do the right thing summary essay

Jotted Lines

A Collection Of Essays

Do The Right Thing: Summary, Analysis

Summary: .

Set on a city block during the hottest day of the summer in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant (‘Bed-Stuy’), Do The Right Thing follows the character of ‘Mookie’ (Spike Lee), a pizza delivery boy, and a day in the life of the neighborhood residents as the climate gives way to escalating encounters and disputes around culture, ethnicity and community. 

Do The Right Thing was Spike Lee’s third feature film following School Daze (1988) and She’s Gotta Have It (1986). The film came a decade removed from the Blaxploitation film cycle and two years before the ‘black film explosion’ of 1991.1 A prolific film auteur, Lee continues to challenge the idea of black film and American cinema. 

The opening credits of Do The Right Thing open to the strains of a soprano saxophone rendition of James Weldon Johnson’s ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’. The song ends screen black and the title sequence begins with Public Enemy’s ‘Fight The Power’ and a cut to a stage. Evoking the conceit of the film musical’s opening number, the montage of the sequence features the hip-hop dance of Rosie Perez in multiple costumes against a changing backdrop of Brooklyn photographs backlit by an array of colour schemes. This opening montage is cut to match the movements of Perez’s dance, a dance of militancy and popping contractions with a face that never smiles. She is more than merely a woman to be leered at or reductively posed as an object of pleasure. Her dance signals a cultural politics of hip-hop and what Guthrie Ramsey notes as the mark of ‘a present that has urgency, particularity, politics, and pleasure’. 2 With these two compositions and their distinct spatiotemporal origins, the present of Do The Right Thing demonstrates a century of urgency. 

‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ began as a poem by James Weldon Johnson that debuted in 1900. Johnson and Johnson’s brother, J. Rosamond, would set the poem to music and this composition would eventually be dubbed the ‘The Negro National Anthem’ and adopted as the official song of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP promoted the use of the song as an anthem for the black struggle for access to freedoms and inalienable rights denied by the discriminatory and terrorist practices of white supremacy and the Racial Contract. Moreover, the use of the song during the Civil Rights Movement and its eventual retitling (‘The Black National Anthem’) continued the purposing of the song as black anthem of protest. As Shana Redmond points out, 

“Black anthems become incubators not only for a race/sound fusion but also the merger of art and practice. The conditions that give rise to these anthems within diaspora include colonialism, Jim Crow segregation, and myriad legal and extralegal enactments of persistent inequality; therefore liberation and its pursuit are necessarily narrated and exercised in tandem with philosophies and acts of resistance.” 3 

Public Enemy offers an anthem less reconciled to the Christian doctrine of social protest and nonviolence but nonetheless remains a song compelled by conditions that animate defiant verse. 

While the first song offers the perseverance of faith and belief in inalienable rights, the latter demonstrates a cultural nationalist tact, a more politicised sense of culture and the black lifeworld. Cultural nationalism shifted the meaning of race from the biological to a deliberate posing of race as cultural praxis and a matter of engagement with the anti-hegemonic struggle against white supremacy as embodying features of black personhood. Moreover, the distance between the poles is made plainer with the modal of hip-hop modernism and not that of the sacred verse of gospel. As a sorrow song of what Mark Anthony Neal calls ‘postindustrial soul’, ‘Fight The Power’ offers a sobering and artful discontent from streets far removed from Birmingham, but a relation nonetheless.4 

The depth of Do The Right Thing demonstrates the staging of a political art richly informed by multiple historiographies of black visual and expressive culture. The film is propelled by an intersection of history, music, cinema and blackness. This generative nexus of historical scripts encompasses such issues as gentrification, the black public sphere, police brutality, the popular, cultural and ethnic conflict, and the everyday urban. In other words, anti-realist in its stance, the film positions itself in the matrix of black representation as an interpretative echo and refabulation of race and art. The film employs a 24-hour conceit of the hottest day of the summer in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant (‘Bed-Stuy’). This plotting of a ‘day in the life’ amplifies the masterful way the film functions as a discrete representational system. The seamless accounting of the day on the block through continuity editing is facilitated by such things as Mister Señor Love Daddy’s radio broadcast, colour, physical movements, emblematic framing, an intricate orchestration of ensemble casting in the depth of field, and sound bridges. With the deliberateness of the film structure, one learns to watch the film and recognise the spatiality of the setting. Eventually, one recognises that at one end of the block is Mookie and Jade’s building, Mother Sister’s brownstone, the Korean-run grocery, and across the street against the red wall are the corner crew (Sweet Dick Willie, ML, and Coconut Sid). At the other end of the block, starting across from the grocery is Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, the stoop where the Puerto Ricans sit, the station home for 108FM ‘We Love Radio’, and the brownstone owned by the Celtics’ fan. The film details a dynamic community of personalities and histories, a space textured by infinite encounters. 

