Chi-raq

Chicago and Iraq makes for Spike Lee’s current film, Chiraq, about gun violence in Chicago and how a group of women “deny rights of access and entrance,” until their men give up their guns. Its based on an ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes, in which the Lysistrata convinces the women of Greece to withhold sex from their husbands until they are able to find the means to end the Peloponnesian War. In Spike Lee’s version, Teyonah Paris acts as Lysistrata, and it is well featured that, “Homicides in Chicago, Illinois have surpassed the death toll of American special forces in Iraq.” Chi-raq also stars Samuel L. Jackson, Nick Cannon, John Cusak, and Jennifer Hudson.