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2021 Spike Lee: The Importance of Representing and Understanding the Opposite Perspective Nicholas Anthony Tracanna
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! SPIKE LEE: THE IMPORTANCE OF REPRESENTING AND UNDERSTANDING THE
OPPOSITE PERSPECTIVE
! ! ! ! ! ! By
NICHOLAS ANTHONY TRACANNA ! ! ! ! ! ! A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major
Degree Awarded: SUMMER 2021
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Foreword
Spike Lee is one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. His work towards universal representation and recognition for the unfiltered African American experience cannot be understated. Upon a deeper look at his filmography, with particular attention to Do the
Right Thing, it is clear that Spike Lee recognizes the importance of depicting a wide spectrum of opinions regarding race relations. Artistic expression, and mass media at large, too often offer audiences a biased and heavy-handed portrayal of these complex issues on-screen. Spike Lee reminds audiences that racial issues are far more complex than being simply two-sided. There are plenty of complications that muddle these issues, rendering the one-dimensional narratives inaccurate. Through the unique circumstances and plotlines through which Spike Lee molds his stories, audiences are offered a glimpse into the complicated reality of race relations in America, ultimately forcing a greater dialogue regarding the status of this country and a necessary recognition of its biases.
Part I: Black History of the Film Industry
Black characters have a deep-rooted history in American cinema. They have been represented and incorporated on-screen since the earliest days of film production. The major issues, however, are the glaring inaccuracies and cruel stereotyping of black characters that ultimately had lasting effects on their public perception.
Film historian Cara Caddoo writes in her book Envisioning Freedom: Cinema and the
Building of Modern Black Life, “Between 1897 and 1910, hundreds of black film showmen and - women exhibited motion pictures in black lodges, schools, and, most frequently, churches. Early black film exhibition developed in response to the dramatic changes African Americans faced at Tracanna 4 the turn of the century—migration, hardening Jim Crow segregation, and the growing demand for urban amusements” (Caddoo 15). Attending motion pictures at churches and social clubs became a popular act of leisure for African-Americans in the late 1890s. Films such as
Something Good – Negro Kiss (1898) and A Fool and His Money (1912) are some of the earliest surviving examples of motion pictures starring black actors and laid the foundation for black representation in American cinema. While the historical relevancy of these early films is undeniable, major progressive steps came as a response to the racist depictions of black people that rose to popularity in the subsequent years.
Much of the fight for proper cinematic representation of black people in American cinema begins with the controversy surrounding D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915).
Originally titled The Clansman, Birth of a Nation is widely considered Hollywood’s first
“blockbuster” as it unprecedently ran over three hours and was the most profitable film of its time. It dramatized the civil war and its subsequent reconstruction era over several years. Birth of a Nation is hailed by many as a revolutionary film that pushed the boundaries of contemporary filmmaking at the time. Film critic Mark Vance wrote, “Mr. Griffith, has set such a pace it will take a long time before one movie will come along that can top it in point of production, acting, photography, and direction” (Stokes). Despite its technical advancements for the film industry,
Birth of a Nation villainized black characters (played by white actors in blackface) and celebrated the Ku Klux Klan’s eradication of them. It depicted black characters as dangerous threats to the white characters and as aggressive animals lusting after white women. This film was released in the middle of heavy racial conflicts within the Jim Crow era, where lynching and mob violence towards blacks reached a peak. Ed Guerrero asserts in his book, Framing
Blackness: The African-American Image in Film, “This bloodthirsty climate, in combination Tracanna 5 with Birth's romantic depiction and glorification of the Ku Klux Klan, most certainly contributed to the public's tolerance of Klan criminality and its expansion to its greatest membership ever, about 5 million” (Guerrero). While many film historians praise Birth of a Nation, the film had disastrous consequences and gave way to a second uprising of the Ku Klux Klan. Spike Lee claims in a New York Times interview regarding his experience as a student at the NYU Film
School, “My problem is that as far as Birth of a Nation goes, we were told D.W. Griffith is the father of cinema, but other stuff got left out. We were never told as students that this film gave a rebirth to the Klan; the K.K.K. had been dormant” (Tillet). The narrative surrounding the negative cultural effects of Birth of a Nation is often overshadowed in American cinematic history by its trailblazing storytelling and cinematic techniques. This is mainly since white media has been able to control this record of history, usually omitting the fact that the film inspired hate crimes and racist organizations to reunite.
