...Introduction Who is Spike Lee aka Shelton Jackson Lee ? A better question would be, “Who isn’t Spike Lee ? A producer, a writer, an actor and most notably, a director. Spike Lee in his time created many provocative and controversial films over the years that jump directly into tendentious subjects like race relations, political issues and urban crime and violence. Some prime exams of his visions at work are films like 'She's Gotta Have It' and 'Do the Right Thing.’ Personal Life Spike Lee was born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20th 1957 in Atlanta, Georgia. Soon after his family moved to Brooklyn New York in a financially well off black neighborhood. Around the age of 19-20 was when Spike Lee decided he was going to begin making amateur films....
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...In Do The Right Thing, Lee utilizes close-up shots and low angle to emphasize his actor’s facial expressions and emotions. Do The Right Thing is a movie based on what a day in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn consists of. A pizzeria that is owned by an Italian man, whose name is Salvatore known as Sal, is located in this black neighborhood. Pino, who is one of Sal’s two sons, does not want the pizzeria to be located in this black community. Instead he would prefer for the pizzeria to be located in a community that consist of people of their own kind. However, Sal feels like that pizzeria is part of the black community. Sal has plenty of respect for the people in that neighborhood, however when one of the actors known as Buggin Out, is purchasing...
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...Jessica Ibarra Professor Michael A. Behrens CINE 102 2 December 2013 Fight the Power Do the Right Thing directed by Spike Lee is a film centered on a series of subplots rather than one main plot. The characters each have their own narrative and helps give the movie substance. Although the conflict did not reveal itself until the movie nears the end, the personalities of the characters became evident through their use of language and body language. The attitudes of the characters became clear, as well as their actions which became almost predictable; what was not predictable was the sudden change of energy during the inciting incidence. When the riot occurs, we wonder how it built up to that particular scene. The characters and their background stories give rise to this ultimate turn of events. Though the characters’ random scenes were jumbled together throughout the whole movie, they were unified in the end when all the characters were involved during the inciting incidence—when the police officer killed Radio Raheem. With the death of Radio Raheem and an increasing rise to racial injustice, Spike Lee demonstrates a symbolic truth between polar opposites and its limitations to tolerance. In an article titled “Do the Right Thing” written by Hal Hinson, he argues, “Lee is attempting to explore the polarities of the inner city…by setting up a system of opposites -- black and white, love and hate, conciliation and violence, man and woman -- then sets them against each other...
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...Rushing ARTS/100 December 10, 2012 Brenda Durden Do the Right Thing was produced and directed in 1989 by Spike Lee (The IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, 2012). Spike Lee is known for creating controversy with his movies. Lee was a pioneer of capturing and bringing attention to societal issues. Lee’s primary focus for many of his movies is to address racial stigmas, stereotypes, and issues between races. Consequently, Do the Right Thing is debatable for its portrayal of the racial tensions in Brooklyn, New York (Smith, Turner Classic Movies Film Articles, 2012). The major themes Lee tries to convey through this film are the day-to-day lifestyles of people in Brooklyn, a community struggling without leadership, and the ethnic tensions within the community. Lee effectively relays these themes to the audience through realism by depicting the period, showing the lack of leadership and community togetherness through a host of scenarios, which leads to the destruction of the neighborhood pizza shop that had been a part of community for technically three decades. Lee also mastered the art of demonstrating the lifestyles and attitudes of the community through music specific the era and the ethnic upbringing, by using prompts that give the illusion of how hot the temperatures were, which lends itself to the mounting tension among racial divide. An overview of the film or performance Do the Right Thing is a movie that takes place in 1989, in a Brooklyn neighborhood...
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...interpret the civil rights movement in a different, more direct way, far removed from the "I Have a Dream" Idealism of the 1960s. This movement was pioneered by Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing, and the civil rights themed song Fight the Power composed by Public Enemy. In the Fight the Power music video, which was also directed by Spike Lee, Chuck D denounces the marches and speeches of the 60s and calls for more radical action, promising that "the young black America... ain't goin' out like that '63 nonsense." The clip documents a large rally in Brooklyn’s, Bed-Stuy against the racially motivated violence that had plagued the city. This landmark song and video are widely considered hip-hop greatest, and helped to mobilize a new youth culture with a civil rights movement of their own. The song became more than just a feature in a movie. Fight the Power means something big, refusing to let racism keep Black African Americans down. Furthermore, it's about not just talking the talk, but also walking the walk (Shmoop). In our dissertation, we will concentrate on why Spike Lee wanted to write Do the Right Thing and the message he wanted to send to America. Then, we’ll move into Public Enemy rising as civil rights leaders for black youth and their aggressive approach for equality along with their composition of Fight the Power. We’ll then shift into text and the meaning behind the lyrics of Fight the Power. In addition, we’ll also focus on the civil rights movement that followed...
