In Spike Lee’s production filmwork of “Jungle Fever'', a tragic story calling out the struggles and hardships of inter-racial romance (in this context, a black versus white romantic relationship, or to be more direct, a love affair in its very essence) has been presented and shown to its audiences, which is apparently also the first ever time cross-race romance has became one of the most important main/central focus topics of the director (the audiences could be able to tell this from watching the preceding film piece of “Mo’ Better Blues”, which Lee happened to touch a bit on this topic as a sideline or side plot). However, this specific filmwork is indeed way more than simply/merely being a sad tale of a failed inter-racial romance at work, but should rather be interpreted and seen as something which goes/dwelves way deeper than that of the surface value, that it is about the steady and firm racial barriers that have been intentionally built/constructed up, as the sense of high walls/tall upper fences being constructed between the dominant group (Caucasian whites) and minority races (in the specific case of this particular movie, African Americans) lasting from generations ago until now at this current point, as well as about the subtly covert, yet without a question deep-rooted racism that is also long-lasting and apparently still on-going, which by itself could probably be easiest to tell and observe within the seemingly normal day-to-day interactions between different races themselves, resulting and arising from that crawling uneasy feeling, which cannot be tracked to its very origin with clear certainty.
On the outside surface or simply based on first impression, as a quite successful businessman living in/residing within the busting Big Apple himself, Flipper has nearly everything going for him, at least that was the case before he met with Angie, an attractive Italian-American young woman who was being introduced to the cooperation to work with him. But as one could still sense somewhat, maybe it is the case that there were already previous cracks existing in the marriage itself, or maybe Flipper has simply gotten a bit bored out by the unchanging daily routines of the married life, anyways, he has later gotten himself into this total “guilty-pleasure” like affair with his co-worker Angie, whom he has only known for a rather short period of time, and which drastically changed/altered his entire life path to a different direction. Throughout this entire film piece here, Spike Lee has mainly and mostly casted his focus/attention on the specific class of people who are usually referred to as the “working class whites”, and his heavily concentrated portrayals of them are not much of positive ones, but rather, more in a critical manner and light. This can be clearly seen within a lot of different scenes coming from the film itself, especially that one particular scene of the so-called “war committee/council” - when Flipper happens to have a huge disagreement, argument, and quarrel with two of his Caucasian co-workers in a private office meeting/conference setting within the corporation which he works at, which the argument keeps on escalating to the next level, which made/urged Flipper to be saying something like “I can see that you guys have absolutely no respect for me” straight to the other men’s faces, and then walked out on them. The actual selfishness/self-centeredness, or perhaps, “racial ego’ which these two white co-workers happen to carry with them has been revealed through this particular scene depicting the certain conflict which happened, although in a quite subtle and covert sense, but is still possible to spot. It is indeed “racial prejudice'' in its best and most appropriate description, in a social situation where the three men are each supposed to be status equal with each other. That is exactly the reason why the specific racial approach of so-called “colorblindness” could oftentimes be unimaginably harming and dangerous, because as human beings altogether living in a colorblind society that way, for sure without a doubt creates more of the excuses for whites in general to deny their internal racism/racist attitudes/racial ego or prejudice which ultimately results in the subtle/covert mis-treatments of other minority races out there, exactly like what Flipper happened to experience with and go through within this specific scene himself.
As generations pass by and as the society progressively develops, one obvious cultural phenomenon or pattern that could be easily seen and observed, is the seemingly “lessening’ of racial discriminations/racial mis-treatments out there within the general social environment as a whole, but this feeling by itself could be merely an illusion or a false sense of assumption, for the actual reality and truth is that, most often times for the current era, what we happen to see and experience the most are, that of the old and medieval cases of direct outward actions in terms of physical harms/violences being inflicted upon minority group individuals back then centuries ago, have since being replaced/exchanged by, as well as switched to a brand new form of very much subtly covert racial discriminations, which is being embedded within almost each and every corner of the 21st century modern society, despite and no matter of our own personal degree/level of recognitions, awarenesses, or better judgments to those different situations and circumstances out there. As a possible result, the most reasonable as well as logical conclusion which could be drawn from that, would thus probably be something that goes like this: There is still indeed, a long long way to go as well as mountains after mountains to climb, awaiting ahead for all of us here being as collective homo sapiens/human beings living on this earth, at least in terms of the general racial equity aspects and sides of things for sure.