Films released after Birth of a Nation featured similarly written black characters with aggressive and nefarious qualities. In response to this early era of American cinema, African-
Americans were forced to form independent film production companies that combatted the stereotyping of their contemporaries. Guerrero writes, “One of the most notable efforts in this direction was the black-produced Birth of a Race, released in 1919 and doomed to commercial failure because of its poor technical and narrative qualities as well as the economic problems of confronting an established, white-dominated, and white-monopolized monopolized film industry” (Guerrero). This becomes a common theme throughout the history of the American film industry in regard to the role and representation of African-Americans. A lack of universal support amid the overbearingly white monopoly of the film industry slows black progression and acceptance in this field significantly. Tracanna 6
Despite this lack of widespread support, there was a wave of black-produced films for black-dominated audiences from the late 1910s to the 1930s. Any attempt for success in diverse markets was immediately suppressed, and ultimately lacked sufficient funding for any film to transcend into various audiences. One of the earliest prominent black filmmakers was Oscar
Micheaux, who began as a writer and eventually started producing his own films. He made immense strides for other black filmmakers to begin producing their own art. The primary difficulty he ran into was getting his films seen and accepted by wider audiences outside of the
African-American community. J. Ronald Green writes in With a Crooked Stick – The Films of
Oscar Micheaux:
One of Micheaux’s early ideas about filmmaking that did not work was to market his first
film to white as well as black audiences. He felt he knew how to sell to the white
population of the Midwest, where he had raised significant amounts of subscription
money for the publication of his novels, but when the returns from the first films started
coming in he undoubtedly revised that tactic. By May of 1919, he was mentioning
primarily black audiences, and his flyers for the film seem to be directed largely at fellow
African Americans, who would remain the only focus of his attention for the rest of his
career. The exception to Micheaux’s career-long focus on black audiences is in his fiction
writing, particularly his later fiction. (Green 23)
Many of Micheaux’s films catered to an African-American audience, including the 1920 silent film Within Our Gates which is widely seen as a response to the racist propaganda film, Birth of a Nation. In order to get many of Micheaux’s films funded, Guerrero claims, “he went from theater to theater, showing pictures of his glamorous stars, and urging investments always in his next film” (Guerrero). He sought to make films highlighting black lead characters in a Tracanna 7 contemporary setting that countered the deprecating portrayals of African-Americans in the early era of filmmaking. Micheaux marks a transitional period in black filmmaking history by beginning to functionally focus on and accommodate the desires of African-American audiences, rather than cater toward white ones. Especially since white support was inherently minimal for
Micheaux’s works, his focus on creating films solely for black audiences proved to be an influential step in growing the African-American film industry.
The 1940s and 1950s were eras of expanded inclusion for African-Americans in white films and even led to some of the first instances of Academy Award recognition for African-
American actors. Despite these advancements, the 40s and 50s still featured a strong sense of pandering for acceptance in the white film industry with black actors playing familiar roles as housemaids and musicians. The more notable strides for black filmmakers were being made in the late-1960s, when blaxploitation films rose to popularity. Blaxploitation films leaned into the harsh stereotyping that black actors were conventionally subjected to and put them at the forefront of the narrative. Guerrero states, “These films were made possible by the rising political and social consciousness of black people (taking the form of a broadly expressed black nationalist impulse at the end of the civil rights movement), which translated into a large black audience thirsting to see their full humanity depicted on the commercial cinema screen”
(Guerrero). Since this era came at a time of heightened black empowerment and coincided with the formation of the Black Panther Party, it’s no surprise that many of these films featured a black protagonist contending against “the Man” or other handicapping forces. In his book
Redefining Black Film, Mark Reid also asserts that “resistance connotes any independent form that empowers black culture and the blacks who make the film” (Reid). While these films were more widely popular than those of Micheaux and other early black filmmakers, they still lacked a Tracanna 8 sense of realism regarding the true African-American experience. Films like Gordon Parks’ Shaft
(1971) and his son Gordon Parks Jr.’s Superfly (1972) featured plots with heavy sexualization, drug trading, and violence that felt like a hyperbolic depiction of black stereotyping.
Nevertheless, it was an exciting experience seeing black men and women finally playing heroic lead roles, despite this era being short-lived.
Soon, the Blaxploitation era of the 70s became stale and was no longer profitable in
Hollywood, leading to a drought in the fight for equality and representation in Hollywood. Spike
Lee and John Singleton were pioneers in the fight for African-American filmmakers to become respected household names again in the late 80s and early 90s. These filmmakers featured more realistic characters that accurately portrayed the African-American experience, rather than using
African-American actors as a means of exploitation or hiring merely a token black character in a predominantly white cast.
However, as was the case in the Blaxploitation era, the meteoric rise of influential black films was brief. Hollywood saw the opportunity in the early 90s to profit off of the popularity of black stories. “Black” inherently became a genre, rather than an opportunity for minority filmmakers to share their own stories. The successes of Do the Right Thing and Boyz n the Hood led to a crowded market of black filmmakers telling black stories, and every production company in Hollywood wanted to monetize this movement. In an interview conversation for the New
York Times featuring several black directors of the 1990s, Darnell Martin, who began her career as a camera operator on Do the Right Thing, stated that, “With my first film, there was a bidding war with people who hadn’t even read the script — studios — just because they heard I was the female Spike Lee. [...] But they weren’t looking at the work. They didn’t believe that we had anything of merit for ourselves. It’s just that we were the flavor, that’s it” (Ugwu). Ultimately, it Tracanna 9 was trendy to be a black filmmaker in the 90s and the profitability of black films in this era was the sole motivator for their production. While the 90s felt like the beginning of a resurgence for black filmmakers, the momentum was soon lost and Hollywood returned to focusing their funding on their bankable white films in production.