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...Do The Right Thing by Spike Lee carries such a prodigiously factual, present-day social aspects that continue to affect our society. It’s brilliant and boundlessly re-watchable -- it’s not at all a straightforward ethics play like so many films on race. People act as badly to one another in the film as in real life, and the film shows that racial conflict head on, in all its ugliness. The film’s proceedings and sweltering temperature reflect the race-and-class-inflected anger that saturated late-1980s New York City, manifesting in episodes such as the Howard Beach and Central Park Jogger incidents and the Tawana Brawley case. Do the Right Thing invokes Brawley via a graffito that proclaims, “Tawana told the truth!” rioters chant the words “Howard Beach” during the climax. The understanding that the film captured the city’s polarized atmosphere was immediate. One stimulating point I noticed is when we see Mookie (Spike Lee) counting his money, this is actually one of the happiest times of him that we see. This comes up time and time again, when he is working, he insists that Sal pays him his money early, because...
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...AJ Woytko Reaction Paper #1 2/27/15 Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” In director and actor Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing,” presents his views on race relations in the 80s in the US. This film portrays the discrimination of African Americans in the United States and shows the many racial altercations that took place during this time period and even still to this day. The concept of the movie I liked; however, I did not like how it was executed. I thought that the acting was fairly poor but I did like how he would center in on one person and get their takes on things throughout the movie. One big thing that stood out to me that I thought was rather ironic was the intense fight scene towards the end of the movie. I thought that was pretty ironic due to the fact that another African American man was choked to death by a white cop in New York City just a few months ago. After watching a few of the Hitchcock movies thus far, I can see huge difference in the making of movies through different time periods. In my opinion, I thought that each of the Hitchcock films were far better directed and acted than that of Spike Lee’s Do The Right Think. I felt that Alfred Hitchcock brought the films more to life and made the scenes stand out than what Spike Lee has. I mean I liked where he was going with the film by digging into a touchy subject like racial altercations in the way that he did during that time period but I just was not a fan of the movie. I was almost falling asleep...
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...Aundre Thompson Andrea Corneil Media 103 December 10, 2013 Do the Right Thing Reaction Paper "Do the Right Thing" is the 1989 film, directed, written, produced by and starring none other than the very talented, Spike Lee. It also stars an assorted cast of very talented actors that includes the likes of Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, and John Turturro. New York City, New York is where the film is set, in the Brooklyn area in a neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. The film tells the story of a wild Brooklyn day on one of the hottest days of the summer. In the movie we are introduced to our protagonist, a young black man who goes by the name of “Mookie.” Mookie is an interesting character, not possessing many qualities that you would come to expect of the protagonist in a film. One of his strongest qualities is his love and protectiveness as a brother to his older sister whom he lives with. Mookie also wants to provide for his girlfriend and his son, but ultimately lacks the ambition to better his situation. He works as a delivery man at the neighborhood Italian owned pizzeria, “Sal’s Famous Pizzeria,” which is a very out of place establishment amidst the predominantly black Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. But Sal, the pizza parlor’s owner doesn’t plan on changing his location any time soon. Sal’s sons also work with him at the pizzeria. Sal's oldest son, Pino, is a very racist and bigoted. He’s disgusted by having to work...
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...Do the Right Thing Spike Lee’s featured film Do the Right Thing which he directed, produced, and started as a main character was a game changer for it’s time. Released in 1989, the film shows the culture of New York’s racially diverse, lower class community in Brooklyn. It brings to the surface how these comminutes were profiled and how they experienced radical injustice. This movie take place like every other day but it happens to be the hottest day of the summer. Lee does a perfect job explaining through a motion picture what times were like for the monitories in the big city and all over America. This movie doesn’t only make sense back then, but it still shows its true colors in modern times as well. The setting of this movie starts out...
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...the Bullet," Malcolm X said "Those big Negros didn’t need big jobs, they already had jobs." Walter, in A Raisin in the Sun by Diana Mitchell, is tired of working for the same white people, he wants a change . Malcolm has trouble finding his true self. Both men must take on obstacles and do things that are very unlikely. Malcolm grew up a thief. Malcolm would steal from his neighbors. In the movie Malcolm X directed by Spike Lee, Malcolm steals because his father was murdered and his mother struggles financially with all the kids. He thinks stealing makes will make supporting them easier. However, Malcolm gets caught stealing. Eventually all of Malcolm's siblings are separated. Spike Lee shows Malcolm in the movie getting...
