Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing: Movie Analysis

“Do the Right Thing”
Course Assignment #3: Movie Night

Overview:
The movie my partner and I chose was Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” Our reason for choosing this movie was that both of us have never seen a Spike Lee movie before, and I have heard a lot of good things from his movies and always wanted to watch one. I also watched the trailer and the movie seemed like it was going to be both entertaining and have a lot of racial conflict.
The movie follows “Mookie” who is a young black man that lives in Brooklyn, New York. He works locally delivering pizzas for Sal’s Pizzaria. Sal is the owner of the store and seems to be a nice fair man at first, but as the movie progresses it can be seen that he is a passive racist, he didn’t really say anything when his son was making racist comments and he also felt like he was more powerful then the black people but was not actively racist about it. Sal was actively racist at the end though when he used the “N” word and crushed Radio Raheem’s radio, which began the whole riot at the end. I felt like Sal felt like he had white supremacy, because he as a white male felt more superior then all the black people that came to eat his pizza. This could be seen when he describes how he has watched all of the people in the neighborhood grow up and he felt like he was a person they all looked up to. Sal also is seen to take the path of least resistance by constantly throwing money at problems. For example when a drunk called “Da Mayor,” comes and asks for money/work he throws money at him and tells him to sweep the front as to make him stop bothering him. This is also seen when a mentally disabled man named Smiley, comes to the store. Sal gives him money to make him go away.
There were two minor scenes that really stood out to me. One of the scenes was when the cops drove past the three black men known as “the Corner Men,” who were sitting on the side of the street and as the cops passed they mouthed “what a waste.” This to me shows cultural racism and it shows a cultural image that the police are superior to people of color and the police views them negatively. Another scene that stood out to me was when a white male was driving and got attacked with water by two black males. The police came instantly and the white male was angry and being verbally aggressive to the police officers, but the police officers seemed to be understanding and didn’t do anything to the white male while he was being blatantly aggressive. This shows that this white male has a privilege over African Americans. I feel like most likely if a black male was that verbally aggressive to the police officers then he would have been seen as someone dangerous and he would have been arrested. At the end of the movie, a black man is being aggressive toward a white man and as a result one of the cops puts him in a choke hold and purposely choked him to death. This shows that the white police officer has prejudice toward blacks, and has a preconceived judgment about black people. Sal has two son’s Pino, who “detests the place like a sickness,” and acts actively racist by constantly saying racist comments and giving a hard time to the African Americans in the movie. He also makes Mookie’s life constantly miserable. Sal’s younger son Vito, is actually friends with Mookie and through out the whole movie doesn’t do or say any racist things. In fact he likes the African Americans in the neighborhood. I feel like the most crucial part of the movie was at the end when Mookie, a black male, broke the window of the white man’s, Sal’s, store. The whole movie he seemed to be defending Sal but at the end of the day he felt Race Constancy. There was a scene where he was standing next to Sal right before the riot and he walked away from Sal and took a trash can and smashed the window because he knew that no matter what he knew that his racial group membership is fixed and will never change. I felt like the movie also had a message about capitalism, because of the store that Sal owned, gained revenue from the black community to provide income for himself, as well as the Asian’s that owned the super market were also taking money from the black community for their own benefit. Overall I felt like this movie did a good job representing the ideas we learned in class and had many good examples of what we learned about racism. I would recommend this movie to anyone in our class because I feel like even though it was made in the 80’s it still shows the race divide extremely well.

The quote I chose from the movie was scene on the screen at the end of the movie:
“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys a community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I chose this quote because it explained the conflict of the movie very well. Because the black individuals in the movie destroyed violently Sal’s pizzeria only because he was white and they thought that it would be an eye for an eye because a white cop killed one of their friends.

Questions:
Focusing Questions: 1. Do you think that the police today are more unjust to people of color over white people? 2. Do you think it’s better to deal with racism eye for an eye approach or peacefully? Explain why? 3. Do you think that active racism exists in today’s society? Can you give some examples from your experiences.

Explanation:
We were really trying to get the audience to think about the police system and whether they thought they had any prejudices. And we also wanted them to start thinking about the differences between Malcolm X and MLK’’s points of view on how to deal with racism and whether to act back with violence or with peaceful methods. Also we wanted to tie it in with racism today and whether it was better or worse 20 years ago about when the movie was made.

Discussion Questions: 1. How were Martin Luther King's and Malcom X's beliefs different as seen throughout the movie? How is the photograph that Smiley has of the two of them important in this film? 2. What happens when the police arrive? Why does this happen? How does this influence the course of events? 3. Which character did you identify most with? Why?