The cohesiveness of this spatial conceit does not comply with the platitudes of Our Town, USA. The film proves that the most rewarding consequence of America as ‘The Melting Pot’ is that the analogy has never worked. We the people are not the same: we have different cultures, belief systems, and freedom dreams. These differences Do The Right Thing (1989) 209 represent at times collateral interests but never truly identical ones. In this way, the interethnic conflicts that circulate up and down the block are but a red herring. Do The Right Thing vitally avoids the classical tact of the social problem film to present the problem of differences as systemic or a result of the idea of America itself. In the social problem film, these staged eruptions of racial conflict are resolved and contained with a tacit framing of our spectatorship in terms of cinematically enacted cures. 

As Michael Rogin writes, ‘Hollywood, inheriting and universalizing blackface in the blackface musical, celebrated itself as the institutional locus of American identity. In the social problem film it allied itself with the therapeutic society. Generic overlap suggests institutional overlap; Hollywood was not just Hortense Powdermaker’s dream factory, but also the American interpreter of dreams, employing roleplaying as national mass therapy.’ 5 Social problem films with race as their object choice usually enact a limited and circumspect sense of social problem-solving. In particular, the way these films are saddled with the extra-diegetic responsibilities of reconciliation between the races promotes a dangerously ridiculous sense of film as social policy. After all, what James Baldwin called the ‘price of the ticket’ should mean more than matinee admission. Do The Right Thing poignantly demands that one’s spectatorship entail a recognition of our respective subject positions and/or complicities in a productively non-patronising way. 

The central conflict of Do The Right Thing cycles around the issue of How come there ain’t no brothas on the wall? Outraged by the absence of black representation on the pizzeria wall, Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) organises a boycott against Sal’s Pizzeria in response to the ‘Wall of Fame’, a collage of photographs devoted to Italian Americans. The call for economic sanctions echoes the use of these strategies throughout the twentieth century by churches, unions and civic leaders as a way of combatting the economic disenfranchisement of anti-black racism. This call for representation is emblematic of a diacritical sense of value. First, there is the value suggested by economic empowerment of a raced consumer-citizen. Second, there is the measure of culture as value. In this way, the central conflict that accrues over the course of the film becomes that of the political and cultural value of blackness. 

However, the film’s vessel of civil disobedience and cultural nationalism is far from sound. Buggin’ Out does not articulate a clear plan of black economic development. His persona is that of empty rhetoric; more hothead than firebrand. Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) lumbers and speaks like a heroic throwback from the mind of Jack Kirby. A laconic giant, his voice and being are embodied by ‘Fight the Power’, the only thing constantly blaring from his boombox. His ‘Love vs. Hate’ direct address constitutes the most that he ever speaks, a gesture to the absurd holyroller ways of Robert Mitchum’s itinerant honeymoon killer in Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955). Yet, this ad infinitum struggle between good and evil, coupled with Raheem’s devotion to the gospel of Public Enemy, frame him as a very textured figure. He wanders throughout Bed-Stuy spreading the word, battling any and all windmills along the way. Every interaction is a contest and exclamation of his being. Finally, closing out the rebel band is Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith). Mentally disabled and physically spastic, Smiley’s speech is as indecipherable as the irreconcilable coupling of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. in the photograph postcards he marks and peddles. Stumbling through the film, Smiley tags his cherished wares in a style imitative of Jean-Michel Basquiat.6 

This crisis of representation emblematic of this rebel ensemble embodies the necessary tensions surrounding the political question of black representation and film as an art practice. Specifically, what is the purpose of the term ‘black film’? Does it represent an entirely foreign film practice? Is it merely a reflection of black people, not art but simply black existential dictation? Like all other expressions of the idea of black film, Do The Right Thing should not be thought as mimetically tied to the social category of race. The ‘black’ of black film represents something other than merely people. Instead it must be appreciated in terms of the art of film and enactments of black visual and expressive culture. In this way, film blackness functions as a critical term for the way race is rendered and mediated by the art of film.7 

This alienation effect of the film escalates with the final sequence of Radio Raheem’s murder by 210 Do The Right Thing (1989) the police. The broken band of rebels storm the pizzeria and what begins as canted and absurd quickly accelerates. Sal begins a litany of ‘nigger’ and pulls out a baseball bat. He then proceeds to destroy Raheem’s boombox, silencing the roar of the Public Enemy anthem.8 Yes, the film resonates with prejudices and interethnic conflict but it also gestures towards the idea of communities constituted by ambivalences. Regardless, the confusion of this confrontation signals a shattering break. Things have gone too far and as Radio Raheem strangles Sal, pulling him over the counter, the fight spills into the street. The fight draws a crowd and the NYPD arrive. A police hold is administered with a nightstick against Raheem’s neck as he is raised and lynched until his kicks wind down. He is murdered. Radio Raheem is dead. 

A void appears in the quick exit of the police with a corpse and Buggin’ Out in tow. There is the mournful calm of what has happened and how it has come to this. Mookie they killed him. They killed Radio Raheem. A divide appears, with Mookie, Sal, Pino and Vito on one side and the witnesses from the neighbourhood frozen still, growing angrier in the street. Everyone is a stranger; everyone is revealed. Murder. They did it again. Just like Michael Stewart. Murder. Eleanor Bumpers. Murder.9 The extradiegetic victims of murder at the hands of the police (not persons unknown) now have Raheem among their ranks. Mookie walks away before returning into this breach, throwing a garbage can through the pizzerio’s window. Fireman and police readied in riot gear arrive and the historical rupture is complete. Even in the absence of Birmingham’s finest with German Shepherds at hand, Sweet Dick Willie makes it plain: Yo where’s Bull Connor?10 Smiley begins a new Wall of Fame amid the wreckage by tacking one of his postcards on the smouldering wall: finally some brothers are on the wall. But, was this really what it was all about? Smiley with his ever-delirious visage appears to be the only one to claim some semblance of a victory. 

