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Do The Right Thing - a wake-up call

16 August 2016 - Dylan Valley

The Conversation - Africa asks Wits filmmaker about the film that has influenced him the most: Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing”

In our new weekly series, “Under the influence”, we ask experts to share what they believe are the most influential works of art or artists in their field. Here, University of the Witwatersrand film studies lecturer and filmmaker Dylan Valley explains why Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” is one of the director’s most influential films.

For a black film and media student at the University of Cape Town, Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” (1989) was a revelation. I watched it on a DVD one afternoon with my friend Frank in one of the damp tutorial rooms in the Arts Block on Upper Campus, only a few steps away from where Cecil John Rhodes’ statue stood.

Our film history curriculum at that point had been mostly European and American cinema. While still American, this was something completely different. It had been nearly 20 years since the film’s inception and it took place on a completely different continent, and yet it was so relatable.

More than just that, it was a visceral film experience, a wake-up call, but also an affirmation. Watching it in 2016 it’s eerie (and tragic) how relevant its central theme of racial tension and structural violence still is, both in America and South Africa.

“Do The Right Thing” takes place over the course of the hottest day on a block in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Spike Lee plays Mookie, a 25-year-old who seems to be meandering through life, but is on a mission to get paid. He works at the local Italian pizzeria, Sal’s, where most of the neighbourhood eats and hangs out.

The simmering heat of the day (visualised by deep reds and yellows on screen) reflects the tensions between the Italian pizzeria owner, Sal (Danny Aiello) and Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito), the self-appointed neighbourhood spokesperson. Buggin’ Out questions the lack of representation of black people on the walls of the pizzeria, which services a mostly black clientele: “Sal, how come you ain’t got no brothers on the wall?”

Sal’s hostile response to Buggin’ Out’s provocation leads to a protest that ends in police brutality and the loss of black life, and marks the demise of the pizzeria.

Why is/was it influential?

Despite its explosive dénouement, one of the main strengths of the film is the complexity of its characters and the representations of blackness on screen. Lee moved beyond stereotypes of ��һ�Թ��� Americans in cinema and created characters reflected in the everyday. In “Do The Right Thing”, black people are not presented in the traditional binary of subservient and smiling, or violent and dangerous, but rather are able to exist as more rounded expressions of themselves.

While Buggin’ Out is concerned with black nationalist politics and representation, he also bugs out when a white gentrifier on the block accidentally scuffs his brand new US$100 Jordan sneakers. Even though this infliction is frivolous, it leads to a cathartic (prophetic?) outburst: “Man motherfuck gentrification!”

No one in “Do The Right Thing” is necessarily “heroic”. Even Radio Raheem, the likeable, stylish giant who blasts the film’s opening theme and leitmotif, hip-hop group ’s Fight The Power, from a large boombox, imposes his music on others. He is mostly an irritant in the neighbourhood. Radio Raheem is unnecessarily confrontational with the Korean shopkeepers who have recently moved onto the block. It’s reflected in the scene where he goes to them to buy batteries, “I said 20 ‘D’ batteries, motherfucker! Learn how to speak English first, alright?”

Although in the same scene, he smiles and tells shopkeeper Sonny (Steve Park), “You’re alright, man”, diffusing any threat of real conflict.

Mookie isn’t necessarily noble or likeable, however his actions towards the end of the film disrupt this reading of him and show significant character development. Ironically, there is not that much black and white in this film; the characters live in a world of greys.

While the film has no typical heroes, it is more clear about its villains, particularly the police. Also there is pizzeria owner Sal’s son Pino (John Turturro) who is openly racist and tells Sal, “I’m sick of niggers.” Sal is more complicated, as he sees himself as a good guy who takes pride in feeding the neighbourhood.

Sal later tells Mookie he sees him as “son”. Despite this, during the film’s climax and in the verbal screaming match between him and Buggin’ Out, he flips and uses racial epithets, telling Radio Raheem to turn off that “jungle music” and hurls profanities like “nigger mutherfucker”.

In his book, “”, Ed Guerrero points out that it is Sal who destroys Raheem’s boombox with a bat: “A line is crossed here, from words to physical action.” When that violence escalates and turns fatal, the victim doesn’t need to be an angel for us to have tears in our eyes. He was real, we knew him.

“Do The Right Thing” was partly inspired by the in which a black man, Michael Griffiths, was killed while escaping an angry white mob with baseball bats after exiting the New Park pizzeria. The mob had earlier tried to chase him and his friends out of their neighbourhood for being black. Unsurprisingly, this was only one of the stories that Lee drew from to write “Do The Right Thing”. This story is sadly familiar nearly 30 years later.

Why is it still relevant today?

In 2016, amidst the #BlackLivesMatter , and a never-ending list of unarmed ��һ�Թ��� Americans being , the film is even more relevant. In 2015, young black men were more likely to be killed at the hands of police than other Americans, and 2016 looks to be on par. In a South Africa where the police killed 34 miners in for striking for a better life, and where the politics of representation and ownership are still unresolved, the tragic trajectory of “Do The Right Thing” will send chills down your spine.

When the film was released, journalists feared it would and hate crimes. There were even warnings issued to white people to avoid seeing the film. Instead, it caused a nation to reflect, and affirmed the black experience around the world. Despite critical and fan acclaim, the film was mostly snubbed by the Academy Awards in 1990, receiving for Best Writing and Best Supporting Actor (Danny Aiello).

Tellingly, went to “Driving Miss Daisy”, which Ed Guerrero calls

the paternalist problem picture with its long-suffering black servant … The contrasts between Morgan Freeman’s rendering of an elderly, humble and enduring Negro servant in “Driving Miss Daisy” and Spike Lee’s portrayal of the feckless, urban youth Mookie could not have been greater in the 1989 Oscar year.

Last year Lee finally won his Oscar at the Academy’s annual , an honorary nod for his contribution to cinema.

Filmically, there is so much more to be said of “Do The Right Thing”: its beautiful cinematography, it’s on-point casting (Rosie Perez’s debut as Tina, and Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as an elderly couple) and its belligerent dialogue (“I’m just a struggling black man trying to keep his dick hard in a cruel and harsh world!”).

The film often breaks the “” – the imaginary “wall” that exists between actors and the audience – making us aware of its construction, like in Raheem’s dreamlike love/hate soliloquy and the racial hatred montage.

Watching it all these years later, perhaps what’s most impressive is how fresh the film still feels, even down to the classic hip-hop and “Afro-centric” clothes and haircuts (there are many Buggin’ Outs walking the streets of my home city of Johannesburg as we speak).

“Do The Right Thing” was a challenge to Hollywood’s cultural hegemony. Lee fought to get the story told on his terms, exchanging larger financial support for his artistic vision.

Most importantly, the film doesn’t offer neat answers, but rather important questions, which haven’t lost any of their urgency today. As a filmmaker, one can only hope to create work with such long-lasting affect.

, Lecturer of Film & Media Studies, . This article was originally published on . Read the .