Margot Bloch

Blue Group
4/25/15
Cinematic Analysis Quarter 4

Part A:
Do the Right Thing is a 1989 film about the harmful sides of racial tension. It is set on a
hot summer day in BedfordStuyvesant, Brooklyn. It is directed by Spike Lee, who also plays
Mookie in the film. Mookie is a young African American man, who has a girlfriend, Tina, and a
son, Hector. He works at Sals pizzeria alongside Sal himself, and his two sons (Pino and Vito).
There is a lot of controversy between the three of them, as Vito and Mookie are friends, but Pino
hates blacks (even though the business is in the black section of town) and wants to get rid of
Mookie. Throughout the movie we see Pino complaining to his father about being in the black
part of the city, and not being with the rest of the Italians, but Sal says they must stay because
that is the only way they will make any money. Conflict arises when Mookies black friend,
Buggin Out, questions why Sal doesnt have any pictures of black people up on his Wall of
Fame (which is just Italian-Americans) in the restaurant when all of their customers are black.
Buggin Out starts a boycott of Sals, except he only has two supporters: Radio Raheem and
Smiley. Radio Raheem always carries around a boombox and blasts his music and Smiley has
a mental disorder and goes around trying to sell his drawings of Malcolm X and MLK Jr. After a
series of small conflicts in the neighborhood, the three go to Sals and demand Sal to put up
photographs of blacks on his wall. He refuses and Radio Raheem then refuses to turn his music
down. Sal takes a baseball bat and smashes the radio after a slew of racial slurs are thrown at
the three. Raheem jumps at Sal angrily and a fight breaks out, overflowing into the street. A
crowd forms and police arrive on the scene ready to break up the fight. Radio Raheem and
Buggin Out get taken away by police and one officer refuses to release his choke hold on Radio
Raheem, killing him in front of the mob of people. They rush off in the police cars and people
start rushing towards Sal, Pino, and Vito, but then Mookie throws a trashcan through the

Margot Bloch
Blue Group
4/25/15
window of the building, diverting the attention. Smiley lights a match to the restaurant and
firefighters show up. After giving a warning to the protestors, the hoses are turned toward the
mob and more fighting breaks out. At the end of night, we see Smiley putting up one of his
pictures on the burnt Wall of Fame. The next day, Mookie goes to Sal for his payment and they
argue about why his business was destroyed. Mookie explains that losing property is nothing
compared to killing a black man. The film ends with two contradicting, yet inspiring and thoughtprovoking quotes by Martin Luther King Jr., who explains why it is necessary to use nonviolent
protest so as not to leave the whole world blind and deaf and Malcolm X, who explains that
sometimes violence is the only way to get a point across and in the Civil Rights movement it
was needed. Overall, the film shows how detrimental racial conflict can be to a community and
teaches us a lesson that it must be improved, yet leaves the viewers to discuss how the solution
can be made- whether through civil disobedience or through violence.

Part B:
Do the Right Thing came out in 1989, and to this day, still gives watchers a realistic idea
of the racial discrimination and segregation in the United States, especially in New York City
from that time. This movie does an amazing job of really giving the viewer an insight to how
racial tensions were experienced by every race back in the late 20th century. In Do the Right
Thing, we can see the opinions of Koreans, African Americans, Italian Americans, Puerto Ricans
and others who played a part in the social conflict. In 1989, the hip hop group Public Enemy
released "Fight the Power," a very influential hip hop song, which was the theme for Do the
Right Thing. Hip hop and the related style of "gangsta rap" were widely criticized in the white
community

for

exalting

inner-city

violence

and

opposition

to

the

police

(http://gecon.blogspot.com/). Public Enemy's logo is a black man standing in the middle of a

target, which, along with the name, gives an idea of how the majority of people in America felt

Margot Bloch
Blue Group
4/25/15
toward blacks. This is clearly shown in the movie as well. At this time (1989), jails were filled
with predominantly black people. There were huge problems with blacks and the law
enforcement (storify.com). The events in the movie are an example of this, as after the police
break up the mob, they take Radio Raheem and Buggin Out away, and kill Radio Raheem, but
leave Sal and his family as if they did nothing wrong.

Part C:
2. Evaluate the impact of the movie on American culture and society OR its significance in the
development of the film industry. Again, this will require in-text citations.
This movie was a huge critique of the way races treated each other in the United States
at that time and it had a large and lasting effect on its viewers. Many of the issues raised in this
movie still exist now and are still trying to be understood by the public. Even today, magazines
and radio shows are still talking about the movie and the message it left for us. It leaves viewers
wondering who, if anybody, did the right thing as the title states. The two quotes at the end
show contradicting ideas of how to resolve the race issue, yet even still many people who
watched it learned a great deal from the film. The movie is a landmark not only in cinema but for
Hip Hop culture (/www.nondomesticatedthinker.com), as the song Fight the Power became very
popular through the movie. According to the National Public Radio (npr)- twenty years ago, the
film Do The Right Thing debuted in theaters and aggressively shifted the focus to the realities of
a divided America (www.npr.org). It exposed many issues that people from certain isolated
communities hadnt known about before its release.
Works Cited

bpetros1. "Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing: Impact on Society." Storify. N.p., 2014.

Margot Bloch
Blue Group
4/25/15
Web. 27 Apr. 2015. <https://storify.com/bpetros1/spike-lee-s-do-the-right-thing-impacton-society>.
Creative Destruction. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2015.
<http://gecon.blogspot.com/2011/04/race-relations-in-1980s-90s-wikipedia.html>
"20 Years since Spike Lee's 'Do the Right Thing.'" npr. N.p., 24 June 2009.
Web. 27 Apr. 2015. <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105850679>.
Williams, Khalif 'Ras'. "Do the Right Thing- 20 Years Later."
Non Domesticated Thinker. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2015
<http://www.nondomesticatedthinker.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Do-the-RightThing-20-years-later.pdf>.