#96 - Do the Right Thing (1989) - Spike Lee

A Spike Lee Joint

Do the Right Thing takes place on one long, hot day in one neighborhood in Brooklyn. The day is hotter than usual but it’s otherwise a normal day – people come and go, living their normal lives, doing what they always do. And for the most part, like most people, they don’t do much. They walk around with friends, they take showers, they sit and watch other people, they listen to music, they talk about sports, and they eat pizza. This routine, day-to-day state of things involves some racial tension, but it’s mostly under the surface; it pokes out here and there, but it’s mostly balanced in a state of precarious equilibrium and covered by a blanket of ordinariness. This normalness is the heart of the movie: Do the Right Thing is about the mundanity of racism. In the movie it escalates on an otherwise normal day, as it does in life, and in both cases it’s hard to make sense of.

The pizza place, Sal’s pizzeria, is the centre of the movie, and in many ways, the neighborhood. Sal, an Italian-American (played by Danny Aiello), has been feeding the mostly black neighborhood for generations. He runs the place with his two sons, one of whom is openly racist while the other is timid and accepting. Their delivery boy is Mookie (played by Spike Lee himself), a likeable guy and the place’s outlet into the community. The rest of the neighborhood is filled with interesting characters: there’s Da Mayor, a jolly drunk who knows everybody; Radio Raheem carries a boom box everywhere and only listens to Public Enemy; Mother Sister is a kind of witchy neighborhood matriarch; Buggin’ Out is a wannabe activist, more in line with Malcom X than Martin Luther King Jr; there’s a group of old guys on lawn chairs gossiping and complaining and reminiscing; and a local DJ watching over everything. Everyone is full of life and the neighborhood is vibrant. But a tension is cooking like Sal’s pizzas and everything on the hot street.

The tension eventually boils over. It has something to do with Sal’s “Wall of Fame” that features only Italian-American celebrities. But that doesn’t quite explain it. Radio Raheem also refuses to turn his music down while he’s at Sal’s, and that causes problems. But that’s not exactly what set off the violence either. There are reasons that aren’t reasons, explanations that don’t quite explain, and frustrating and confusing contradictions. The less likable characters do unlikeable things, but they’re sympathetic. And the likeable characters do unlikeable things with little explanation. There are no villains and no heroes. The reasons for the chaos are chaotic themselves. And in the chaos the movie doesn’t try to explain or suggest reasons why racism exists. Though it’s not filled with love, the movie isn’t filled with hate either. it just shows racism in its ordinary setting – in an ordinary neighborhood on an ordinary day – where it lurks just under the surface, ready to emerge for whatever reason, or for no reason at all.

The movie highlights this complicated and beguiling nature of racism that makes it so profoundly painful. And though it knows there is no satisfying explanation for it, it seeks understanding through its complex and dynamic characters. They are all real people and it would be difficult not to feel sympathy for each of them by the end of the movie. Even with the most overtly racist character there is a sense that his attitude has more to do with the negative feelings he has for himself than any feelings he has for anyone else. It’s one of the jobs of a movie to put the viewer in other people’s shoes and Do the Right Thing does this better than any movie I’ve seen. We may not like their reasons for doing what they do – or even understand the reasons – but we feel with them and for them even in the worst moments.

Just as it offers no explanation for racism, the movie also offers no suggestion for how to deal with it. When it was released in 1989 there was some worry it would inspire race riots like the one in the movie. I don’t think that ever happened and the fear was misplaced for a few reasons. When the dust settles at the end, it’s clear the violence accomplished nothing. The movie also ends with quotes from both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. The quotes highlight the approaches of both leaders but neither is highlighted over the other. The point isn’t so much about how to deal with the problem, but the fact that it needs to be dealt with.

Do the Right Thing is an excellent movie. It is entertaining, funny, and sad, and full of very human and rich performances. Even without its complicated message it would be well worth watching. But the message is what makes it important (and the film remains important without becoming self-important, which is a difficult balance to achieve). And it would be cliché to say that a movie that involves racially-motivated riots, bigotry, suspicion, fear, and violence is timely and pertinent now as it was in 1989. But that cliché is the point of the movie. Racism is there. It’s not always visible, there are many reasons for it but those reasons are hard to comprehend, it makes no sense even while almost making sense, and there are no easy answers for it. Everyone is responsible or no one is. But it lives on, under the surface or above it, quietly bubbling behind our backs or blowing up in our faces. 

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