The day after brings the new normal of an awkward, yet tender, meeting between Mookie and Sal. In the end, Mister Señor Love Daddy broadcasts the only available closure – a reminder to register to vote and a mournful shout-out to Radio Raheem.11 The film ends with scrolling citations from Martin Luther King Jr. and X before the film’s final image: the King and X photograph. The offering of these two contrasting political positions – the immorality of violence and the pragmatism of self-defence – is one of the major reasons that the film continues to haunt, inspire, and provoke. For only there on the screen does their proximity hint at some kind of dialectical resolve or compatibility. Do The Right Thing orchestrates the tensions and distinctions between social categories of racial being and the art of film. The film is a question masquerading in the form of a call to action. In other words, the film functions in a way too irresolute to be thought of as merely provocative protest. If the film is troubling, so be it. Killing the messenger has always been convenient, but it never truly disavows that a message has been sent. Always do the right thing. That’s it? That’s it. I got it. I’m gone. 

Michael B. Gillespie

Notes 

1. For more on the history of the Blaxploitation cycle and the significance of 1991, see Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press, 1993. 

2. Guthrie Ramsey, Race Music: Black Cultures from Be Bop to Hip-Hop, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2003, p. 178. 

3. Shana L. Redmond, ‘Citizens of Sound: Negotiations of Race and Diaspora in the Anthems of the UNIA and NAACP’, African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2011, p. 22. 

4. See Mark Anthony Neal, What The Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture, London and New York, Routledge, 1999, pp. 125–57. 

5. Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1998, p. 221. 

6. The photograph was taken on March 26, 1964, in the halls of the United States Capitol Building during Senate debates on the Civil Rights Bill. It documents the only meeting between the two men and lasted only a few minutes. 

7. For more on ‘film blackness’, see Michael B. Gillespie, ‘Reckless Eyeballing: Coonskin, Film Blackness, and the Racial Grotesque’, in Mia Mask (ed.), Contemporary Black American Cinema: Race, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies, New York, Routledge, 2012. Also, see the press conference (May 1989) that followed the premiere screening of Do The Right Thing at the Cannes Film Festival. (Available on the Criterion Collection and 20th Anniversary Edition DVD releases of the film.) The insistence by much of the audience on reading Do The Right Thing in social reflectionist terms glaringly illustrates the need to distinguish between black people and black film. 

8. The baseball bat references Howard Beach and the death of Michael Griffith. On the evening of 19 December 1986, a group of black men entered a pizzeria in the Queens neighbourhood of Howard Beach seeking help after their car broke down a few miles away. Upon leaving, the men were confronted by a group of Italian Americans from the neighbourhood armed with baseball bats. Attempting to escape from a continued beating by the mob, Griffith was struck and killed by a car on the highway. 

9. Michael Stewart was a New York City graffiti artist killed while in the custody of New York Transit Police (1983). Eleanor Bumpers was a mentally ill, African American senior citizen killed by NYPD officers during the eviction from her home (1984). 

10.Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor served as Public Safety Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama (1957–1963). A rabid white supremacist, Connor was responsible for the brutal and violent responses (the use of police dogs and fire hoses against protestors) to the desegregation campaigns spearheaded by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. 

11.This call to vote was part of Lee’s endorsement of David Dinkins’ mayoral run. Dinkins would be elected New York City’s first African American mayor the following year. 

Cast and Crew:

[Country: USA. Production Company: A Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks Production. Director: Spike Lee. Producer: Spike Lee. Co-producer: Monty Ross. Line Producer: Jon Kilik. Screenwriter: Spike Lee. Cinematographer: Ernest Dickerson. Editor: Barry Alexander Brown. Music: Bill Lee, featuring Branford Marsalis. Cast: Danny Aiello (Sal), Ossie Davis (Da Mayor), Ruby Dee (Mother Sister), Richard Edson (Vito), Giancarlo Esposito (Buggin’ Out), Spike Lee (Mookie), Bill Nunn (Radio Raheem), John Turturro (Pino), Paul Benjamin (ML), Frankie Faison (Coconut Sid), Robin Harris (Sweet Dick Willie), Joie Lee (Jade), Miguel Sandoval (Officer Ponte), Rick Aiello (Officer Long), John Savage (Clifton), Samuel L. Jackson (Mister Señor Love Daddy), Rosie Perez (Tina), Roger Guenveur Smith (Smiley), Steve White (Ahmad), Martin Lawrence (Cee), Leonard Thomas (Punchy), Christa Rivers (Ella), Frank Vincent (Charlie).] 

Further Reading: 

Darby English, How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness, Boston, MIT Press, 2007. 

Ed Guerrero, Do The Right Thing, London, BFI Publishing, 2001. 