In a cyclic nature, Hollywood continued to praise and subsequently demote black films roughly every decade. Now in this modern, contemporary era, there appears to be a new rise in black cinema with filmmakers such as Barry Jenkins, who directed Moonlight (2016) which was the first Best Picture winner at the Oscars featuring an all-black cast. Jenkins, alongside Ryan
Coogler and Ava DuVernay head this new wave of black filmmaking. While serious strides have been made, little will remain changed as the gatekeepers and chiefs of major film production studios are white.
Part II: Spike Lee’s Signature Style
Studying the past is necessary to understand America’s deep roots in suppressing black stories, both in the cinema industry and in society at large. With a career that began in the 1980s,
Spike Lee is one of the only prominent filmmakers who has remained relevant across generations while fighting for black voices. Lee played an instrumental role in progressing black cinema forward in cultural relevance. More so than Oscar Micheaux, Gordon Parks Jr., or even John
Singleton, Lee has remained a popular social figure for nearly four decades of his making influential films, films that challenge society and address the relevant racial issues of the particular and various eras he depicts. In order to dive deeper into Spike Lee’s ability to accurately portray diverse social issues in his 1989 racial drama Do the Right Thing, it’s necessary to study his filmography as a whole and the thematic threads that tie them together. In Tracanna 10
Spike Lee’s case, he uses editing techniques, thematic motifs in his narratives, and even in- camera effects to express his overarching ideologies into his films.
Lee’s films often provide audiences a narrative rooted in a strong foundation of historical contexts. This is abundantly clear through his use of splicing documentary-style montages into the beginning or end of his films. These historical contexts accentuate the message and true conditions surrounding the narrative of the film. For instance, Malcolm X begins its biopic journey with footage from the 1991 Rodney King beating at the hands of the L.A.P.D. This moment shows the audience, right at the beginning of the film, that 26 years following Malcolm
X’s assassination, little has changed in America regarding race relations and police brutality.
This introduction establishes a wider discussion regarding society and how Lee’s films have a larger scope than their on-screen runtime. While many of Spike Lee’s films are already based around a true story, these montages add depth to the film’s overall impact. They allow the audience to subconsciously blur the line between reality and fiction within his films, and apply their messages and social critiques into real-life scenarios.
In the same vein as the beginning of Malcolm X, BlacKkKlansman ends with footage and interviews from the Charlottesville riots of 2017. Throughout the film, African-American
Detective Ron Stallworth corresponds over the phone with the Ku Klux Klan and attempts to infiltrate the organization posing as a white supremacist. At the end of the film, after numerous conversations with Grand Wizard David Duke, Stallworth finally reveals his true racial identity to him. This moment leaves Duke speechless and dumbfounded that he’s been corresponding with an African-American detective. This shot makes the audience question whether David Duke is beginning to realize the unsubstantial nature of his prejudices. But just as these thoughts are Tracanna 11 generated by the audience, the violent footage from Charlottesville heartbreakingly answering this question for us with real world power.
In addition to these moments of splicing in footage from true events, Spike Lee uses unique in-camera effects to further push his worldly perspective as an auteur. Most notably, this comes in the form of a very stylized in-camera effect that appears sparsely throughout each film of his career. This effect, coined “the double-dolly shot,” features the actor and camera moving in the same direction at the same speed, making the actor appear as if they are floating or moving still through time. Lee uses this shot in both subdued and dramatic contexts, often using it as a plot point to show the character experiencing a surreal moment or mentality. This signature shot artfully exudes a broad social commentary regarding the African-American experience and the film industry at large. In these shots, the actor appears to be moving through space and time, while simultaneously remaining still. Ultimately, this signature effect serves as a larger metaphor for the plight of African-Americans in contemporary society.
While advancements have been made on the surface, there has been little progression toward objective equality. Within the film industry, the same conclusions could be made. Over
80 years following the rise of Oscar Micheaux, prominent black filmmakers still face the same perils and ostracism in a contemporary setting. In an article with the New York Times, Thomas
Chatterton Williams wrote about Spike Lee’s continued difficulties in getting his films properly funded. He claims, “When, for example, Warner Brothers balked at putting up the money to produce the version of Malcolm X [Spike] Lee wanted to make, he was able to circumvent the studio and petition the most prominent members of the black 1 percent, including Magic
Johnson, Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby, to open their pocketbooks” (Williams). This directly echoes Micheaux’s unorthodox funding tactics of asking for donations to get his 1920s-era films Tracanna 12 made. While advancements have undoubtedly been made for black filmmakers, it tends to feel like their progress has merely been moving in place, a concept directly parallel to how Lee’s characters often move within the double dolly shot—simultaneously moving forward yet remaining static, stagnant.
