R. Staaf Do The Right Thing

 

Do The Right Thing Blog Post

Respond to specific details in the assigned reviews of Do the Right Thing.
Desson Howe, of The Washington Post, sums up the Bed-Stuy neighborhood well when he states, “a black New York neighborhood where Italians serve pizza, Koreans sell vegetables but blacks do all the buying.” Do The Right Thing takes place exclusively in this tight-knit community where everybody knows each other’s business. The white people run all the businesses and the black people are viewed as lower class citizens. Although Howe says the blacks do all the buying, Mookie (Lee) is the only black person in the film with a job besides Love Daddy (Jackson), who works the radio station overlooking Bed-Stuy.

Jim Emerson says, “The first hour is so exuberant that I sometimes almost forget the dark clouds that are about to descend -- and that makes the last part of the film all the more painful to watch.” I felt exactly the same way while watching the film. I knew some conflict had to arise (or there would be no climax to reach at the top of the Classical Paradigm), but the story unfolded pretty slowly. Lee took his time to develop all the essential characters so when the final showdown came, the audience would have mixed feelings concerning who, if anyone, had done the right thing.

Roger Ebert describes the whole point of this film in one eloquent paragraph:

Of course it is confused. Of course it wavers between middle-class values and street values. Of course it is not sure whether it believes in liberal pieties or militancy. Of course some of the characters are sympathetic and others are hateful. And of course some of the likable characters do bad things. Isn't that the way it is in America today? Anyone who walks into this film expecting answers is a dreamer or a fool. But anyone who leaves the movie with more intolerance than they walked in with wasn't paying attention.

The film hit a nerve with audiences in 1989 when it released, and some people were afraid of what the film stood for. Others were forced to face their own racist feelings, while others were more confused than before they saw the film. Lee made all the characters relatable so when the brawl broke out at the end, viewers wouldn’t really know who they were rooting for.

　

　

　
Give some examples of how the camera, frame composition, and editing of this film inform the content

 

Lee used extreme camera angles through out Do The Right Thing. He used extreme low angles when characters were “preaching” the thematic messages of the film. He used a mixture of high and low angles during conversations, particularly between Radio Raheem and Sal, to portray one character as having authority over the other. Lee also made liberal use of the oblique, or “Dutch”, angle. He used this unnerving angle to give the audience the same feeling of unrest within the community that the characters were experiencing. Lee also used some crane shots to get high angles looking down on the neighborhood. This gave the film a very confined feeling, like there was nothing outside the scorching world of the Bed-Stuy neighborhood.

Lee used primarily warm colors (reds, oranges, and yellows) to emphasize the heat as the day wore on. He also used fairly slow editing at times, choosing to show entire events happen (such as someone crossing the street) in order to further emphasize the heat and the feeling of lethargy dragging on the community.

Go back to one shot in the film and describe mise en scene, camera, etc. in detail.

During one scene of a conversation between Sal and his son, Pino, Lee used a single long take. Lee starts with a long shot of them at the booth. The two of them are facing each other at a booth in Sal’s pizzeria putting them both in profile with a red flower in a vase between them. The camera slowly zooms in closer to a medium shot of the father and son having an intimate conversation about the future of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria and Pino’s racism. The window behind them looks out across the street where members of the neighborhood buy things from the Korean grocery store, as Sal and Pino talk about the racial climate of Bed-Stuy. As they continue talking, Smiley comes up and bangs on the window selling his photographs. Pino yells at Smiley, and eventually goes outside and pushes him away sparking an argument with someone else off screen. This all unfolds in a single take about four and a half minutes long.