Stuart Hall, ‘What is this “black” in black popular culture?’ and ‘New Ethnicities’ in David Morely and Kuan-Hsing Chen (eds), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, New York, Routledge, 1996, pp. 468–78. 

Spike Lee with Lisa Jones, Do the Right Thing, New York, Fireside, 1989. 

Mia Mask (ed.), Contemporary Black American Cinema: Race, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies, New York, Routledge, 2012. 

Paula J. Massood (ed.), The Spike Lee Reader, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press, 2007. 

W. J. T. Mitchell, ‘The Violence of Public Art: Do the Right Thing’, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 16, No. 4, Summer, 1990, pp. 880–99. 

Source Credits:

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Films, Edited by Sarah Barrow, Sabine Haenni and John White, first published in 2015.

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Do the Right Thing Analysis

by Walker Valdez April 2016

Introduction

The film Do the Right Thing, written, directed and produced by Spike Lee, focuses on a single day of the lives of racially diverse people who live and work in a lower class neighborhood in Brooklyn New York. However, this ordinary day takes place on one of the hottest days of the summer. The film centers on how social class, race and the moral decisions that the characters make have a direct effect on the way people interact with each other. It starts with the film’s characters waking up to start their day and climaxes with a neighborhood riot after police officers excessively restrain and kill a young black man named Radio Raheem for fighting an older Italian American restaurant owner named Sal in his pizzeria, and then outside on the street. The film, although released in 1989, with its social commentary on the effect that race has on police brutality is just as relevant today as when it was released 26 years ago.

Though the movie ultimately shows how dangerous it is to react to others based on race, ironically, Lee portrays characters stereotypically in the movie through their language and aesthetics. Spike Lee indulges in stereotypes by using iconography to represent the different racial groups in the film (Etherington-Wright 236). He does this in numerous ways such as having Italian American characters wear crosses and tank top shirts. He also does this in his portrayal of Radio Raheem wearing an African medallion necklace while carrying a large boom box playing loud rap music. Even tertiary characters such as a group of Puerto Rican friends are shown listening to salsa while speaking Spanish and drinking beer on the stoop of their apartment building. Lee also points out that his characters recognize that their different ethnicities can lead to a power struggle by having them openly insult each other through ethnic slurs in both a comic and serious fashion. Lee also shows this when his black activist character Buggin’ Out tells Mookie, who is a black man employed by a white man, to “Stay Black” insinuating that Mookie should never strive to be a Tom or a sell-out (Etherington-Wright 238).

Throughout the film, the characters not only point out the differences in their race, but also display the ideas found in Marxism through their social interactions. According to Understanding Film Theory , “Marxism was conceived as a revolutionary theory that attempted to explain and expose the relations of power in capitalist societies” (Etherington-Wright 83). It also says that Marxism’s founder, Karl Marx, was “concerned with the apparent division between the ruling and the working class” (83). In the film, Buggin’ Out verbally attacks a property owning white man for running over his new Air Jordans and then asks him “What are you doing in my neighborhood?” In this brief scene Lee is able to show how a character in a poor neighborhood feels the psychological need to compete with others economically. This is an example of the Culture Industry and Buggin’ Out displays this because he buys the latest shoes and does not want to feel that he was literally and symbolically being run over by a man who was much wealthier than he was (86).

The film is set in a predominantly black neighborhood and the only two families seen that own businesses are either Italian American or Korean American. Therefore, some of the black characters like them because they are business owners and others dislike them for the same reason. However, at the end of the film the only business owner whose business is vandalized and burned to the ground is a white man’s. Lee shows that, although there is conflict between Korean Americans and African Americans, the history between whites and blacks is much more conflicted. Furthermore, even though many of the black characters love Sal’s pizzeria, they do become aware of what Sal really thinks of them when he feels threatened out by Buggin’ Out and denies him the chance to put a picture of a black man on the pizzeria wall. The movie also clearly shows how by denying the picture, Sal keeps control over the black patrons in his restaurant. The two films clips that will be discussed will be analyzed by using both a racial and Marxist perspective. The first clip shows black and Hispanic characters in conflict over material possessions, but ultimately respecting each other, and the second clip shows Mookie coming to the realization that as much as he tries to moderate peaceful relations between white and black characters at some point he feels he has to fight for what he thinks is unfair, even if it means losing his job over it.

Do the Right Thing Analysis of Scenes

The first selected scene begins with a record being played that brings in the sound of conga drums while the camera fades to the next scene where we find a group of Puerto Rican men who fit a perceived ethnic Puerto Rican image while the salsa music of Ruben Blades is heard loud. Spike Lee opening the scene with heavy use of iconography enforces stereotypes by choice of the men’s clothes, language, and facial appearance. The man in the center speaks in Spanish, referring to his beautiful land Puerto Rico, while his friend disagrees with its beauty by calling it a nightmare. The scene is successful in portraying that this corner of the majority black neighborhood is very different from the rest. While the two friends begin to argue the camera pans away to reveal that the loud salsa music actually comes from an old boom box which begins to blend with loud rap music cluing the viewer that Radio Raheem must be near. The camera pans to the right and starts from the ground, moving up stopping at the large newer stereo being held by two large African American hands wearing gold knuckle jewelry, showing Lee’s use of fetishization by focusing on half of the body and not the face. As the camera pauses, the viewer can read the words Super and PRO stereo and Raheem’s music is heard much more clearly, showing signs of economic excess. The jewelry and the stereo’s excessive noise and size represent economic power and status. The camera pans up to Raheem’s serious face and the African medallion hanging on his neck once again shows iconography. While the camera focus on Raheem, the sound of the Puerto Ricans yelling that their salsa music is being drowned out is heard. The camera rotates to the right again and passes green bushes that represent a tropical climate as the salsa music starts to be heard again.

