Spike Lee & Air Jordan's

In my lecture earlier this morning the class and I watched a short clip from Spike Lee's film "Do The Right Thing" in which we had to look into the Binary Oppositions between the three cultures represented in the clip. In a certain part of the clip a Caucasian male bumped into an African American male on a street in Brooklyn, NYC and made the mistake of stepping on his brand new Nike Air Jordan's which lead to the black male ganging up with fellow African Americans on the white guy. This lead into a discussion in which we, as a class started analysing the symbolism portrayed in the significance of this event being that the shoe the black male was wearing is a certain model made by Nike called an "Air Jordan", This trainer turned out to be one of the most iconic and popular model of sneakers that the sports industry has ever come across, turning Michael Jordan into the richest athlete in the world at the time. This lead the black guy to take racial offence in the white guy stepping on his brand new "Nike Air Jordan's" as form of disrespect on how far his culture has come in modern day America.

Spike Lee, the director of the film in question became the face for the Air Jordan after he released a film called "She's Gotta Have It" in which he stars as his alter ego "Mars Blackmon" who is a die hard New York Knicks Basketball fan. After the success of the film and the hype of the character, Nike used Mars Blackmon as the face for the Air Jordan advertising campaign. On the 21st of October 2006 Nike released the "Jordan Spiz'ike" as a tribute to the relationship between Michael Jordan and Spike Lee. The shoe features the numbers 40 and 23, the number 40 representing Spike Lees's film company 40 Acres & A Mule Film Works and the number 23 which is Michael Jordan's jersey number.