While there are plenty of aspects that differentiate Spike Lee as a unique auteur both in production and editing, the most notable is his use of addressing perspectives within his narratives. In Spike Lee’s most commercially successful film, Inside Man (2006), the central conflict of the movie stems from a lack of true visual perspective. The film revolves around
Detective Frazier and his handling of a hostage situation during a bank robbery. Toward the beginning of the film, the robbers dress the hostages in the same clothes as themselves. In the climax of the film, the robbers leave their guns in the bank and run outside alongside all of the hostages. From the police’s perspective, everyone is the same. They can’t take any action because they are oblivious to the enemy’s actual identity. The robbers are intermixed with the hostages, and there is no means of distinguishing between them since the hostages never saw what the robbers looked like previously. Inside Man barely touches any issues regarding race in an objective tone, but its theme and overall message can easily be translated to fit that narrative.
Once the sense of visual perspective is nullified, people have no basis to judge others. Anybody could be morally just or unjust, as their appearance has no linear correlation with their actions.
Inside Man laid the foreground for themes explored further in Lee’s first Oscar-winning film, BlacKkKlansman, which illustrates how a lack of visual perspective can ultimately prove that racism is frivolously shallow. During Ron Stallworth’s continued conversations with David
Duke in BlacKkKlansman, he is unaware that he is actually speaking with an African-American, a group of people that he has dedicated his entire life to tirelessly hating and oppressing. These Tracanna 13 are some of the most powerful moments of the film because it shows how many surface-level prejudices contribute to racism. Once you peel back these stereotypes and compartmentalized visual prejudices, racism crumbles under its own weight. One of the most racist men in history is willing to trust a black man and interact with him consistently over the phone, simply because he has no insight regarding his racial identity. This film takes the idea of addressing perspective and the effects of a lack thereof from Inside Man and introduces it into a more explicitly racial setting.
While Spike Lee is widely regarded for his depictions of interracial relations, many of his films delve into different topics that still accentuate his filmmaking roots in illustrating conflicting perspectives within the African-American experience. School Daze is one of the two major feature films that precede Do the Right Thing in Spike Lee’s filmography. It lays the foundational elements of conflicting perspectives within the African-American heritage that ultimately serves as the basis of ideological contention between the main characters of Do the
Right Thing.
School Daze is a film surrounding the conflicts within Mission College, a Historically
Black College or University (HBCU). This film concerns itself mostly with tensions arising within the black community itself. It depicts colorism and explores two different cliques within the college: the socially conscious students and the less concerned fraternity/sorority members.
Particularly in a musical performance within the film entitled “Good and Bad Hair,” the darker- skinned women clash with the lighter-skinned women based upon their hair styling. The darker- skinned women keep their hair nappy and natural, and the lighter-skinned women straighten their naps in an attempt to look “white.” This opens a wider discussion regarding black people feeling obligated to appease white people in society. Kobena Mercer writes in his book Welcome to the Tracanna 14
Jungle, “I want to take issue with the widespread argument that, because it involves straightening, the curly-perm hairstyle represents either a wretched imitation of white people’s hair or, what amounts to the same thing, a diseased state of black consciousness” (Mercer 96). In his chapter entitled Black Hair / Style Politics, Mercer claims that straightening hair is not a defining factor to judging a black person’s racial identity, but rather a means of abandoning naturality. While straightening is not inherently an act of pandering to white culture, neither is growing out an afro an indication of black nationalism. In School Daze, there is a disconnect between these groups regarding their outlook on their blackness. The darker-skinned women claim that the lighter-skinned women are ashamed of their heritage and will do as much as possible to fit in with their white oppressors. The light-skinned women retort by calling the darker-skinned women jigaboos and dirty because they don’t concern themselves with their appearance. Mercer claims, “What is at stake, I believe, is the difference between two logics of black stylization—one emphasizing natural looks, the other involving straightening to emphasize artifice” (Mercer 103). Despite being from the same heritage, both parties have conflicting perspectives on their race and whether they consider their heritage important to embrace.
At the climax of School Daze, the main character Dap walks through the main campus and yells at his peers to “wake up!” He is fed up with all of the meaningless conflicts between his activist-minded group and the other cliques within the university. After the entire university wakes up and joins Dap in the main campus courtyard, he breaks the fourth wall to tell the audience directly that they need to wake up. This moment indicates the frivolous, and self- destructive nature of clashing with those of your same culture. Dap calls for African Americans, and other ethnicities alike, to set their differences aside to thrive together in harmony. This powerful scene finishes the film with great levity, Dap’s two small words having a great deal of Tracanna 15 impact, calling people to action and widening the film from a fictional narrative into a very real one. Indeed, these final words of School Daze resurface the very next year as the opening line in
Spike Lee’s next feature film, Do the Right Thing.