Explanation:
I chose these questions because I thought that that it would make the audience really get into the main points that the movie was trying to portray. I wanted the audience to really think about the differences between Malcom X’s point of view compared to MLK’s. I also wanted a discussion about the most crucial scene of the movie, and that was when the police arrived at the end and killed Radio Raheem.
And I also wanted them to kind of put themselves in someone’s shoes and try to identify with one of the characters to get a feeling of what they would do in this situation.

Critical Thinking Questions: 1. Mookie at the end of the movie was divided between whose side to go on, Sal’s or the African American’s of the neighborhood. To what extent should one’s moral decisions be influenced by personal identification with and loyalty to one’s racial or ethnic group? Did Mookie do the right thing? 2. Do you think the police killed Radio Raheem in an act of self defense, or was it an injustice in our social system due to racism? Explain why you disagree or agree with the police’s actions? 3. Listen to the song “Fight the Power” and listen to the lyrics. In what way are the lyrics in "Fight the Power" appropriate to the movie? What do you think is "the Power" in the context of the film, and how does one fight it?

Explanation:
We chose these questions because it would really make the audience think about the movie critically and deeply. The whole movie had very opposing views, White vs. Black, MLK vs. Malcolm X, and what is “the right thing to do.” So we tried to come up with questions that were ambiguous and tried to begin some discussion to see what the individual viewer thought the right thing to do was. And also I felt like the song in the movie “Fight the Power” was very critical as a whole.

Reflection: The group consisted of 4 individuals. I invited Conrad, and Zak and my partner invited Grace and Kelly. Conrad is a white male from Boston, MA. Zak is a white male who is openly homosexual, from New York, NY and lived near Brooklyn where the film took place. Grace is a white female from Washington, DC and has been living in a very diverse community her whole life, and Kelly is a white female from rural Vermont.
The discussion I had with my viewers was actually very interesting. We talked a lot about the two quotes at the end of the movie said by “Martin Luther King, Jr.” and “Malcolm X.” To summarize MLK’s quote was about how violence and hatred is the wrong approach by black people when the dominant group is oppressing them. Malcolm X was saying the opposite, he was saying that Violence is ok to use because it’s self-defense. We all agreed that the two opposing views of MLK and Malcolm X were seen through out the movie. Conrad said that MLK’s approach of peacefulness was seen in a couple of places, for example, when one of the characters was upset at Sal and instead of being violent and hateful about it, he at first tried to boycott the pizza but his actions didn’t work. So he then went to the Malcolm X approach by trying to be violent and hateful. This was seen at the end of the movie when Sal smashed Radio Raheem’s radio.
I felt like our opinions were all different. For example during the movie, my friend Conrad was laughing at some things that were inappropriately racist. This showed that Conrad was being passively racist and laughing at racist jokes. Everyone else in the room remained mostly quiet. There were moments where we paused the movie to talk about it and share our opinions on what was going on. I felt like this movie caused some tension and arguments. When Conrad laughed at one of the jokes, Zak got upset and began arguing whether it was ok to laugh or not. Conrad didn’t think it was bad if he laughed at some of the humor and Zak thought that he was being ignorant.
Everyone seemed to answer the questions almost in the same way. And I felt like master status was actually opposed for the most part. People agreed that white individuals are racist toward blacks for the most part especially when it comes to the police. Except for Kelly who thought that the police was just trying to control the situation.
One thing that really surprised me was that Kelly thought that the police killing Radio Raheem was somewhat justified because Radio Raheem was killing Sal and it was self-defense. No one in the group agreed with her. Everyone else thought that the police had no reason to kill Radio Raheem and that the police commited a hate crime.
One thing that Zak said was “I still see these things in Brooklyn today, I live in New York city and there are literally racially divided neighborhoods throughout the whole city. More then 20 years after the movie was made I still see these things in New York.” This really made me think about how this movie still applies to people today and the problem of racism is still seen in our society. It shocked me thought that Kelly disagreed with Zak, she thought that Racism is pretty much non-existent today. This seemed to have angered some people in our group and everyone started yelling and arguing.
For the most part we all agreed on things but there were some things that caused issues like the whole part of racism existing today. And also no one really wanted to think that they were passively racist and admit that because they are white they didn’t have privileges over blacks, except for Zak.
I felt like we were prepared for the discussion because we had the questions previously thought out and we have already watched the movie before hand. Some of the issues we had though was the uncontrollable arguments between the group members. Sometimes it was hard to control the topic of discussion because we really went off topic.
I felt like our group learned a lot about the topic, and I felt like people didn’t really know about the opposing views of MLK and Malcom X until they watched the movie. We also learned through Zak’s experiences in living in a very diverse area. Some of the group members like Kelly have never seen racism in real life so talking to her and telling her that racism really exists taught her something.
I learned from this experience that people’s views are very hard to change. They will argue for their belief even if they actually know they are wrong. Also we didn’t know what Howard Beech meant so we googled it after the movie and all learned that it was an incident where 3 black males were beaten to death with baseball bats by many white kids.