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Do The Right Thing Analysis

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Who did the right thing?
“Do the right thing” is a 1989 movie written and directed by Spike Lee. The focus of the movie is Sal’s famous pizzeria which is owned by an Italian man named Sal along with his two sons- Pino and Vito- and his employee Mookie. The movie depicts what racial tension between whites and blacks looks like in a black dominated neighborhood. It comprises different characters with the rush to do the right thing. In this essay, I will deeply delve into 4 characters from the movie: Sal, Da Mayor, Tina and Radio Raheem, and discuss whether their action was the right thing to do or not. For each character, I will provide analysis of a situation and their response to it. I will use an illustration from the movie to bring a specific …show more content…

In the movie, he is portrayed as a person who respects his place and a typical businessman who prioritizes getting money above anything. He has a “wall of fame” in which he hanged pictures of white Italians. Sal doesn’t show bad feelings towards the blacks openly, as they are his number one customers. He exhibited a fair behavior despite Mookie showing bad work ethics, such as taking so long to deliver a pizza. In his conversation with Pino, Sal said that he has never had trouble with the people but rather he is happy that they grew up on his food which makes him proud and hence, he prefers to stay there as it is the best place for him to get money. However, Sal gets into a disagreement with Buggin’ Out, who wants him to have some pictures of black people on the wall as it is a black neighborhood, for refusing to do so. From Sal’s perspective, refusing this is the right thing to do, because it is his own place and he has the right to do anything with his own space. I don’t think Sal is showing his racist behavior by refusing it, but rather he is celebrating his own values as he hanged pictures of Italians specifically; not whites or blacks but only Italians. Nonetheless, Sal calls Buggin’ Out the “N-word” towards the end of the movie when their fight gets heated up, which is not the right thing to do. This shows …show more content…

Radio Raheem is a young black aggressive man with a boombox who rambles the street playing public enemy’s “Fight the Power”. He is portrayed as a very impolite person who tends to get into trouble wherever he goes. This is exemplified when he visits a supermarket to buy a battery where he yells and curses at the Korean shop owners and makes fun of them for not speaking fluent English. Furthermore, he always plays “Fight the Power” loud on the street and refuses to shut it off when people ask him to do so. The most remarkable incident is where he comes with buggin’ out with his radio playing loud and shouts at Sal to hang black pictures on the wall. I think what he did here is not the right thing. He came after the shop was closed, played the song really loud and refused to shut it off when Sal told him to. One can’t force a person to do things that they don’t want in their own shop. If Radio Raheem wants black pictures he should ask him more politely, instead of initiating a fight. This incident is what resulted in his death, which is not Sal’s fault but the cops’ fault for killing him; if not for the cops, Sal might have died instead. Disturbing a shop after it is closed, for something we don’t have any right over it is definitely not the right thing to

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In the film Do The Right Thing by Spike Lee, Sal, an Italian pizzeria owner is seen to fall under the category of being a sympathetic racist as defined by Dan Flory as being “characters with whom mainstream audiences readily ally themselves but who embrace racist beliefs and commit racist acts”(68). Sal is a likable character in the film from the beginning, yet he commits subtle and blatant acts of racism in the film that would be considered to be abhorrent and highly disrespectful, yet the audience feels a sense of sympathy for him. On the other hand, in the film Gran Torino the character of Walt Kowalski is man who lives in constant feeling of disdain and flagrantly uses unabashed racial slurs throughout the film. Viewers of Gran Torino are at odds with Walt, along with trying to feel sympathy or empathy for him in regards to the viewer's own viewpoints of race and watching hostile attributions Walt shows to everyone in the

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Title Sequence Analysis: Do The Right Thing Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing starts off right out of the gate with a soft and soothing saxophone playing in the background on a black screen. This delicate instrument only plays for merely half a minute then as the screen begins to open from the blackness viewers are pumped up by Public Enemy’s top hit, “Fight The Power.” This energetic song blares through the neighborhood of a Brooklyn, NY street with various silhouette poses from Rosie Perez flashing simultaneously.

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If you ever want to start a debate on racial issues, just screen Spike Lee’s ‘Do The Right’ to a group of people. Right from the title of the movie the controversial messages start to bring out what someone really thinks on racial injustice. The movie shows racial tensions between groups in a neighborhood. Present in the film are the Italian pizza shop owners that have selectively opened their business in a black neighborhood, while having a racist son. There is the black protester who boycotts their business since the owners do not have any black legend’s placed up on their wall of fame.

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could he possibly cause harm to with that. This also shows that no matter what you do, you are a always considered threat. This boy was simply walking back home and got killed for just being black. Situations like this will make you open your eyes and see that both “Whistling Vivaldi” and “Black Men and Public Space” depicts what happens in and to our race every

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