Saturday, June 30, 2012

Nicole White Do the Right Thing Blog


 
As I was reading the Washington Post review again, one line really stuck out to me; “But director Lee, with pluralistic panache, keeps things open to wide interpretation.” This leaves us with the final question of Did Mookie do the right thing? I personally don’t think he did. Sal gave him a job and also told him he would always have a job at that work place. I thought Mookie was lazy; he would always take forever to deliver a pizza. The way Sal approached the scene with the music was a little outrageous, but then again, it’s his shop. He wanted them to turn the music down and they wouldn’t cooperate. I don’t think Sal did anything wrong in this situation. He is the owner of the Pizzeria, he can choose whether brothers go on the wall or not, or how he wants music turned down. Sal didn’t kill Radio, the police officers did. Mookie shouldn’t have taken his anger out on Sal.

As I was reading the Emerson review, he makes a point of saying, “You start thinking: If only Sal, who is always yelling at everybody, hadn't had such a quick temper. If only the customer had just turned down the volume on his radio. If only...” I actually thought this exact thing while watching this movie. Radio had it coming to him; they all barged into Sal’s place causing a scene. You hate to see someone die over things like this, but he wouldn’t cooperate when Sal asked him to turn down the music. Things had gotten out of hand very quickly in this scene.

As I was watching Dr. Permenter’s commentary on the movie, she was making a point about how the black viewers saw this movie differently than the white viewers back when this movie came out. She made the comment that the white people viewed it as the “owner of the pizza shop doing nothing wrong.” That is exactly how I felt watching this movie. This last scene escalated the way it did because they came into his shop causing a scene. Yes we know Sal is always yelling at people, but that’s just Sal. They all know that’s how he is, but yet they still go eat at his place. Like I stated above, it’s his shop, he can run it however he wants to run it.

While watching this movie, I noticed the use of many different camera techniques. We see the use of an extreme long shot when we see the shot of the street, allowing you to see down the street for a little ways. We see the use of an extreme close up when Love Daddy is telling the people to wake up. We only see the alarm clock, the top of the microphone, and Love Daddy’s lips. The camera then slowly zooms out to a high angle shot. We see the use of an oblique angle when the Mayor was talking to Mother Sister. This is showing us that something isn’t right there.  Reverse shots were also used in the scene when the Mayor was talking to Sal. We see the camera switch points of view for each character. I noticed many low and high angles were used quite a bit in this film. Lastly, we see a pan used when they are showing the neighborhood trying to convince Mookie that Sal was bad.

  

In this scene, we start out with an extreme close up of the alarm clock, the microphone, and Love Daddy’s lips. The camera slowly begins to zoom out to a close up shot where we see Love Daddy’s face. It eventually zooms to a medium shot allowing us to see part of Love Daddy’s body. After it zooms to medium shot, we being to see the camera start moving toward a high angle long shot. This is allowing us to see the inside of his place, as well as part of the outside. Eventually the camera stops zooming out and begins to pan. This allows for us to see the extreme long shot of the street.

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