The man in the center recognizes that Radio Raheem is issuing a challenge of power by standing next to them blaring loud rap music that many black youth identify with. This challenge of power has both racial and economic symbolism because it is essentially seeing not only whose stereo plays louder music, but also whose culture is the more dominating one. When the Puerto Rican man walks over to his boom box, which has a Puerto Rican flag sticker on it, it is clear that his stereo is not as new and when he turns up the volume louder the viewer realizes it’s not as loud either. Raheem then turns up multiple knobs and drowns out the salsa yet again, letting the Puerto Rican man know that in this power struggle he has just lost. He responds by turning down his music again and saying “You Got it Bro” to which Raheem responds by smiling and pumping his fist in the air. This two minute scene, although entertaining, in reality represents the whole movie in the way the different races want to feel acknowledged, powerful and respected by the other races in the film. In this scene Raheem proves he is more powerful and it is a precursor for the many confrontations that he faces throughout the film.

The second selected scene begins minutes after Radio Raheem has been killed by the police because of their response to a street fight between Radio Raheem and Sal. This scene represents how disbelief turns to outrage, as the characters shout the names of other victims of police violence. At this point the viewer begins to realize that this may not have been a freak accident and in fact that has been happening repeatedly in this neighborhood. The residents of this lower class neighborhood are now all aware that it is the norm for them to be victimized by police. The older man saying “They didn’t have to kill the boy,” points out that Radio, though large and intimidating, was still a fairly young man.

When the camera pans to Mookie’s shocked face, it reveals that Mookie has decided that there is something wrong with standing next to these three white men while the rest of his neighbors and friends watch. The way they stand is very important because Sal is standing in the center and his two sons are standing behind him. Mookie is also next to him, but his body is slightly away from them showing that he is reconsidering his position towards them. He looks to Sal, then back at the neighborhood and begins to walk away from Sal and his sons. The act is very significant because Mookie felt a loyalty to Sal through employment, but now a line in the sand is drawn. After Mookie leaves, Sal’s facial expression becomes tenser because he realizes that at least he had someone in the neighborhood literally on his side who ethnically looked like the rest of the residents who at the moment are not happy with him or his sons.

Seeing that tensions may escalate, the character Mayor tries to pacify the crowd, but they do not take him seriously due to his alcoholism and the fact that he is dressed poorly. At this point the crowd is upset, but have not decided to commit any acts of violence yet. The camera panning from a largely black crowd to three white men staring at them shows that Sal and his sons may have more economic status, but they do not have the numbers. Pino’s face shows that he may have been expecting this to happen all along. This scene is very fascinating because at this point Sal and his sons are not just a symbol of wealth, but are now a symbol of any injustice committed against the people of the neighborhood by someone who is white or economically more powerful than they are. It is ironic because Raheem was actually choking Sal before the police came, but the residents do not acknowledge that. As Mookie runs with a trashcan towards the pizzeria, he is not only smashing Sal’s store, but is showing his outrage and anger for being made to feel powerless by the police. Sal’s voice in slow motion can be heard yelling “No!” but by then it is too late. As the residents loot the store it shows that they are tired of being made to feel powerless by the police and by all those who are economically better off. While some destroy the store, others go for the money showing that they are desperate to regain the power that they felt that they never had. While the neighborhood residents destroys the pizzeria, Sal is taken to the other side of the street where he is forced to watch in disbelief as not only his store is being destroyed, but also his economic superiority over them becomes destroyed as well, thus proving to be a remarkable scene.

Director Spike Lee chose to create a film that is able to both entertain and emotionally resonate with an audience by pointing out that when racial and social disparities are not properly addressed by those in power, they can ultimately lead to acts of extreme violence by those who feel powerless. The film is realistic in its approach that a melting pot of different cultures and races doesn’t mean that everyone will live happily ever after. Lee knew that in order to make a film about social issues he needed to embrace the stereotypes in order to criticize them. At one point in the film the police officers are driving through the neighborhood and say “What a waste” while they are driving by. The residents outside at the moment were not committing any acts of violence, but in a brief instant it shows that the officers whose job it is to protect the community do not respect the residents they serve, and also hints at what is to come later in the movie.

