I’ve read recently that, in light of this past summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, that Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing has taken on new relevance. The ending, where Lee’s character Mookie throws a garbage can through his employer’s window, causing many of the neighborhood residents to rush in and trash the place. When the movie was new, a number of critics (white ones mostly) questioned the move. but these days, people aren’t really questioning that action much any more.
Yeah, having finally taken the time to see it, I can easily say this movie is sadly just as relevant now, if not more so, than it was in 1989.
Set in a mostly black section of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, the movie follows a single, very hot day in the life of the residents, most specifically Mookie, 25 year old pizza delivery boy. It’s hot, no one seems to have working air conditioning, and racial tensions just below the surface are starting to bubble up. Sal’s Pizza is something of a neighborhood institution, where Sal (Danny Aiello) runs the place with his openly racist son Pino (John Turturro) and his other son Vito (Richard Edson). On this day, a fellow called Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) asks why Sal’s “Wall of Fame” doesn’t feature any black people. Sal says since he owns the place, he can and will hang only Italians on the wall. Buggin’ Out is soon tossed out and decides to start a boycott of the place.
That is, more or less, how the movie starts, but plot is not the point here so much as showing the underlying racial prejudice felt by just about every character in the movie. Pino may be the most openly racist, but just about all the other characters have something going on as well. Mookie doesn’t care much for his employers, the local Korean grocery store owner is constantly getting harassed, and what passes for wisdom in the neighborhood comes from the local drunk Da Mayor (Ossie Davis). You know your movie might have problems when the loudest voice for getting along may be coming from Samuel L. Jackson’s local DJ. Even characters like Sal who may see themselves as being above racism are fairly paternalistic and condescending to others before he finally loses his temper in the movie’s climactic final scenes.
In fact, given what happens when the cops show up to arrest Buggin’ Out and another man named Radio Raheem, it maybe isn’t surprising why this movie hits just as if not closer to home than it did 30 years ago. What I think Lee is doing here isn’t really necessarily justifying anyone’s behavior so much as saying it can happen and it is understandable where people go and what they do when they’re frustrated and angry enough. Instead, given that Lee closes with different, somewhat contradictory quotes from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X before showing a photo of the two men shaking hands, I get the impression what he’s actually trying to say is that the problem of racism may lead to understandable flare-ups of violence, but the solution to such issues is something we as a society still haven’t figured out yet.
As movies go, this was a brilliant piece of work. As a spotlight on the problems we face as a country, we should hope it wouldn’t be timely 30 years later but it sadly and most certainly is.
Grade: A
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