Part III: Do the Right Thing
Do the Right Thing takes place over the course of one day, specifically the hottest day of the summer, when, “Like a gun, the heat becomes the great equalizer. The redder the sun gets, the more the truth of the lives of those who live in this small neighborhood unfolds. Their concerns, worries, insecurities, and frustrations bubble to the surface” (Sullivan and Boehrer
144). Despite occurring within a relatively short period, the film offers a complex storyline following the lives of a diverse ensemble cast. Each character contributes a meaningful performance that is instrumental to the film’s overall effectiveness as a racially charged drama.
The defining aspect that separates Do the Right Thing from its contemporaries is its offering of a wide spectrum of perspectives surrounding the same circumstances. The film is not a subjective, propaganda piece that only offers audiences one side of the story. Black, White, Hispanic, and
Asian cultures are all gathered together on this one block in Bed-Stuy, New York. The cultures interact in a fairly harmonious fashion, but as the movie progresses, the tensions exponentially rise.
The bulk of the film is driven by Mookie, who works delivering pizzas for Sal’s Pizzeria.
He works alongside the Italian-American owner Sal, and his two sons, Pino and Vito. Inside
Sal’s Pizzeria, there is a wall of fame featuring prominent Italian-American figures such as Al
Pacino and Frank Sinatra. This serves as the driving force of conflict for the movie after Buggin’
Out, one of Mookie’s African-American friends, takes offense to the wall. He argues that Sal Tracanna 16 should also be celebrating prominent black figures, considering the amount of business that the local African-Americans generate for his business. Sal aggressively disagrees and this marks the central catalyst for the ensuing conflict between races.
The dichotomy of mentalities regarding how to handle racial injustices ultimately becomes a recurring theme throughout Do the Right Thing. We’re introduced to two African-
American characters with different mentalities toward their Caucasian counterparts, and three
Italian-American characters with drastically different mentalities toward their African-American counterparts. Mookie is more open to associating with Sal and his sons, and is often shown trying to ease the tension between them and his African-American friends. While he never explicitly defends Sal and his actions throughout the film, he works as a mediator for the two races. Buggin’ Out, on the other hand, is much more radical in his attitude toward Sal. He demands recognition for his race’s contribution toward the monetary success of Sal’s Pizzeria.
Michael Aranda suggests that through these two characters, the film, “wrestles very explicitly with two strands of black activism, and what those two approaches mean for the community as a whole” (CrashCourse). The film does not depict only one perspective of racial tensions, much like the two central African-American characters who differ in their attitude toward activism.
It’s hard to ignore the direct connections that Spike Lee draws with Mookie and Buggin’
Out to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. It’s a question of handling racial inequality through peace and respect, even if it is not reciprocated, or through militancy by any means necessary. Martin Luther King Jr. preached about the redemptive powers of love. He claims in his sermon entitled Loving Your Enemies,
“Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies.’ It is this: that
love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually Tracanna 17
transforms individuals. That’s why Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies.’ Because if you hate
your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love
your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption.
You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even though they’re mistreating you”
(King).
In stark contrast, Malcolm X introduced a more radicalized Muslim ideology that, at times, toed the lines of black supremacy. He had a zero-tolerance approach to any inequalities against him or his people and offers no sympathy toward white people due to the historic injustices that their culture has beset upon black people. Malcolm also addressed some black men as “blind” or
“lost” because they yearned to appease the white man, much like Mookie does throughout the film working as an employee under Sal. He is consistently shown working under the white man’s reign, much to the dismay of Buggin’ Out. For example, after the initial argument between
Buggin’ Out and Sal regarding the wall of fame, Mookie removes Buggin’ Out from the pizzeria and was jokingly instructed to “stay black.” It’s these two juxtaposed mentalities that carry the historical weight of the film, connecting it to the ideologies proposed by two of the most influential civil rights leaders in Black American history.
On the polar opposite end of the spectrum lies Pino, the ideological counterpart to
Buggin’ Out. Pino is the most blatantly racist character in the film, rarely pulling racially- charged jabs directed toward the African-Americans that file in and out of Sal’s Pizzeria. In between these racist moments, the audience is shown Vito bonding his friendship with Mookie and displaying his support for black culture. He recognizes his brother’s hateful mentality but knows there isn’t much he can do to change anything. In a display of visual rhetoric, Pino is almost always shown wearing a white tank top, and Vito is almost always shown wearing a black Tracanna 18 tank top. The subtle imagery regarding their mentalities and identity concerning their African-
American peers provide an additional layer of creative depth to the characters. Both Pino and
Vito are easily identifiable in their perspectives on the opposite race, but the biggest question mark within this family is Sal.