The film expertly lets the conflict build slowly instead focusing on the ridiculousness of stereotypes such as the Asian store owner with a thick accent, or the overly agitated and hyper active young man who can be seen as very pro black. The film shows the viewer that these issues concerning race exist, but the characters do not directly confront them until the very end of the film. It is important to emphasize that these issues are not solely with race, but also who is in control. It is the combination of the two that takes things to a boiling point. Comic scenes like a boom box show down ultimately prove to be more about power and less about who’s got better music, and a riot does not usually form without years of feeling that the system created for a group’s protection does not benefit their best interests. Do The Right Thing is more than just a film on police brutality or racial identity, it is about the beauty and ugliness that exist, not only in a low income community, but in our selves.

Works Cited

Do The Right Thing . Dir. Spike Lee. Perf. Spike Lee, Danny Aiello. Universal, 1989. DVD.

Etherington-Wright, Christine, and Ruth Doughty. Understanding Film Theory . Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.

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Do The Right Thing Essay

Director and actor Spike Lee presents his "truth" about race relations in his movie Do the Right Thing. The film exhibits the spectacle of black discrimination and racial altercations. Through serious, angry, and loud sounds, Lee stays true to the ethnicity of his characters, all of which reflect their own individualism. Lee uses insulting diction and intense scenes to show how severe racism can lead to violence. The disturbing scene where different nationalities badger their opinions on each other shows poor communication and horrible stereotyping. This is an example of antilocution. Pino's Italian slang, Mookies black talk, and Korean obscenities are all mixed together to show how communication grows impossible among different …show more content…

The burning of Sal's Famous Pizzeria will leave an imprint in the minds of anyone who watches. When Sal smashes Raheem's radio, the tension turns to uproar. Total bedlam occurs within minutes after the death of Raheem by the city police. This could be a physical attack on both sides. Both of the actions taken by Radio Raheem and Sal were uncalled for. Mookie performed a heroic contribution as he shifted the fighting away from Sal and towards Sal's Pizzeria. In fact Mookie saved Sal's life in the midst of everything. In the middle of the chaos the Korean man says, "I'm black, you, me, the same." This reflects how people in society try to fit into certain groups that seem to be the right thing to do at the moment. Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing focuses on scenes representing failed communication, dire stereotyping, absence of trust, and wrongful violence that reflects the existing concerns about racism in America. The intense language and strong gestures enhance the film creating a realistic view for the audience. I would give this movie a five star rating. Do the Right Thing, is to the point and entertaining with a serious view of the world. There are no absolute heroes or villains. There are no easy answers to the questions that this film poses. Do the Right Thing is one of the best-directed, best made films of our time, a film in which the acting and visual style work together to make a statement about race in America. It is also bound to enrage

Analysis of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing Essay

Director and actor Spike Lee presents his "truth" about race relations in his movie Do the Right Thing. The film exhibits the spectacle of black discrimination and racial altercations. Through serious, angry, and loud sounds, Lee stays true to the ethnicity of his characters, all of which reflect their own individualism. Lee uses insulting diction and intense scenes to show how severe racism can lead to violence. The biases reflected through Do the Right Thing model those of today which has kept society in a constant feud for so long. In Oprah Winfrey's dynamic episode, "The Color of Fear", Mr. Mun Wah projects his strong opinion when he states, " . . . that racism is still going on today, that we've got to stop to hear the anguish

The Theme Of Do The Right Thing

The film has several ethnicities within a small area along a time line of one day. The film has many, informative methods in which it describe the various diversity issues of all the characters within the movie. For example, Sal’s pizzeria which is owned by an Italian American has pictures of famous Italian Americans on the wall and plays Italian music. One character named Buggin Out is always upset. Bugging out hates the fact that there are no black people pictures on the wall especially since the pizzeria is in a black neighborhood. His perspective represents the people in the African American community that always protest, but usually don’t work to improve the community. The

How Does Spike Lee Use Cinematography In Do The Right Thing

Spike Lee’s camera technique in “Do The Right Thing” enhances racial tensions between characters. uses a lot of canted frames, tracking shots, close-ups, high and low angles, parallelism, and music to achieve this. The heat wave going through Brooklyn is exemplified in many ways: on the radio, through discussion between characters, people’s dress, and actions, etc. Lee also uses cinematography to get across how hot this day really is. For example, the film begins with a montage of people in the neighborhood trying to cool off, struggling to get through their morning routines: a shot of someone taking a cold shower, cuts to a shot of someone sticking their face in ice, to someone sticking their head in the freezer, men drinking beer, someone

Spike Lee - Auteur Essay

Spike is no stranger to controversy due to the elements he uses in his films. Most of Lee’s films consist of an African American theme and inspect the issues of race relations, political issues, urban crime and violence. His 2nd film he made Do the Right Thing (1989) explored all of these issues. He also explored the issues of family/father & relationships in his films Crooklyn (1994), Get on the Bus (1996) and He Got Game (1998). In his films School Daze (1988), Do The Right Thing (1989), Jungle Fever (1991), Get on the Bus (1996), Summer of Sam (1999) and Bamboozled (2000) he included the issues circulating around racism. Another issue he explores is black female sexuality which is in the films She’s Gotta Have It (1986), Girl 6 (1996) and She Hates Me (2004).

