Do The Right Thing Film Analysis

Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) is about the day to day life in a Brooklyn neighborhood and the racial strains confined from within. It demonstrates the differences of the various characters of a modern neighborhood. Trust and brutality embody the ongoing troubles about racism in America. The language and gestures set the film to a higher representation and allowed the viewers to have a more realistic conversation about race/racism, which was not present in that period of time. The film begins with its characters waking up to a hot summer day and then commotion occurring in the neighborhood after the police unduly suppress and kill a young black man named Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) for brawling with Sal (Danny Aiello), an elderley Italian American man in his pizzeria. The film, in spite of the release in 1989, with its social analysis on the impact that race has on police brutality is equally prominent today as was when it was released twenty-six years ago.

Do the Right Thing (1989) has a main theme of peace vs. war and of “…always doing the right thing.” While the tone of the film comes from the intense music background and ironically the makeup and clothes of the characters speaks to the narration of the film. Spike Lee depicts the characters stereotypically through their language and gestures. In the film, tertiary characters such as the Puerto Ricans are appeared tuning in to salsa music while drinking beer and speaking Espanol under their apartment buildings. Lee also shows the Italian Americans (Sal and his sons) wearing crosses and white/black tank tops as the aesthetic or stereotype of them. Another example is the portrayal of Radio Raheem wearing an African necklace while also holding and playing loud rap music through a boombox stereo. The aspects of performance in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing were where “various characters spoke directly to the viewer.” While Lee used the compositional aspects of design and clothing to enhance the film, he also used the means of music and sound in his film, both diegetic and non-diegetic. Whether it was Raheem’s rap music from his speaker, the Puerto Ricans salsa music, and or the shouting of the people in the neighborhood. The film plays the song “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy, and a saxaphone depiction of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” to set the tone for an equality and rights subject. In the scene of Radio Raheem’s death, the sounds of the neighborhood portrays how incredulity converts into fury, as the people in the neighborhood start to shout the names of more black victims of police brutality. In the next scene, the camera pans to Mookie’s shocked face, showing that he has realized the wrong in standing next to Sal and his sons. In this scene, the positioning of the characters is very important, because Sal is in the middle of his two sons, while Mookie is a bit aside from them; distant and disturbed, producing an important part of the films resolution as Mookie looks at a different light towards them.

Director Spike Lee used much of dialogue, setting, sound, clothing, etc. all to create an important environment for the film and the viewers. He wanted to reveal to the viewers a more realistic film concerning issues that were long before existent. Lee embraced the generalizations of race so as to condemn them and talk about social issues in the film. Do the Right Thing emphasizes on how these issues are not controlled and it is actually whom who can control/change it. The film portrayed society realities in a skillful cinematic way.

Works Cited

1. Baldwin, J. (1990). James Baldwin on Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. New York: The New York Times.
2. Brown, J. (2006). Racial Stereotypes and Identity in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Journal of Popular Culture, 39(2), 245-257.
3. Diawara, M. (1991). Spike Lee and the Task of African American Filmmaking. Cinéaste, 18(3), 4-11.
4. Evans, C. (1990). Do the Right Thing and Spike Lee's Invisible Man. African American Review, 24(4), 581-588.
5. Gates Jr., H. L. (1991). Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. The New Yorker. Retrieved from [URL]
6. Jameson, F. (1993). Do the Right Thing. In Signatures of the Visible (pp. 41-68). New York: Routledge.
7. Kellner, D. (1994). Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing: The Symbolic and Political Development of a Film Text. Film Quarterly, 48(2), 14-26.
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9. Mazzarella, W. (1995). How to Hear the Sound of a Brand Name: A Critique of the "McDonaldization" Thesis. American Journal of Sociology, 100(2), 325-352.
10. Shome, R. (2000). The Ineffability of Race: Gender, Affect, and Silences in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, 15(2), 30-53.