Sal plays both sides from the beginning of the film, but later exposes himself as a
“sympathetic racist,” which is a term coined by Dan Flory in Spike Lee and the Sympathetic
Racist. He writes, “Lee depicts sympathetic racist characters so that viewers may initially forge positive allegiances with them despite those characters’ anti-black beliefs and actions, which in earlier stages of the narrative seem trivial, benign, unimportant, or may even go unnoticed. He then alienates viewers from such characters by revealing the harmfulness of these typically white beliefs and actions” (Flory 68). Ultimately much of Sal’s personality and sympathetic attitude toward Mookie is a façade. In a scene nearing the end of the film, Sal even goes so far as to tell
Mookie and his sons, “Mookie, I want to tell you that there’s always going to be a place for you here, right here at Sal’s, Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, because you’ve always been like a son to me”
(Do the Right Thing). He makes these generous claims about Mookie and loving the African-
American community in which his pizzeria is located, but his unadulterated ideology begins to reveal itself at the climax of the film. Our perspective of Sal widens as the storyline progresses.
He is not sympathetic toward the African-Americans of his neighborhood, he merely tolerates them because they bring him so much business.
Sal also serves as a wider metaphor for the film industry itself. Just as the film industry profited at large during the 70s blaxploitation era and the early 90s rise of black filmmakers, so does Sal’s Pizzeria throughout the film. There is a façade of sympathy that clouds the true intentions of both Sal and the film industry. In the same cyclical nature of the film industry’s Tracanna 19 interest in supporting black filmmakers, Sal’s outward expression of acceptance toward his customers is merely an act of tolerance. Once the element of monetary gain is lifted, neither Sal nor the film industry truly concerns themselves with African-Americans. They both only feign interest and sympathy for pursuits of riches. This duality of Sal’s outward expression contrasting his internal feelings toward his black customers adds another layer of complexity to his character, which sparks a dialogue among audiences regarding their opinion of the character.
Spike Lee presents his racial narrative from an objective and open standpoint. While we may not fully agree with each character’s mentality, we are forced to understand their perspective of these events. The five aforementioned characters represent the sheer totality of the spectrum of interracial ideologies. Buggin’ Out and Pino represent the extremes, with Mookie,
Sal, and Vito showing the audience that these issues are not so one-dimensional. In a journal within Art, Faith, and Mystery, Michael Dunaway writes:
“It’s that kind of sympathy for both sides, that determination to present them both as
compelling and understandable, that makes for good drama. It also happens to be what
makes good human beings. Throughout the film, as befits his style and techniques and
fundamental storytelling approach, Lee presents us with characters who are archetypes
(tellingly, he dons a gold tooth and an earring to play Mookie)—but they never become
stereotypes; there are always living, breathing human beings inside those archetypes.
They’re our neighbors. They are us” (Dunaway 75).
Due to the historic oppression and violence toward African-Americans at the hands of the police, it would be understandable for Spike Lee to write an enraged narrative that forces his specific opinions onto the viewer. However, doing so would ultimately hinder Do the Right Thing’s inherent value. The film has an objective standpoint that presents the action of the film in a non- Tracanna 20 biased way. Each character offers valid arguments throughout the film that help the audience rationalize with their mentality. Upon finishing the film and seeing how its circumstances develop, it’s the viewer that must formulate their own opinion on each character.
Radio Raheem is another important character within Do the Right Thing, serving as the culminated personification of the conflicting mentalities that Mookie and Buggin’ Out respectively represent. For the most part, he’s an idle character throughout the film. He doesn’t initiate any issues, just so long as none are brought upon him. He trots through the neighborhood with a huge boombox blasting Fight the Power by Public Enemy, an anthem specifically created for Do the Right Thing. He wears four-finger knuckle rings on each hand that read “LOVE” and
“HATE.” He explains to Mookie,
“Let me tell you the story of Right Hand, Left Hand. It's a tale of good and evil. Hate: It
was with this hand that Cain iced his brother. Love: These five fingers, they go straight to
the soul of man. The right hand: The hand of love. The story of life is this: Static. One
hand is always fighting the other hand, and the left hand is kicking much ass. I mean, it
looks like the right hand, Love, is finished. But hold on, stop the presses, the right hand is
coming back. Yeah, he got the left hand on the ropes, now, that's right. Yeah, ooh, it's a
devastating right and Hate is hurt, he's down. Left-Hand Hate KOed by Love. If I love
you, I love you. But if I hate you...” (Do the Right Thing).
