Do the Right Thing

The film Do the Right Thing is a movie about love and hate.  It is great in showing racism from all different views and races.  The movie was written, produced and directed by Spike Lee, who also stars as the lead character, Mookie.  The movie takes place in the summer, during a heatwave in Brooklyn, New York.  The neighborhood consists mostly of Black, but is mixed in with some White, Italian, Asian and Hispanic.  It shows how nobody gets anything from it and everyone loses. 

I think this movie speaks volumes about racism in America.  Racism has been ingrained in our society for so long when people get angry the insults seem to go directly to skin color.  The movie shows how people’s anger can escalate quickly.  It may begin with any slight agitation, but when a mixed group of races is involved it can quickly turn into a race issue.  Each race acting out against the others.  This all causes more accusations, which causes more tension and escalates to heated anger.  In making this movie, Spike Lee didn’t focus on the perspective of one race.  He showed how hurtful it could be to all.  As Roger Ebert said in his review of the movie, “he made a movie about race in America that empathized with all the participants.” 

I think Spike Lee did a good job of showing how easily hate can escalate to racism.  He showed that it didn’t benefit anyone and only caused pain and sadness.  One character, Sal, played by Danny Aiello, is an Italian pizza shop owner who has been in this neighborhood for about twenty five years.  It’s a popular place for people to gather and Mookie also works here.  Sal has even said Mookie was like a son to him.  On this day however another character, Buggin Out, played by Giancarlo Esposito, had been giving Sal a hard time about not having any black people on his wall of fame.  Buggin later recruits Radio, played by Bill Nunn, to get Sal because he thought he was being prejudice.  This escalates to a riotous mob crowd who destroys Sal’s restaurant and in the end Radio is killed at the hands of the white cops.  I think that Mookie’s action of throwing a trash can through the window of Sal’s shop at the end of the movie was a very important move.  Although it may have seemed a very strange move because you may have thought this is what caused the destruction of the shop, I think Spike Lee had Mookie do this to take the crowd off of Sal, who he thought they were going to kill, and redirect it at the shop instead.  Also as stated in Roger Ebert’s review, “there are no heroes or villains in the film.”

Spike Lee shows just how stupid racism is throughout America and even within small communities.  Since he showed it from many viewpoints it was clear that no one benefits.  It really makes you see how much better things could be if people would communicate with each other better.  The movie didn’t even really start out from a racist point of view, but from hate and anger.  Stress and tension from the heat from what people perceived as racism grew and exploded into an all out race war.