The movie “Do the Right Thing” starts with the loudness of “Fight the Power”. When we are still immersed in the rhythm and lyrics of the song, and before we even realize, Spike Lee has already taken us into a tiny block in an ordinary Brooklyn neighborhood, into a horrifying miniature of the noisy American race conversation, into a battle between love and hate.
This block might be tiny, but it is not simple because of the people who live here. There is Mr. Senor Love Daddy, the local DJ and troubadour; there is the block’s old couple, Da Mayor and Mother Sister, who can never stop arguing with each other; there is Smiley, the mentally disabled guy who sells pictures of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, who always gets shoved around by everybody;
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long-term residents. From my point of view and understanding of the film, I think that Lee does a good job in depicting the relationship dynamics through race/ethnicity, social strata, age, gender, and immigrant status. However, the depiction of police authority could have been better, or in other words, it could have been expressed in a way that is more understandable for the audiences. As I recall, there is a scene in the film that depicts the three men sitting at the street corner while the police drive by and comment at them “what a waste”. From this detail we can see the division between the police and the powerless inhabitants due to power and authority, which eventually leads to the final boil. Details like this seem to make sense when it is on its own, but what does not make sense to me is the overall purpose that Lee wishes to accomplish while depicting the police officers. If Lee’s purpose of portraying the police is just to criticize police brutality and black oppression in the way that they often treat Blacks with extreme means, then why Lee plants the scene in which the black kids soak the white man’s antique car but don’t get in trouble. Even though Spike Lee chooses a generally implicit style while shooting this film, the depiction of the police authority seems to be one of the aspects of the film that is too implicit to understand, at least for general
In Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing and Michael Shultz’s Krush Grove, the various sights and sounds that are present from the beginnings of the movies are used as tools to portray the different African American experiences that are present in both films. In the opening credits of Do The Right Thing, Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” can be heard while a women dances. In this case, the imagery and music are used as tools to help establish a setting that the movie takes place in. The sights and sounds in the opening credits help transport the viewer to the streets of Brooklyn in the late 1980’s, where the majority of Do The Right Thing takes place. Similar techniques of creating a setting using sights and sounds are used throughout Krush Grove.
Spike Lee’s film, Do the Right Thing takes place in a neighborhood in Brooklyn on a hot summer Saturday. It opens on the local radio disc jockey starting his morning show and announcing that the day’s weather will be extremely hot. The scene then goes to a disabled man named Smiley trying to tell anyone walking by about why Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are still important and why racism still needs to be fought, which becomes important later in the movie. The scene cuts to the main character, Mookie, waking his sister up before he leaves for work.
In Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing, we dive head first into a world of racial and social ills. The movie is set in the African American and Puerto Rican neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, on the hottest day of the year. We follow a young man named Mookie, who lives with his sister Jade, and works as a pizza delivery guy for a local pizzeria owed by Sal. Sal’s “Wall of Fame” is soon questioned by a man named Buggin’ Out, who believes that Sal should place some pictures of African American celebrities on his wall to represent the African American society he serves. Sal refuses and Buggn’ Out attempts to
For my shot analysis I chose a shot from the Spike Lee Movie Do the Right Thing. This is the second shot following the climactic riot scene. It features Da’ Mayor and Mother Sister reacting to the hellacious events of the previous night. The block was just devastated by a melee that broke out because the police killed Radio Raheem after he and Sal got in an altercation that was triggered by the volume of Radio Raheem’s boom box. Though at a very superficial level the fight was about the loud stereo, the real significance of the fight had more to do with the culmination of anger and tension between the characters of the film caused by prejudice and ignorance. This paper will analyze
In Spike Lee 's Do the Right Thing, the story takes places in 1989, another year in the long struggle for equality for African-Americans. The film portrays the racial tensions between locals of the neighborhood and an Italian-American family in the majority Black and Hispanic neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy) in Brooklyn, New York. Spike Lee shows us what a day in the life of the Brooklyn neighborhood consists of and throughout the movie he portrays several different aspects of a modern urban neighborhood, using the many unique personalities of the characters in the movie.
