Do the Right Thing

Wow.. might just be about to write my biggest review ever. Do the right thing is a commentary on life and communities and cultures and the oppression each one can face. Spike Lee does an absolutely impeccable job at giving nobody the Protagonist role or the good guy role to show how as a system, a populous, a community and a world we cant and wont work and live harmoniously together without prejudice if we push our opinions and turn being ‘right’ into a lethal dagger of subjectivity to add colour to a concept like who's right and whos wrong which is an easy concept to mistake for black and white especially in the (especially in the context of this film) heat of the moment. Spike Lee also uses the pacifist way of achieving equality and harmonious living and Malcom Xs more violent and hands on way of achieving equality and harmonious living to add to the fact that both ideologies are right despite being conflicting and contradictory of one another because being right and doing the right thing is way more than black and white and right and wrong especially in this context of living equally and harmoniously. This message aswell as the two ideologies are echoed throughout this run time with the heat being a match that lights the fuse to the absolutely explosive and powerful and intense ending. - Da Mayor: "Listen, listen, listen. Good people, please! Let's all go home. Someone's gonna get hurt. If we don't stop this and stop it now, we gonna do somethin' we gonna regret for the rest of our lives." - The only character that can be debated as the good guy or protagonist is Da Mayor he serves as the voice of reason despite being the oldest and probably the one whos lived through the most hate and oppression yet holds no anger and he serves as an attempt of an emotional anchor for the characters as the fuse becomes closer and closer to blowing. But with what goes on throughout the movie and the aggressive passion these characters feel towards what they dub the right thing to do clouds logical reasoning or straightforward thinking and allows their passion and emotion about their opinion of right to be louder than the opposing opinion and there in lies the conflict that is so hard to avoid but does far more damage than anything else as we see when the fuse goes boom. - Bojack Horseman: “All i know about being good i learned from TV. And in TV, flawed characters are constantly showing people they care with these surprising grand gestures. And i think that part of me still believes thats what love is. But in real life, the big gestures aren’t enough. You need to be consistent, you need to be dependably good. You can’t just screw everything up, and take a boat out into the ocean to save your best friend, or solve a mystery, and fly to Kansas. You need to do it everyday, which is so…. hard.” - Bojack Horseman S5 Ep6: Free Churro. - I wanted to use this quote from a show called Bojack Horseman because it was replaying in my mind as i reached the emotional climax of this film. I think the biggest thing to take away from that quote and this film is that of we try our hardest to do what is good and treat people good as if you were someone talking to yourself and aim to treat everyone how you want to be treated… with respect and understanding and compassion and do this consistently so it becomes a part of your very nature to make people happy. whether that be allowing them to voice their opinion and their views but respecting them aswell as their culture and the fact we dont know whats going on behind closed doors or why they have this opinion and if they dont know much then try educate them but with respect then i think maybe. just maybe. we could perhaps start to make some sort of difference. And maybe give love the upperhand over hate like Radio Raheem said. But then again is that not just another black and white concept that is so much more complicated than maybe i even can understand? if it is why or what has happened to us or the world to make us this way? Why cant we all live harmoniously? Why cant we all respect someone’s culture or colour? And why is that so fuckin hard man? Ultimately this is the point of do the right thing it is within itself a debate of subjectivity. But it does without a doubt show you how trying so hard to make a change can be just as damaging as not doing anything at all but one thing it absolutely makes certain is that nobody wants anything like what happened when this fuse went off to happen. It just asks how we can avoid it and how we should act individually to make living harmoniously more easier and potentially make the world less miserable and sometimes hopeless. All i TRULY know about this film coming out of it is that it’s a masterpiece that i will be thinking about for a long time and will keep in the back of my mind as i interact in my day to day and will think about it when maybe I'm a bit more touchy on a day or i don't like the opinion someone is voicing and rather than act aggressively try and talk calmly and educate or get educated via said person about whatever subject. If we take anything away from this film it’s to try be nicer man and to try keep an open mind… to a point.