Spike Lee Do The Right Thing

Even though there has been a substantial progress in establishing racial democracy and social tolerance towards cultural diversity, race still remains a debatable topic to discuss in the United States today. Therefore, the depiction of race through cinematic lens can be a quite challenging process as well as a complex task for a film director. Spike Lee, a successful independent filmmaker has managed throughout his career to address the difficult sociopolitical issue of race in the American screen, by exposing the audience to the harsh social reality. In the contemporary post-racial American society, race has rather become a “fashionable” topic to discuss on TV media and film “as a more genuine proof” (Dirks and Mueller 124) that society has progressed. In fact, adopting a color-blind approach or a “silent mode” when referring to race has become a common element of contemporary diverse societies, which is a convenient way of not confronting with the “uncomfortable” situation of racism and denying its existence. Spike Lee aims to highlight the specific aspect of society through his movies that racism is still present in the

By playing the race card with disgrace, Spike Lee depicts the relations of American multicultural/multiethnic communities with a sense of empathy and sympathy, by reflecting his personal experience growing up in a multiracial neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Furthermore, two years later in Jungle Fever, Lee addresses the theme of miscegenation and the politics of interracial relationships. Additionally, in Bamboozled, Lee stresses that even in the new millennium the influence of blackface minstrelsy has shaped and has reinforced to a great extent prejudice about African Americans that are still visible in the contemporary American popular