The movie I chose to do my scene analysis on is Do the Right Thing. The scene I chose in the movie is the scene of the 20 “D” Batteries. The scene of the 20 “D” Batteries reflects the movie and the scene because it betrays the ethnic and racial tensions between each race and the cross-cultural communication between them. Throughout the movie the filmmaker Spike Lee uses wide variety of angles but in this scene he uses high angle and low angle. The character Radio Raheem is walking down the sidewalk listening to “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy on his Boom box, the director Spike Lee uses a low angle to make Radio Raheem seem as if he is powerful. In contrast when Radio Raheem walks into the store we see the little Asian boy
Spike Lee's 1989 film Do the Right Thing is able to effectively explore the problem of racial conflict in America by skilfully manipulating cinematic devices such as staging, narrative, cinematography, editing and sound. The concentration and emphasis on characters' certain physical attributes with the use of photography and camera framing, the fast pace editing style and manipulation of sound all contribute to film's overall meaning. In analysing the short sequence beginning with a small girl drawing a chalk painting on the road and ending with Sal, the local pizzeria owner, making Radio Raheem, "a hulking misunderstood home-boy" , two slices of pizza, these devices are seen to illustrate the hostility between Black and Italian working
At the beginning of the film, we are introduced to a wide variety of characters. Mayor, an older gentleman with a drinking problem, portrays neutrality in the film that is in sharp contrast to the racism and discrimination that is harbored in most of the cast. Throughout the story, Lee has a way of making this hatred between characters seem ridiculous to the point where it becomes humorous. Perhaps as a way to make the audience look at hate as a joke, and to see it that way in their own lives. However, slowly we begin to see that the hate towards others is stemming from frustrations within their own lives, and is taken out on others in increasingly more harmful ways. In the end, we see this escalating hate lead to violence and in turn to destruction for everybody.
Director and actor Spike Lee presents his "truth" about race relations in his movie Do the Right Thing. The film exhibits the spectacle of black discrimination and racial altercations. Through serious, angry, and loud sounds, Lee stays true to the ethnicity of his characters, all of which reflect their own individualism. Lee uses insulting diction and intense scenes to show how severe racism can lead to violence. The biases reflected through Do the Right Thing model those of today which has kept society in a constant feud for so long. In Oprah Winfrey's dynamic episode, "The Color of Fear", Mr. Mun Wah projects his strong opinion when he states, " . . . that racism is still going on today, that we've got to stop to hear the anguish
Spike Lee’s film ‘Do The Right Thing’ displays the spectacle of black discrimination and racial altercations in the 80’s in Brooklyn, NY. After watching the film, I noticed W.E.B. DuBois’ concept of double consciousness being displayed through the film’s main character Mookie. Mookie handles the terms of his relationship with himself, his boss Sal and his sons, and the neighbors within the community. This reflects the way people of color have always been able to balance the notion of the ‘color line.’ This term originated by W.E.B. DuBois was a way to show the struggles of Black Americans to see themselves outside of the normative of value that is put out on white dominant culture. Based on DuBois’ double consciousness he also speaks about the clash of ‘twoness.’
The film has several ethnicities within a small area along a time line of one day. The film has many, informative methods in which it describe the various diversity issues of all the characters within the movie. For example, Sal’s pizzeria which is owned by an Italian American has pictures of famous Italian Americans on the wall and plays Italian music. One character named Buggin Out is always upset. Bugging out hates the fact that there are no black people pictures on the wall especially since the pizzeria is in a black neighborhood. His perspective represents the people in the African American community that always protest, but usually don’t work to improve the community. The
The film Do the Right Thing is a very relevant on issues of race. The film shows how there is tension between all races. The film shows racial tension between the communities in the hottest day of the year. The heat is a theme in the film. Heat in general gets people on edge and raises tension. The film relates to W.E.B. Dubois work “The Soul of Black Folk.” Dubois (1903) work includes the concepts of the veil and double consciousness. The African Americans in the film deal with the idea of a veil. Mookie the protagonist deals with the idea of double consciousness.
Spike Lee’s camera technique in “Do The Right Thing” enhances racial tensions between characters. uses a lot of canted frames, tracking shots, close-ups, high and low angles, parallelism, and music to achieve this. The heat wave going through Brooklyn is exemplified in many ways: on the radio, through discussion between characters, people’s dress, and actions, etc. Lee also uses cinematography to get across how hot this day really is. For example, the film begins with a montage of people in the neighborhood trying to cool off, struggling to get through their morning routines: a shot of someone taking a cold shower, cuts to a shot of someone sticking their face in ice, to someone sticking their head in the freezer, men drinking beer, someone
It is unfortunate that intolerance continues to exist in our nation (or anywhere else for that matter). Racism, one of the largest and most prevalent forms of intolerance, commonly destroys relationships and can eventually lead to violence. The existence of such hateful ideologies is so prevalent in our society that popular culture is constantly trying to challenge the ignorant basis of racial conflict. Spike Lee’s film, Do the Right Thing, connects with this concept of racial conflict that is so foreign to my past. Through the application of my social and political views, I will demonstrate how Spike Lee’s film is difficult for me to relate to and, in my opinion, conveys a misleading message.
Director and actor Spike Lee presents his "truth" about race relations in his movie Do the Right Thing. The film exhibits the spectacle of black discrimination and racial altercations. Through serious, angry, and loud sounds, Lee stays true to the ethnicity of his characters, all of which reflect their own individualism. Lee uses insulting diction and intense scenes to show how severe racism can lead to violence.