Emmalyn Ilagan on Do The Right Thing

Do The Right Thing is a movie that has stirred up its audiences, through ambiguity and implied politics on controversial topics.  It defeats expectations in order to instill something deeper—understanding of the different sides in actions of intolerance, specifically in regards to racial tensions.  The words on violence of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X are significant to the story as well, and close the film to leave a contemplative audience to decide if they have learned something about the opposite view.

Consistently, themes about community, love, and hate arise through visual and verbal display.  The character Radio Rasheem expresses how Love and Hate are always battling one another when he runs into the protagonist, Mookie (played by the director, Spike Lee).  The opening of the movie also features Love Daddy (played by Samuel L. Jackson) sitting at his radio station atop of the block of all the movie’s focused events, alerting how today will be a scorching, hot day.  Throughout this day, the folk of the community interact, all the while with tensions escalating.  Buggin’ Out has a huge ordeal in Sal’s pizza shop about his wall of famous Italians.  Ironically enough, the actor who plays Buggin’ Out is actually half Italian.  Regardless, his black pride gathers Radio Rasheem, who carries his anthem playing boombox to make noise for those whose voices cannot be heard.  The two approach Sal at his shop, and after a long day of heat, all hell breaks loose with a fight, riot, murder, fire, and so on all in quick succession of how easily it is to create a ruckus that could’ve been prevented, but happened and caused an uprising.  The fire represents the passionate hatred spawned from misunderstandings and the differing stigmas of a colorful and “free” society according to different ethnic American groups.  After Sal’s Italian pizza shop is burned, the community turns on the Korean convenience shop, in which Sonny tries to tell them that they are the same—he managed to save his shop from the same destructive fate.  After the symbolic fire of Sal’s pizza shop, Love Daddy wakes up the city the following morning in order to send messages of loving one another, to “chill” out, and vote at the end of the film to give it a hopeful and thoughtful turn.

The angles used in this film are very often (if not always) at extremes.  Spike Lee purposefully uses Dutch angles to tip off the audience when situations or conversations are askew.  A great example of this usage is right when Buggin Out and Radio Rasheem enter Sal’s pizza shop, because their argument made everything that the film had built up to completely off.  Much of the movie does this in order to make prevalent the statement about the segregation of ethnic communities at the time the film was created (and presently still today).  There are plays on dominance in conversations too, swapping between high and low angles.  In the start of the film, when Smiley is trying to explain about the pictures he hands out of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X has an extremely low angle to signify the importance of his talk.  Overall, Do The Right Thing leaves its audience with a questioning of, “What is the “right” thing?” through its artistic cinematography and statements through them.