Again, the rings contribute as a motif to the overarching theme of the film which compares the ideologies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Radio Raheem carries within him both perspectives throughout the film, adding more symbolic depth to the tragic ending sequence, especially understanding Malcolm and Martin’s similar, fatal fates while fighting for justice and equality. Tracanna 21
Each of these radically different characters and their unique attitudes concerning each other finally culminate together in the same location at the end of the film. As Do the Right
Thing approaches its climax, Sal and his employees are closing up the pizzeria when a few teens from the neighborhood start knocking on the door claiming they’re hungry for a slice. Sal decides to let them in, much to the chagrin of his employees, and goes toward the oven to make their pizza. As soon as he does this, Buggin’ Out and Radio Raheem barge into the pizzeria with
Fight the Power blaring. The pizzeria erupts into a screaming argument, with Buggin’ Out and
Radio Raheem verbally engaging with Sal about his wall of fame and Sal demanding Radio
Raheem to turn his music off. As the argument reaches its boiling point, Sal shouts racial slurs at the two, grabs his baseball bat, and smashes Radio Raheem’s boombox. When the boombox shatters, Fight the Power is silenced. Silencing the song is akin to society’s yearning to silence
Radio Raheem’s fight for equality and freedom of speech. The radio is a part of his personality, and naturally, he retaliates. He launches over the counter and wrestles with Sal. The fight soon breaks out into the street. and the police eventually arrive at the scene, ripping Radio Raheem off of Sal. One of the officers puts Radio Raheem in a stranglehold and disregards the pleas, some coming from his own colleagues, to release his choke. By the time he unleashes his grip, Radio
Raheem’s lifeless body falls to the pavement. The officers, knowing what they’ve just done, rush to put Radio Raheem in a police car and speed away from the scene. The neighborhood is left in shock from what just occurred. There is a moment of deafening silence, as we are unsure of what will happen next. Mookie watches the scene from a distance before marching to a nearby trashcan, emptying it, and throwing it through the front window of Sal’s Pizzeria. This moment is the catalyst for a riot onto Sal’s Pizzeria. The neighborhood residents ram their way into the pizzeria, destroying the property, emptying the register, and subsequently burning the building to Tracanna 22 the ground. Through the flames appears Smiley, with Fight the Power fading back in as background music. He approaches the wall of fame and tapes his picture of Martin Luther King
Jr. and Malcolm X onto it. The final shot of the climax shows Smiley looking at the wall of fame, with a burning and destroyed Sal’s Pizzeria behind him, letting out an overjoyed smile.
One of the most divisive and widely discusses moments in film history, people tirelessly analyze the ending of the film, and whether Mookie acted in a morally just way by throwing that trashcan through the window of Sal’s Pizzeria. Many criticize Mookie for acting irrationally and ultimately inciting a riot, while others praise him for finally standing up for his own heritage.
Yet, these analyses completely miss the central point of the film; there is no “right thing” to do in that scenario. With generations upon generations of African-Americans being marginalized and wrongfully murdered at the hands of an oppressive force, this moment represents their frustration reaching a boiling point. All rational thoughts, or the possibility of finding the morally justified decision to make, are properly void. Emotions overtake Mookie, and he acts accordingly. It is certainly possible that this situation could have been handled in a peaceful manner if Mookie never incited the riot. But on the other hand, the same could be said about the fight between
Radio Raheem and Sal before the N.Y.P.D. arrived at the scene. It’s difficult to handle these situations with civility when the opposing force refuses to do the same. In his review of the film,
Roger Ebert suggests that though “people have accused Lee over the years of being an angry filmmaker” and that, though Spike Lee has much to be angry about, instead the “wonder of “Do the Right Thing” is that he is so fair.” Ebert continues by suggesting that the film’s “predominant emotion is sadness. Lee ends with two quotations, one from Martin Luther King Jr., advocating non-violence, and the other from Malcolm X, advocating violence ‘if necessary’” (Ebert). It is simultaneously difficult to blame or praise Mookie’s decision. Spike Lee presents this situation Tracanna 23 in such a well-rounded way that the audience can’t help but understand all angles of the moment.
But above all else, this ending opens the door for further dialogue among families and friends that ultimately leads to larger discussions regarding the true and tragic racial issues in America.
Part IV: 30 Years Later
Made objectively clear through his use of documentary-style montages of true events that typically precede or follow his films, Spike Lee tends to link his films to real circumstances.
Despite Do the Right Thing being a fictional narrative, it feels unquestionably realistic. This allows the film to be digested in a wider context than merely the fictional realm. Using this power, Spike Lee can create a narrative that is arguably more accurate and objectively depicted than those broadcast by contemporary mass media.
In an interview with W. Kamau Bell for the American Film Institute, Spike Lee states,
“They [critics] wanted at the end of the movie, for me to have the answer for racism so that we could all live in peace together. […] You can’t look at Radio Raheem and not see Eric Garner or brother [George] Floyd” (Lee 00:23:49). The resemblance between the climax of Do the Right
Thing and the countless, contemporary incidents of murder at the hands of the police is uncanny.
In June 2020, Spike Lee released a short film on CNN entitled 3 Brothers – Radio Raheem, Eric
Garner, and George Floyd which splices together footage from all three murders, all three men choked to death by police in similar fashions. An extremely powerful short film, 3 Brothers puts into perspective how little has changed in America since Do the Right Thing was released in
1989. The film ends with a title card reading, “Will history stop repeating itself?” 3 Brothers highlights the endless cycle of racial injustices that African-Americans have endured. As time Tracanna 24 has progressed and apparent changes have been made, striking moments such as the murder of
George Floyd prove that little has actually been realized.