Do The Right Thing Cultural Pluralism

These different ethnic relations are racially divide because it depends on someone's believe towards a race. In the film Do the Right Thing, written, directed by Spike demonstrates how social class, culture, and race can affect the way people interact with each other. For example, Buggin’ Out who is an African-American sees that the pizzeria's “Wall of Fame” and he is offended that the wall only has pictures of Italian “white” important people. The important wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to the

Do The Right Thing : Racial Conflict

It is unfortunate that intolerance continues to exist in our nation (or anywhere else for that matter). Racism, one of the largest and most prevalent forms of intolerance, commonly destroys relationships and can eventually lead to violence. The existence of such hateful ideologies is so prevalent in our society that popular culture is constantly trying to challenge the ignorant basis of racial conflict. Spike Lee’s film, Do the Right Thing, connects with this concept of racial conflict that is so foreign to my past. Through the application of my social and political views, I will demonstrate how Spike Lee’s film is difficult for me to relate to and, in my opinion, conveys a misleading message.

Themes Of Do The Right Thing

The film Do the Right Thing is a very relevant on issues of race. The film shows how there is tension between all races. The film shows racial tension between the communities in the hottest day of the year. The heat is a theme in the film. Heat in general gets people on edge and raises tension. The film relates to W.E.B. Dubois work “The Soul of Black Folk.” Dubois (1903) work includes the concepts of the veil and double consciousness. The African Americans in the film deal with the idea of a veil. Mookie the protagonist deals with the idea of double consciousness.

Spike Lee: Do the Right Thing Essay

In Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing, we dive head first into a world of racial and social ills. The movie is set in the African American and Puerto Rican neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, on the hottest day of the year. We follow a young man named Mookie, who lives with his sister Jade, and works as a pizza delivery guy for a local pizzeria owed by Sal. Sal’s “Wall of Fame” is soon questioned by a man named Buggin’ Out, who believes that Sal should place some pictures of African American celebrities on his wall to represent the African American society he serves. Sal refuses and Buggn’ Out attempts to

Film Paper on Boyz N The Hood

Both Lee and Singleton strive to give an authentic picture of how black youth interact with people of other races. For example, the Korean show owner from DO THE RIGHT THING saying: “I no white. I black, you, me, same. We same!” tells the black youth that other minorities in America have their own battles with civil injustice from white authority.

Do The Right Thing Sociology

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The film depicts the lives of those who live on a city block in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York where Sal’s Famous Pizzeria is located. Racial and ethnic hatred is shown through the characters who frequent the Italian restaurant. Sal’s son, Pino, wants to move the Pizzeria into their own neighborhood away

Analysis Of Do The Right Thing

In spite of the fact that Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever are both associated with social and political issues, they tend to navigate through various racial viewpoints using different cinematic elements. Spike Lee uses a variety of techniques in his film to bring awareness to events occurring in today's society. For example Do the Right Thing, is a film that tackles down the social issue of prejudice as well as the controversial issues between Italian-Americans and African Americans in New York City. The whole movie unravels around the “Wall of Fame” located inside Sal’s Pizzeria, which only features Italian actors. One day a local customer name Bugging Out, demands to have black actors, since after all the pizzeria is located within a black neighborhood. Soon enough the “Wall of Fame” becomes a symbolic representation of racism and hate which leads to a riot involving an explicit scene of police brutality. On the other hand Jungle Fever, tends to emphasise on the subject of interracial couples, as well as the controversy between Italian-Americans and African Americans and of course the usage of drugs. The movie is based on Flipper, an African American architect who has an affair with his secretary Angie, who is an Italian-American. The climax of the movie occurs when Flipper’s wife Drew, finds out about the affair and from then on society begins to reject Flipper and Angie because of social norms. Forcing them into a corner where they later learn that they were driven

Analysis Of The Movie ' Do The Right Thing ' Essay

In Spike Lee 's Do the Right Thing, the story takes places in 1989, another year in the long struggle for equality for African-Americans. The film portrays the racial tensions between locals of the neighborhood and an Italian-American family in the majority Black and Hispanic neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy) in Brooklyn, New York. Spike Lee shows us what a day in the life of the Brooklyn neighborhood consists of and throughout the movie he portrays several different aspects of a modern urban neighborhood, using the many unique personalities of the characters in the movie.

Do The Right Thing Analysis

The movie Do the Right Thing, composed, coordinated and created by Spike Lee, concentrates on a solitary day of the lives of racially differing individuals who live and work in a lower-class neighborhood in Brooklyn New York. Notwithstanding, this common day happens on one of the most sizzling days of summer. The movie fixates on how social class, race and the ethical choices that the characters make directly affect the way individuals communicate with each other. Furthermore, in this essay I will analyses Spike Lee’s use of mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound in the film.

