Do The Right Thing (1989) Analysis
“WAKE UP!” exclaims Samuel L. Jackson as local radio DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy, kicking Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do The Right Thing into gear. It is one of the hottest days of the summer in 1980’s New York City and as the temperature reaches a boiling point, so does the tension between all of the different personalities in the neighborhood. The sets and costumes are colorful, the camera angles are intense, and the dialogue is over-the-top, but the overall film tells a story grounded in reality in regards to race and protest, exposing audiences to both macro and microaggressions and sparking a debate about rioting and peaceful demonstration which is still prominent today.
Lee introduces a multitude of characters with varying races, personalities, and values. Sal is an old Italian-American man who runs a pizza place with his two sons that he built from the ground up. Mookie is a character played by Spike Lee who works as a delivery man for the pizzeria. Although he is close with Sal’s son Vito, the other son Pino is blatantly and unapologetically racist against black people, causing a rift between him and Mookie along with the restaurant’s patrons. Sal believes he has earned his spot in the community because of how he created his own business. Mookie does not seem to care about Sal, or any character for that matter, as much as he cares about getting paid. Sal gets confronted by Buggin’ Out for not including any pictures of African-American figures on the restaurant’s wall of fame, to which he responds that it is his establishment and he can do what he wants. Spike Lee discusses this conflict in his interview with Marlaine Glicksman, stating, “But what’s going to be the value of having one black photo up on Sal’s wall of fame? Is that going to do anybody any good? But on the other hand, he also has a point, because let's turn around and say, ‘Look, Sal, you make all your money off black people, why don’t you have enough sensitivity to have at least one photo up on the wall?’ So that's the way the film is to me. Everybody has a point”(Lee, Fuchs, 19). Sal, along with all the other characters portrayed in this film, is extremely complex. Upon first watch, Sal’s outburst in the film’s third act against Radio Raheem and Buggin’ Out may seem to come out of nowhere. However, Lee actually peppered in some microaggressions to Sal’s character such as referring to his black customers as “these people”. Lee mentions in the interview that Pino initiating the fight in the end would have been too easy, and that Sal being the one who snaps actually makes sense because it explains where Pino developed these toxic thoughts from. When referring to Sal’s use of the n-word, Lee explained, “That didn’t come out of thin air. It just had to be provoked. But it’s still there, though”(Lee, Fuchs, 19).
Lee uses dichotomy and harsh contrasts as tools throughout this film: the sounds of smooth jazz and Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power”, Radio Raheed’s “LOVE” and “HATE” rings, Buggin’ Out’s initial protest and the riots that followed, and so on. This was done to show the audience the complexities of real world issues and how they are not always so easily decipherable. The phrase “racism” often alludes to the dichotomous conflict between black and white, but Spike Lee turns this on its head during a sequence in which people of different races deliver monologues aggressively insulting people of another race using offensive stereotypes and slurs. He continues this trend by having Radio Raheem play “Fight The Power” during scenes where the actions against injustice are more tame and playing jazz music during scenes with extreme violence and chaos. The shot of Radio Raheem lying dead on the ground with only his “LOVE” ring in view after being forcefully withheld by the cops is another example of Lee complicating harsh contrasts established early in the film. This encourages audiences to look closer at what is being portrayed in the film and to attempt to see gray areas rather than labeling everything as black or white. Marlaine Glicksman explains in the Fuchs text that, “Lee’s films differ not only in their black perspective–in an industry where few blacks have a voice–but also in their ability to look at both sides of the coin at once. As in real life, his characters are neither all good nor all bad. And therein lies their–and Lee’s– power: the minute he establishes our identification with a character, Lee turns him inside out to reveal the dark side in us all”(Glicksman, Fuchs, 16).
It is through Lee’s ability to break down dichotomies that he is able to present the audience with the ultimate question: what is “the right thing” that is being alluded to in the title? This question is beautifully explored throughout the film and is something that has been brought up in the media in recent years in regards to practicing the right to protest in America. Towards the end of the film, Buggin’ Out recruits Radio Raheem to help him protest against the lack of African-American representation on Sal’s wall of fame. Their first approach to this was to walk into the pizzeria with Raheem’s boombox blasting “Fight The Power” and demand a change be made to the wall. Though the scene in which they enter the pizza place is tense, the protest is peaceful. However, things quickly turn around for the worst when Sal calls the protesters a racial slur and destroys the boombox. A physical altercation breaks out and requires police involvement to be stopped. The police kill Raheem and take Buggin’ Out away, leaving behind a crowd of angry onlookers who just witnessed an extreme act of racial injustice. Mookie throws a garbage can through the pizzeria and a riot ensues, leaving Sal’s in shambles. Two quotes are presented before the credits, one by Martin Luther King Jr. speaking against violent protests and one by Malcolm X explaining that self defense should not be considered true violence. The scenes leading up to and including the pizzeria riot alongside the two quotes leave the audience wondering what is truly considered the right way to incite change, since neither method used in the film had truly beneficial results. Revisiting the film’s opening line, “WAKE UP!”, it is important to note that the question posed from this film is much more than an interesting plot device or a way to highlight the complexity of the characters, but is instead something that needs to be thought about when reacting to different approaches used in the fight against racial injustice. Kaleem Aftab writes, “The opening line of the script was the very same cry of “Wake up!” that had served as the ambiguous end to School Daze. ‘That is a call to everybody, not just African-Americans, to look at what is going on around them,’ Spike contends”(Aftab, 99). Do The Right Thing takes all the simplicity out of human nature and forces a discourse with its audience about good and bad, black and white, and right and wrong.
