Do the Right Thing

The Plot

Set in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York, Lee portrayed the daily life of his own neighborhood on the hottest day of the year, with warmth, humor, and music (including an original score by his father, Bill Lee). Shot entirely on location by a mostly black crew, the film particularizes the archetypal characters and small details of people's lives. Most cross-cultural interactions are depicted as confrontations and concessions of varying intensities, sometimes comical and increasingly threatening. They build at one point to a ritual round of racial epithets verbalized by each of the resident races, including a white policeman. Tensions also exist between women and men, focused primarily on the failure of black men to be strong and fulfill their responsibilities. Hopelessness is part of the landscape.

The action surrounds Sal's Famous Pizzeria. Formerly an Italian neighborhood, Sal and his sons continue their business long after others have moved away. Sal (Danny Aiello) and his sons are portrayed in a mainstream style of expository dialogue, enabling whites access to their feelings and motives. Mookie, the central black character played by Spike Lee, and the other key black characters are revealed through a style of dialogue as almost musical interplay more accessible to black audiences.

Mookie works for Sal delivering pizzas and functions as a bridge between the Italians and African Americans as the central conflict builds: black demands for voice and representation challenging white Italian positional power. Radio Raheem's music (Public Enemy's “Fight the Power”) and Buggin Out's pressure for black celebrities on Sal's Wall of Fame confront the power of Sal's ownership, and this time no one concedes. The seemingly inevitable violence leads to Radio Raheem's brutal death at the hands of the police.

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