Mass media outlets have historically only represented the majoritarian perspective.
According to Pew Research Center regarding a survey conducted amid the 2020 election, “two- thirds of U.S. adults say they’ve seen their own news sources report facts meant to favor one side” (Shearer). The truth is often skewed due to political agendas, and the sheer universality of a story becomes lost in these one-sided retellings. Simone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson write about Freddie Gray and his specific case of racial injustice in Are You Entertained?: Black
Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century as an opportunity to exemplify this point. After his arrest, Gray was the victim of a plethora of injuries that eventually lead to his death, but the cause of these injuries was widely disputed by the mass media outlets. In an attempt to raise awareness and control some aspects of what was being conveyed to the rest of the world, the city of Baltimore started the hashtag #BaltimoreRising and used social media outlets as their way of telling their truth. Drake and Henderson write:
“I assert that African Americans are using Black Twitter, a loosely formed but well-
defined network of self-identifying Black users, to talk back, and further, that they are
being heard. Black Twitter users are employing the age-old practice of signifyin(g) to
revise biased news reports regarding police shootings of un-armed Black people and to
address misrepresentations of corresponding Black Lives Matter protests that often
criminalize victims of police violence; as they have done so, hashtags on Black Twitter
have become catalysts for social change” (Drake and Henderson 162).
Decentralized networks of voices, like “Black Twitter,” allow for wide arrays of opinions and stories to be heard. There is a responsibility to seek after the truth of a situation, even if it is not Tracanna 25 explicitly conveyed to us by mass media outlets. The media tends to skew their stories in favor of some level of biased gain. No matter what the truth of a specific situation may be, it goes through plenty of filters before the media releases the story. Even once the story is released, there are still many perspectives that are underrepresented or even ignored entirely.
Ultimately, this is the foundation for what is studied in the critical race theory movement.
Critical race theory responds primarily to socially constructed racism, typically formulated through biased media tactics that harmfully skew public opinion on minorities. These opinions are “not objective, inherent, or fixed, they correspond to no biological or genetic reality; rather races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient” (Stefancic and
Delgado 8). Due to the historically overbearing white institution of mass media, minoritarian perspectives are widely underrepresented. As a retort to these majoritarian foundations, there have been recent developments in critical race media projects, which are defined as “a media production by people of color that seeks to dismantle majoritarian ideologies embedded in mainstream news and entertainment fare by centering the voices, bodies, histories, experiences, and resiliency of racially marginalized communities using a racial realist perspective” (Alemán and Alemán 289). “Black Twitter” has become the most notable critical race media project, likely without any conscious effort of becoming one. As a free social media outlet, anyone may use their voice on Twitter for any given purpose. It is now commonplace for ordinary people to post about their personal experiences. In the context of civil rights and raising awareness on these issues, “Black Twitter” and other social media movements have offered audiences a much wider perspective than what is given through mass media outlets.
Being an outlet for underrepresented voices, “Black Twitter” operates as a broad societal connection akin to what Spike Lee was a pioneer of, specifically for African-American Tracanna 26 filmmakers. His films tend to seek out minoritarian perspectives in an unfiltered manner, just as critical race media projects give platforms to underrepresented voices. While the film industry often exploits black stories and profits off rising trends in black filmmakers, Spike Lee uses his films as an outlet to give a voice to those who are excluded from the popular narrative.
In addition to adding perspective to the mass media, the film industry, and both of their depictions of race, Do the Right Thing forces audiences to look inward at our personal views of race. The Black Lives Matter movement has risen in meteoric popularity over the past few years.
It’s impossible to discuss modern civil rights activism without mentioning this organization.
Upon the murder of George Floyd in 2020, worldwide protests against racial injustices erupted, with Black Lives Matter at the head of the movement. These protests allowed all races the opportunity to join the cause and fight for justice, but was also a social media phenomenon that prompted people to protest merely to appear progressive. Do the Right Thing generates interracial dialogues that initiate the process of recognizing a mutual understanding, but it also spawns internal questions regarding personal convictions. Analyzing the characters on-screen and understanding their perspectives on race relations forces audiences to identify with specific characters and their qualities.
Characters like Sal make non-African-Americans question their prejudices and misconceptions, even if they are subconscious. Audiences question whether they are true allies for equality, or if there is a measure of personal gain that is leading them to join in the protest.
For many, these protests were quite literally a matter of life and death. However, among them were countless people posting selfies amid the crowds, using these monumental moments merely as an opportunity to exploit the cause. As we’ve seen historically in the film industry, pandering to underrepresented audiences for superficial gain is nothing new. In many ways, the history of Tracanna 27 the film industry is a direct indication of American history at large. While steps have been taken toward equality and reparations of injustices, history continues to repeat itself. Just as the characters move still through time in Spike Lee’s signature dolly shot, the world continues to progress with little change, and not nearly enough empowerment of underrepresented voices.
Tracanna 28
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