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...Demetria Brown COM 2010: Intro to Film Term Paper Assignment Spike Lee’s: “Do the Right Thing” Film Analysis: Do the Right Thing Spike Lee's 1989 film, Do the Right Thing is able to effectively explore the problem of racial conflict in America by skillfully 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 analyzing 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 class Americans. The narrative style in this double scene sequence encapsulates the major oppositions at work in the film, which is racial acceptance and alienation. This can be seen in the juxtaposition of two scenes that show Radio Raheem's acceptance of his Black friend Mookie and his rejection and disdain of the White Italian pizzeria owners. The story is told within the course of one day and scenes follow each other sequentially. This particular sequence begins with Mookie treading over the young girl's drawing of a harmonious scene with the sun shining and people smiling, implying to the viewer...
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...Breonna C. Close Reading Jared Gardner English 2263: Intro to Film 11 October 2013 What They Really Think About Race In Spike Lee’s film, Do the Right Thing racist stereotypes are a recurring theme throughout the entire film. The slurs are used explicitly in one of the most interesting scenes of the entire film. The three minute and thirty-four second scene shows six different characters breaking the fourth-wall between the audience and each character. The camera angles in the scene also show that the characters know that they are addressing an audience for the purpose of expressing their views on the race they are criticizing. Looking directly into the camera is usually a sin for actors to do. However, each character looks directly into the camera, acknowledging that they know it is there, and citing their rant without looking away. The affect this has makes it seem as though that character is speaking to a person directly. While this scene stands out the most for its obvious use of racist stereotypes, it is only a platform for the entire films views on racism. The scene starts with an intense conversation between Mookie and Pino. The topic of their discussion is race. Mookie questions Pino on why he constantly refers to African American people as ‘niggas’. Pino acts like he despises black people, however Mookie brings up a great point about all of his favorite celebrities, are niggas. Magic Johnson, Eddie Murphy, and Prince are all BLACK celebrities, that Pino is a...
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...The first time we saw each other after seeing Spike Lee's movie Do the Right Thing, my sister and I had a fight over lunch. It was one of those things you do with a lover, or sometimes with a close friend about politics, where the terms you disagree on are too buried to perceive or even to guess, at the time, that they're there. You can be agreeing about all the superficial details and about the largest of generalizations all along--my sister and I both found the film powerfully moving--and still wind up fighting about ... something--one of those disagreements that leave you dissatisfied and unexplainably angry. Her arguments weren't unfamiliar. I had run into very similar concerns, interpretations, and vocabulary in some of the mainstream criticism on the film. But it was only after stewing about our lunch for a couple of days that I began to figure out how completely at odds with the movie I saw was the one she--and those critics--had seen. The more I thought about it, the more I could see that these were no idiosyncratic subjective responses. Rather, our differences were bound up with Spike Lee's mix of styles of representation, which my sister and I responded to selectively and from very different perspectives. While Lee's representation of the Italians was moving and meaningful to her, she could find nothing in his portrayal of the black community that would provide for the same feelings. For, I came to see, while Lee uses to elaborate his white characters methods and narrative...
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...After watching Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do The Right Thing, it is very clear to me why this film is considered an independent film. By using Michael Z. Newman’s article Indie Cinema Viewing Strategies it was easy to break up the film into three slogans: characters as emblems, form as game, and read as anti-Hollywood. Do The Right Thing uses a mixture of these three slogans through character, narrative structure, and theme to open our eyes to racism and violence and let us decide what really is doing the right thing. Although this film was distributed by a major Hollywood studio, it still keeps within the styles and techniques of independent cinema. Beginning with the characters in Do The Right Thing, each character is interesting and contributes to the narrative structure of the film. When discussing characters as...
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...Do the Right Thing Summary Emily Bings Sociology November 16, 2015 In the eye-opening 1989 film Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee was able to create a captivating story of racial tension and discrimination. Starring as Mookie in his award-winning movie, Lee portrays a pizza delivery man trying to support his girlfriend and son. The pizzeria has been run for twenty-five years by an Italian-American named Sal, who has an older son named Pino who is incredibly racist towards African Americans. Pino and his brother Vito are suffering a rocky relationship due to Vito’s friendly demeanor towards Mookie, which Pino practically views as a crime. These separate racial groups set the discriminatory tone for Lee’s disturbing yet inspiring hit film. This intense drama captured racism in urban America using simple characters that were able to portray a huge amount of meaning and values. Tensions begin to rise on a hot summer day between Buggin’ out, Mookie’s close friend, and Sal at his pizzeria. Buggin’ Out takes it upon himself to directly ask Sal about the lack of black celebrities on his “Wall of Fame,” to which Sal states that he does not need to feature anyone who is not Italian in his restaurant. After Buggin’ Out’s unsuccessful protest against the wall with Radio Raheem and Smiley, tension is left thick and raw between the two racial groups. Radio Raheem and Smiley, although not the stars of the film, seem to hold pretty large significance just by their character identities alone...
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