Children in Spike Lee's Crooklyn

An analysis of Lee’s editing techniques in a scene from Crooklyn. Press play!

It isn’t until Troy departs for home that she exchanges her slightly reverted pony tail for two neat puffs. Her face is framed by the jade earrings her mother sent her for her birthday. She is has exchanged her bangs, ribbons, and and dresses for a halter top and and skirt. In this scene Troy asks after her mother’s health gingerly touching her mother’s free kinky tresses, in response, her mother gestures towards Troy’s straight edges and asks “who did this” knowing she should have expected nothing less from Aunt Song. In many ways, Troy’s hair and aesthetic mirrors the growth she has experienced at her Aunt’s house. As she returns back to Crooklyn we see that she is on the brink of another phase of her life. It’s as though she has been groomed but also has left her girlhood behind in many ways.

At this point in time, Troy succumbed to her Aunt Song’s aesthetics and politics of respectability by submitting to the hot comb. An anxiety inducing experience but one that is filled with a novel sense of pleasure at the end. Troy’s hair for the majority of the time at her Aunt’s house, has her hair pulled back into a ponytail that is tied with a blue ribbon. Overall her aesthetic is much more conventionally feminine. The physical change in hair symbolizes the physical distance between Troy and her mother as well as the distance from her mother’s influence. The transition also symbolizes Troy exploring her femininity, in tandem with her straightened hair her interactions with other children is restricted to other girls, she wears nightgowns, uses curler while she sleeps, she accessorizes and wears dresses.

In this scene Troy is serving her mother breakfast in bed. This scene follows her father taking a hiatus from the home after a big fight, seemingly at the wishes of Caroline. Troy is left to comfort her mother and look after her. This scene showcases both Caroline and Troy in all their braided glory. The scene captures Troy in training to eventually fill her mother’s shoes as caretaker in the home. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of Troy and her mother in this scene alludes to the influential role Caroline plays in Troy’s life at this age; she can persuade Troy to do many things- visit and have an amiable stay with her relatives in the South, apologize to a boy she was teasing or to go grocery shopping. Troy’s hairstyle was artfully and loving done by her mother, but that doesn’t mean that their wasn’t pain or resistance involved. Her mother coaxed her hair- combing and pulling her hair into neat braids and decorating it with beads. One can use the hairstyle and also the experience of the hairstyle as a way to interpret this point in Troy’s life,as a point in which Troy, although largely independent at the time, was guided and influenced by her mother’s values, aesthetics, voice, rules and moods.