YMMV / BlacKkKlansman

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Why does Felix correctly suspect Flip of being Jewish (despite never suspecting he's a cop)? Is it something in the way he looks or sounds? Is it subtly picking up his disgust at anti-Semitic comments? Or is Felix simply a paranoiac who tends to suspect just about anyone he’s unsure about of being a Jew?
• Anvilicious: As is typical for a Spike Lee Joint, the viewers are not left scratching their heads over what the message is. For example, the ending uses footage from the Charlottesville incident to draw parallels between the KKK in The '70s and far-right politics in The New '10s.
  • David Duke during a phone call with Stallworth directly says that white supremacists in office are needed for America to "reclaim its greatness again." Given Donald Trump's use of "Make America Great Again" as a slogan, the intent is pretty on the nose.
  • It should be noted that David Duke got 39% of the vote for Governor of Louisiana in 1991 (including the majority of the state's white population) and WAS elected to state senate. (He was running against an incumbent governor who had already stood trial for mail fraud, obstruction of justice, and bribery. As popular anti-Duke bumper stickers of the time said, "Vote for the crook! It's important.")
• Award Snub:
  • John David Washington was nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globes, but not at the Academy Awards. Topher Grace's performance was also overlooked.
  • Come the Oscars, the film was nominated in six categories, including Best Picture, but lost all but one, with Best Picture going to Green Book. It won for Best Adapted Screenplay, which — in the the context of its loss and that the Academy frequently gives Screenplay Oscars to quality films that have poor Best Picture odds — comes off as a consolation prize. Lee outright said that the loss was a case of History Repeats, comparing it to Do the Right Thing losing to Driving Miss Daisy in 1989.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Felix, Ivanhoe and Walker are unabashedly racist and revolting. Them being killed by the same bomb they were going to use against Patrice is very satisfying. The same can be said for Connie getting arrested minutes after framing Stallworth as a rapist.
  • David Duke claims to be able to recognize a black person by the way they talk. Ron revealing he has been talking to a black person the entire time and didn't notice it is extremely cathartic and hilarious.
  • Landers getting arrested after openly admitting to harassing black people.
• Complete Monster: Walker is the bombmaker of the Ku Klux Klan's Colorado Springs chapter, driven by racist spite to kill for his cause. Developing a powerful explosive, Walker guides Connie Kendrickson through his and Felix's plan to bomb an activist rally where hundreds of black students and lynching survivors will be gathered. Though the initial plan to murder the crowd fails, Walker had prepared a "Plan B", and attempts to bomb the home of the activist rally's leader to kill her and everyone inside.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Ron Stallworth's initial phone call to the KKK, where he (a black man) declares his hatred of everything non Aryan, and rants about his "sister being accosted by a black goon" just to seal the deal. Meanwhile, every police officer in the room is looking at him in disbelief and amusement.
  • Several bits with the Klansmen that highlight their ignorant bigotry comes off as simultaneously hilarious and disturbing. For a prime example, when Ron asks David Duke on the phone how he knows when he's talking to a white or black man, Duke says he knows he is talking to a white man because of how he pronounces his R's, then going into an example of how he thinks black men pronounce their R's. Ron's reaction is what sells it. What's more? Interviews with the real-life Ron indicate that this actually happened.
  • In one scene, Klansman Felix is going on about how he thinks the Holocaust was faked and Flip - who is actually Jewish - tries to one up him by saying how awesome he thinks the Holocaust was.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The uncomfortable white supremacist violence have only become more repulsive following the murder of George Floyd.
  • David Duke had a reasonably successful mainstream political career despite his leadership of the KKK, including state public office.
• He Really Can Act: While Topher Grace has never been considered a bad actor, nobody took him too seriously. He's gotten some of the best reviews of his career for playing David Duke.
• Love to Hate: Felix is an utterly insane bigot who is overall the nastiest - and most devoted - Klansman in the entire film. But his complete lack of class, and cartoonishly enormous bigotry also becomes genuinely humorous, and Jasper Pääkkönen absolutely perfects his role as such a snidely scumbag.
• Memetic Mutation: Because of Adam Driver, of Star Wars fame, being in this movie as a cop posing as a KKK member and saying the N-word many times, "Kylo Ren says the N-word" videos became popular.
• Nightmare Fuel: The scene where Harry Belafonte's elder black activist character talks to the black student union in graphic detail about how a developmentally disabled boy he knew was tortured and killed by a mob, after being convicted of raping and murdering a white woman, including photographs. Made worse by the fact this story is actually true. Made worse still by how pointless the boy's murder was. He'd already been found guilty and sentenced...and the mob killed him anyway.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Corey Hawkins as Kwame Ture only appears in two scenes (the second being very short), but the Rousing Speech he gives in the first one is so intense and charismatic that it is easily one of the movie's most memorable scenes.
  • Harry Belafonte's monologue about witnessing, while being powerless to stop, his friend's lynching.
• Special Effect Failure: The "Jesus H. Christ!" Duke exclaims upon Ron touching his shoulder while the photo is being taken is clearly edited in since Topher Grace isn't moving his mouth.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The ending montage, depicting the 2017 Unite the Right rally and the related Charlottesville car attack, is a sad reminder that the problem of racism has not changed much since the events of the movie.
  • The Memoriam of Heather Heyer:
    HEATHER HEYER
    May 29th, 1985 — August 12th, 2017
    Rest In Power
  • The lynching of Jesse Washington and how monstrous the people responsible were against a black boy who wasn't even 18. And it wasn't just some random act of violence by a few racists, thousands of people showed up to gawk, some of whom were important political figures.
• Win Back the Crowd: The film won back longtime Spike Lee fans who were disillusioned by his lackluster 2010s slate and controversial public statements. It also helps that it won Lee his first Oscar.

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