Spike Lee Does the Right Thing?

Spike Lee Does the Right Thing?

The Spike Lee film ‘Do the Right Thing’  (1989) explores the racial tension in a predominantly black neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York. An interesting aspect of this film is the clear intention to stereotype each race. For example, there are the Asians who own a corner store an barely speak English, the homeless black alcoholic, the unreasonable white racist cops, the Italian Americans who own a pizzeria, and the black young man who walks around playing rap music through his ghetto blaster radio. Seeing as this film is about the tension between each of these races, it would make sense to stereotype each race as clear contrasts can be easily identified between each race, which is the unreasonable basis for this hatred between races.

This stereotyping seems to be effective in commenting on the racial scars in American Society. In some ways I guess this film does seem to give the audience a sense of essentialism but, seeing as the film acknowledges the oppressive past and present of African American people, this essentialism doesn’t quite lead to ahistoricism. The constant references to historic figures in civil rights movements such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks etc. remind the audience of the past hardships for African Americans. Another interesting factor of this film is the soundtrack. The Public Enemy song ‘Fight the Power’ is heard 10times throughout the film. Whenever the big, aggressive African American character, Radio Raheem, is in shot, he is usually playing this song through his ghetto blaster.

 This adds to the racialized theme of this film as the song is literally telling African American people to fight the dominant white force in society. The song describes the racism portrayed by historical white icons such as Elvis Presely and John Wayne and basically tells the listener not to conform to society’s racist regime. Also the fact that this song is a hip hop song closely relates to African American culture as a large majority of hip hop artists and fans are African American people. ‘Fight The power’ seems to be a sort of motivation behind the film, as it is played during the opening credits to allude to the racial tension that is going to be presented in this film. It is also played during the climax where a plethora of racialized rage turns into an immense brawl between different races.

This film is an interesting portrayal of different steretypes due to it’s clear intention to comment on the ridiculous stigmas that go hand-and-hand with each stereotype. Therefore I believe that Spike Lee has made a positive contribution to Hollywood cinema with his self-proclaimed ‘most controversial film’.