Do the Right Thing: A Portrait of Race in America

The film ends with two lengthy quotes. The first is by Martin Luther King Jr. who believes that violence is always self-defeating. The other is by Malcolm X who believes that violence is sometimes necessary in self-defense. The last image the audience is asked to consider is a photograph of these two men engaged in a friendly handshake. Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing is a film born of these two fathers and the conflicting ideologies they represented or, at least, have come to represent in the public consciousness.

It follows a variety of characters as they go about their lives in the New York neighborhood of Bed-Stuy on the hottest day of the year. The temperature mirrors the frustrations and anger that lie beneath the surface of this community. Anger at the Korean grocers who just set up shop on the corner and the white man in the Larry Bird jersey who just bought a Brownstone down the block and the Italian-American who has operated a pizzeria for years and only puts pictures of Italians on the restaurant wall. These frustrations will no doubt find their way to the surface during the course of the day as the melting-pot begins to boil.

The two main characters are Sal (Danny Aiello), an Italian-American pizzeria owner, and Mookie (Spike Lee), a young African-American man who works delivering pizzas for Sal. There doesn't seem to be any animosity between Sal and Mookie, although there doesn't seem to be any respect either. They tolerate each other, as two necessary parts of the same machine and, though it is not obvious in the beginning, the film is working toward a final confrontation between these two men.

Many other characters inhabit Lee's Bed-Stuy, including a radio DJ (Mister Senor Love Daddy played by Samuel L. Jackson) who observes and comments on the action in the streets, Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) who gets frustrated at the Korean grocers for not carrying his brand of beer, the militant Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) who provides the film's most memorable line ("Hey, Sal, how come there ain't no brothers on the wall?") and Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) whose death at the hands of police officers incites Mookie to throw a garbage can through Sal's window, which inspires the residents to burn the pizzeria down.

While tensions run high throughout the whole film, only two moments in the film prepare the viewer for the death of Radio Raheem and the burning of Sal's Pizzeria. The first is a visceral dance performed during the opening credits by Rosie Perez to Public Enemy's "Fight the Power." The second is an infamous sequence that comes mid-way through the film. Several of the characters address the camera directly and deliver monologues riddled with racial slurs against various ethnic groups.

I once had the chance to hear Spike Lee speak at a local university. During the Q&A, a young white man (obviously still in high school) got up to asked Lee a question about Do the Right Thing. "Do you think Mookie did the right thing?" the young man asked. He had obviously put some thought into the question, and was pleased with how clever he was being. However, I don't think he could have anticipated Lee's response. "I've been asked that question before," Lee said, "but I've never had a black person have to ask me that."

Lee obviously condones Mookie's actions. However, his purpose with the film is not to inspire African-Americans to burn down white owned establishments. As the two quotes that end the film illustrate, his purpose is to encourage dialogue between the races. The final confrontation between Sal and Mookie takes place the morning after the fire. There isn't a gun fight, or even a fist fight between the two men (which a lesser film would resort to), just a conversation. A very emotional, angry conversation, yes. But when it is finished both men go their own way, clearly different men than they were the day before.