Do the Right Thing

Warning: There’s a lot of spoilers in this review I’ve been craving to watch a Spike Lee film for a while, specifically this one since it’s been talked about and acclaimed by many people on here. Safe to say it didn’t disappoint. The way Spike chooses to have the characters and premise operate is a really fascinating take on racism. One of the reasons why this film is so effective is because of the setting. The neighborhood is a melting pot of races and ethnicities together that interact constantly. Having this melting pot of groups I feel like really helps us get a better understanding of the racial dynamic between certain types of groups, especially in the context of this film. The narrative tells just how bad racism can start to spurt because of a lot of stereotypes placed on certain races. However with this film, people try to fight this racism off by trying to “do the right thing” which is where the genuis of the whole build up to the anarchy comes in. Yes it may be a very long build up, but it’s very necessary to get an understanding of the narrative and it doesn’t feel that long once you really get into all these charismatic characters Spike Lee crafted While all the characters try to do the right thing, ironically they don’t realize by doing these acts of trying to end the racial tension in the neighborhood, they only make it worse because they are hypocritically actually doing the wrong thing by fighting fire with fire. Radio Rahim tries to Do the right thing and create peace by showing this town of many ethnics black culture by putting them onto the rap music he listens to. Little does he know, he’s only just doing the wrong thing by obnoxiously blasting his music everywhere he goes, having no respect for people and being disruptive to the people in the neighborhood. Also Radio Rahim only playing his music and blasting it over the Mexican music shows that he may have a few prejudices of his own since he’s not open to learning more about their culture of music and instead tunes it out with his music Pino tries to do the right thing by asking his dad to move out the neighborhood with him, so there will be less racial tension. Pino words his motives of wanting to move out like he’s doing it for the other neighbors to have more peace, but really his reasoning to get out the neighborhood is because he thinks the black people there are insufferable, indicating that his motives behind his proposition to Sal are only fueled by racism and that he is indeed not doing the right thing While Buggin Out tries to do the right thing by boycotting Sal’s pizza shop because he didn’t put any black people on the wall of pictures, he really isn’t doing right because Sal only putting up Italians on the wall isn’t a direct sign of prejudice. While Sal in the end may be racist, yelling multiple slurs at them right before the onset of the riot, him only having up pictures of Italians only at the beginning wasn’t a key signal of him being a racist. While Mookie tries to do the right thing by throwing a trash can at Sal’s pizzeria in payback for what Sal did, he’s still in the wrong because he made the riot go further out of control as a result. This is just an amazingly crafted film that just teaches such a valuable lesson about violence and racism. It shows you that the reality of things are that you can’t put out a fire with more fire. Solving problems with violence and impulsiveness is never the answer and only leads to more division. This movie shows that acting on impulse often backfires into making bad after bad decisions that often end with bad consequences as a result. We must think slowly and act peacefully, not think hastily and act out of violence. This is one of those films that’ll always hold true to our era and state of the world no matter what time we’re living in because they’re is still racism, hatred and division on these types of levels even in our modern society. I can’t stress enough just how much of an essential film this is to watch