Essay Film Sequence Analysis of "Do the Right Thing"

Spike Lee's 1989 film Do the Right Thing is able to effectively explore the problem of racial conflict in America by skilfully manipulating cinematic devices such as staging, narrative, cinematography, editing and sound. The concentration and emphasis on characters' certain physical attributes with the use of photography and camera framing, the fast pace editing style and manipulation of sound all contribute to film's overall meaning. In analysing the short sequence beginning with a small girl drawing a chalk painting on the road and ending with Sal, the local pizzeria owner, making Radio Raheem, "a hulking misunderstood home-boy" , two slices of pizza, these devices are seen to illustrate the hostility between Black and Italian working

Do the Right Thing Scene Analysis Essay

Do the Right Thing is a dramatic comedic film that was directed by Spike Lee. The movie was released in 1989. Lee served in three capacities for the film: writer, director and producer of the movie, Ernest Dickenson was the cinematographer and Barry Alexander Brown was the film’s editor. For this film, Lee garnered together some notable actors and actresses, including Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Rosie Perez, Samuel L. Jackson, John Tuturro and Martin Lawrence. The setting of the movie is in Bedford-Stuyvesant; which is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. This particular neighborhood is made up of several ethnic groups that include African Americas, Italians, Koreans, and Puerto Ricans. The movie takes place on a particularly hot day

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Do The Right Thing Analysis Essay

Black struggles and racism, king and malcolm’s use.

Crisis and conflict characterize the film “Do The Right Thing”. However, explicit racial divisions and tones that the characters who belong to different races in the film bring out the motive in this crisis.

Spike lee intends to bring out the notion that human beings are different and unique in their own ways and there is little human beings can do to hide from that fact. It brings out the notion that, differences between people are the source of all prejudice, stereotyping, and intolerance. Amid all the chaos, Spike Lee seeks to show that there are some voices of reason through the character of Da Mayor.

That, human beings have a choice to live positively and all the ills that the community in the film embodies can easily be avoided by only doing the right thing. The community in the film has intertwined interests that apparently make it difficult to do the right thing, be it for personal or communal benefit. From the onset, the film presents a multiracial community brought together by various interests.

All the people who live in the block have developed some interdependence while some characters are caught up in situations that demand that they commit their loyalties to different parties. People in this community have kept alive racial awareness and the interdependence that exists is only for convenience and survival.

John Turturro and Buggin Out who have not cared to hide their views about racial awareness and won’t waste an opportunity to hit out at people of different races proof this. The presence of the Radio Raheem the Radio personality, Smiley the retard and the “cornermen” especially the radio disk jockey who comment on almost everything give rise to a complicated but thriving community. There is also white owned business that serves a dominantly black neighborhood.

Mookie the deliveryman has a Puerto Rican girlfriend with whom they have a baby. He is aware of the sentiments that black people hold about whites but he needs a job hence he has to work for the whites to make a living. Comments like those of black people like Mother, Sister and Buggin out clearly show the reservations that blacks hold against whites despite acknowledging the importance of people like Aiello, albeit grudgingly.

The community is a reflection of the black population in the US. It brings to thefore the ills that afflict such a community. Police brutality as shown by the shooting dead of Radio Raheem’s wife which fuels the tenacity of such communities to use force as the only means of protection.

The police show little remorse as they leave his body and speed off. The touchy issue of racism and advocacy for equal rights is dominantly present throughout the film. Racism is deeply rooted in the community in the film perhaps a reflection of the American society at the time.

Through Buggin Out, Aiello’s prejudiced mentality comes out. After Buggin Out’s query as to why there are no black faces on the restaurant owner’s wall of fame, Aiello retorts that he only recognizes the achievements of his fellow Italians and by extension white people. Given that he represents whites in the film, the subtle message here is that white people think lowly of blacks.

Smiley sells postcards bearing the photos of Luther King and Malcolm X both of whom are black. This is comparable to recognizing Italians only faces on Aiello’s case. The resentment present in the black community and the need to have someone who represents liberation breeds adoration of the two black leaders from the black community.

Malcolm X and Martin Luther Kind are the emblems of black struggle for equality in the US. Black representation comes out through the two public figures although their approaches to black representation and liberation struggles were parallel.

The use of the two black figures brings out an argument on what actually is right. Martin Luther King is known to have advocated for peaceful means to solving crises and tensions in the community especially racism. On the other hand, Malcolm X advocated for the use of force where necessary to get what one believes is rightfully his/hers. The title of the film emphasizes the importance of doing what community generally accepts as right.

This presents an argument that what is “right” is comparative. For instance, peace and equality it’s possible to achieve peace through both force and diplomatic means. It is an argument that life in this community brings out clearly. After Radio Raheem is shot, people are upset and apparently put the blame on Aiello. Objectively speaking, Aiello has little to do with Raheem’s death. The police should take most of the blame for his death. People could not listen to Da Mayor when he tries to appeal for reason.

However, the root cause of the problem is Raheem and Aiello’s approach and their provocative ways that are nowhere near diplomatic. They do not at all embody any of Martin Luther King’s principles. No one knows for sure if their violent confrontations could have produced respect and subsequent peaceful coexistence between the two.

The tragic end to Raheem’s live and Aiello’s business is quite a pointer to what violence advocated by Malcolm X is but no one knows for sure if there could have been a positive out come. Moreover, none can either deny. After all, what other form of self-defense is available to depressed people?

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"Do The Right Thing Analysis." IvyPanda , 7 Nov. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/do-the-right-thing-analysis/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Do The Right Thing Analysis'. 7 November.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Do The Right Thing Analysis." November 7, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/do-the-right-thing-analysis/.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Do The Right Thing Analysis." November 7, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/do-the-right-thing-analysis/.

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