A Closer Look at Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing

The opening words spoken in Spike Lee's 1989 film, Do The Right Thing, are given to a local radio DJ in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. Mister Señor Love Daddy, played by Samuel L. Jackson, begins his job as the somewhat isolated narrator to the story by shouting through the microphone at his listeners, telling them to "Wake up!" It's through him that we learn it's one of the hottest days of the year and this sets up one of the film's main ideas about how tensions can more easily rise in unbearable weather.

Appropriately enough, Do The Right Thing's first scripted words were also the last words spoken in Lee's previous film, School Daze. While the latter tackled prejudices and tensions within an all-black college, the former expands on a similar idea and more tightly scrutinizes the internal hate of its narrow-minded characters. The theme of both films is clear, however - it's time that the world truly considers their conscious and unconscious hateful attitudes and question how these dangerous ideas formed inside their minds.

Do The Right Thing's narrative is vital to the impact of its conclusion. As the film opens, we're introduced to a wide array of everyday characters, all of whom are immediately interesting and unique. The first part of the film is easy to swallow and we quickly become attached to all the characters. It's through this quiet, alluring introduction that sets up the series of events leading to a shattering ending. The film seems to be structured on a crescendo, constantly building up to a larger theme but the audience is unaware until the film's dead serious and frightening climax.

At its heart, the story is largely a character study, presenting the audience with characters that all have flaws and are all imperfect. The film becomes three dimensional and realistic because no major character is portrayed as completely a hero or completely evil. The viewers are given a large puzzle where they must sort out each character's intentions and interpret the events accordingly.

Mookie, one of two main protagonists and played by Spike Lee himself, is a pizza delivery boy at Sal's Famous Pizzeria, a white-Italian owned restaurant in a predominantly black neighborhood. It's through Mookie that we come to identify most of the characters and events in the story. He is portrayed as stern-faced and difficult to read, which raises questions about the reasons behind his actions at the film's climax. While Mookie has his flaws such as his obsession with getting paid or his habit of wandering off while on the job, he is still one of the saner characters in the story and usually seems in control of his anger.

Sal, the other main character of the story, is played by Danny Aiello. He owns Sal's Famous and employs his two sons, also important to the story, as the restaurant's workers. Sal is a strong but hot-headed individual and never backs down when his mind is made up about something and this gets him into trouble later on in the film. While one of his sons is blatantly racist against the blacks in the neighborhood, Sal keeps his prejudices at bay for the most part and takes on a father-like appreciation of the people in the neighborhood because he's "watched them grow up" on his pizza. Sal is no saint however, and one gets the impression that he's always used aggression and yelling to get things done around the pizza shop.

Sal's sons act as polar opposites and demonstrate two different sides of the issue of racism. The son played by John Turturro explains that his friends mock him for having to serve "niggers" and he holds a deep hatred and fear of the blacks in the neighborhood. In a revealing scene where Mookie confronts Turturro's character about his idols, he has to explain that they may all be black but they're not niggers because they're different. The other son played by Stranger Than Paradise's Richard Edson, is tolerant of differences in race and befriends Mookie. The opposing viewpoints of Sal's sons lead to a heated scene in a supply closet where the two fight, verbally and physically, about Edson's character trusting Mookie more than his own brother.

Painting the collage of characters even further, Lee creates two older adult characters who seem to possess wisdom of old age. Da Mayor, played by Ossie Davis, is mocked for being the town drunk and is shown at first as a more one-dimensional character. However, like most of the characters, we delve deeper into their lives when they're confronted with heated situations. Trying to defend himself in front of a group of kids, Da Mayor tells a story about his harrowing past. It's true he may use his past to justify present-day errors, but the story and Da Mayor himself is shown disrespect by the group and he gazes away, avoiding eye contact and any further humiliation.

Ruby Dee plays Mother Sister, an old woman who sits at her window sill, observing all the events of the day. She is the object of Da Mayor's affections, at least on this day, and the banter between them becomes almost a running gag. These two characters may hold wisdom but they seem to be ignored by the busier younger crowd of people. Mookie himself seems to ignore Da Mayor's words of advice to him - the film's title - about how he should, "Do the right thing. That's it."

Do The Right Thing uses the technique of frequency to display the tiresome and repetitiveness of racism and personal prejudices. Many instances of characters lashing out at others of a different race are shown, including the treatment of the Korean grocery store owners who are mocked by many of the characters. In one of the film's most important sequences, many characters take their turn at composing intense racial slurs directly at the camera. Lee understands the importance of putting yourself in someone else's shoes and we do just that as the actors cold stares look directly at us and they voice their hatred. Through sequences like these, the audience grows extremely weary of all the prejudice and wants the characters to wake up, acknowledge their differences, and never let blind hatred into the equation.

The film's climax is the top of the structured crescendo. Through Lee's narrative, we've grown accustomed to these characters even though all of them may have severe flaws. He uses the bond we have with the characters to make the climax all more effective.

Radio Raheem throughout the film is viewed as a side character, voicing his opinion with his large boom box blasting Public Enemy's Fight The Power on and endless loop. The final half hour brings Radio Raheem to Sal's Pizzeria where he refuses to turn off his blaring music. He's become attached to the idea that his music is who he is and silencing it would be surrendering his personality and all that he stands for. Sal, who doesn't quite understand the concept of Radio Raheem, is quickly angered and over-reacts by smashing his boom box with a baseball bat. At this point in the scene, the pizzeria becomes dead silent and we as the audience fear for the inevitable events to come.

Sal is grabbed by Radio Raheem and thrown over the counter and out of the front door of his restaurant, while being choked all the way. Sal's violent indulgence led to more violence instead of solving the problem. The police inevitably get involved and a police brutality occurs once a racist cop has Radio Raheem in a choke hold.

Enraged by the loss of an important member of the community, the people of the neighborhood gather outside of the pizzeria where a shaken Sal and his two sons stand outside. Everyone in the mob has a look of bloodlust in their eyes. Perhaps Mookie understands this and that's why he throws a trash can threw the window of the pizzeria, directing the focus point of anger toward property instead of human lives. On the other hand, mob actions like these can lead to a deeper hatred of a race, as represented by John Turturro's character staring at the pizzeria in flames and saying his last line. Instead of having an expression of surprise, he has an expression of grim knowledge as if this is what he'd expect from them all along. He mutters the word "niggers" yet again and we can feel the endless loop of racism kicking into gear again.

The conclusion of the film is open to many interpretations and it's hard to place a correct assumption. Did anyone really do the right thing? It seems as though the only sure thing about the climax is that hatred and violence leads to hatred and violence which leads to more hatred and violence. It's a vicious cycle that Lee is deeply concerned about with this film.

At Do The Right Thing's proper closing, we're confronted with two opposing quotes by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. The film demands our attention to wake up and discuss what truly could be the right thing.