Do the Right Thing is still relevant today

           
                                                                                By Tom Pacak

I remember watching Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing in one of my film classes last year. I was moved to tears by the powerful take it has on racism in America. With recent events in our history, Trump being elected President and the recent police killings of unarmed black men, the film is still relevant in today’s times.

The film is that rare movie that doesn’t take any sides of its characters. Spike Lee shows how racism affects both the victim and the people who are actually racist. Racism is the film’s primary main antagonist. Every character in this film is shown to have some sort of bias or hate for a particular race. Whether its Sal’s bias for Italian figures in his restaurant, Radio Raheem being racist to the Korean couple who own the convenience store, or Buggin Out not liking Sal’s bias for Italian Figures.

Do the Right Thing opens up in a small suburb in Brooklyn. The suburb has mostly black people living in it. The only non-blacks present are Sal and his restaurant employees and the Korean couple across the street who own the suburb’s convenience story. In this little suburb, it is one of the hottest days of the year and everybody is just trying to get by.

Mookie (Spike Lee) is a deliveryman living in the suburb who works for Sal (Danny Aiello). Mookie seems to not be affected by the race relations in his neighborhood. He honestly just wants to collect his paycheck and move on. In the pizzeria, Sal has a blatant bias for Italian figures. The wall in the restaurant is decorated with some well-respected figures. This bugs Mookie’s friend Radio Raheem, who walks around the suburb throughout the movie holding a boom box blasting Fight the Power by Public Enemy to the annoyance of almost everybody in the suburb. Sal’s wall also annoys troublemaker Buggin’ Out. He questions Sal’s wall and demands that some important black figures like Martin Luther King be put on the wall.

The racism represented in this film is like a ticking time bomb. Each character has their hate and at the end of the day, it eventually blows up in everybody’s face. One character is dead, a building is burned, and the police start arresting and attacking the residents of the suburb. When the film was released in June 1989, many critics felt that the film would cause a clash between people who viewed the film. Those people were clearly wrong. The characters aren’t perfect but they aren’t bad people either. Do the Right Thing is brilliant at forcing the audience to have empathy and look at the other side of the coin when it comes to the issues that these characters face.

Spike Lee decided to end the film with two important quotes. The first one is from Martin Luther King Jr. His quotes summarizes how we must not use violence to destroy our enemies. Once we use violence, we destroy ourselves. “Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.” The second one was from Malcolm X. His quote explains that we must stand up against system and those in power who wrong us. “I don’t even call it violence when it’s self-defense, I call it intelligence.” At the end of the film, none of these characters are bad people, they just don’t know how to do the right thing or what the right thing is.  

4 stars out of four