Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing

While African-American filmmakers have been a staple of the cinematic landscape since the pioneering work of Oscar Micheaux during the '20s, none have had the same cultural or artistic impact as Spike Lee (Spike Lee, para.1). Spike Lee is an African-American filmmaker known for his uncompromising, provocative approach to controversial subject matter. He was the role of black talent in Hollywood. He is the son to Bill Lee, who is a jazz composer. On March 20, 1957, Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia but he grew up in Brooklyn, NY. He was attended Morehouse College for his Bachelor’s in communications and NYU for his Masters in filmmaking, studying along side Martin Scorsese. He is a producer; director, writer and actor who creates controversial
In his film, 1989’s Do The Right Thing examined all of the above and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1989. It was his third full-length feature, is one of the director's most daring and controversial achievements, presenting one sweltering day, which culminates in a riot in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn (Lee, Spike…). It was a story about the tension between different races in the neighborhood in New York; it showed all the anger and hate everyone has towards each other. It also expresses why they carry those type of emotion. Throughout the film, Lee uses canted frames, dolly shots, tight close ups, high and low angles, parallelism, source music as well as his mis-en-scene. Some of the famous scenes from this movie are close ups, he begins the camera from a long shot and quickly zooms in to the character talking about how they dislike another race. Many years later, this film is still praised for being beautifully directed. His aesthetic techniques are one of the aspects that made this film such a controversial success. Lee wanted his message to get across and he used dramatic and subtle techniques to achieve it (Spike Lee’s