Article about how when Do The Right Thing came out, Spike Lee was branded as another angry black man and in reviewing the movie, white people almost invariably were upset over the destruction of Sal's pizza place while seemingly ignoring the police-brutality involved in Radio Rahim's choking death. Rorschach, indeed:
Recalling reactions to the film's violent climax, Lee would later remark, "If in a review, a critic discussed how Sal's Famous was burned down but didn't mention anything about Radio Raheem getting killed, it was pretty obvious that he or she valued white-owned property more than the life of this young black hoodlum." The frankness of Lee's rhetoric and the film's content led the mainstream media to label him an angry, confrontational filmmaker. In her 1989 Time review of Do the Right Thing, titled "He's Got to Have It His Way," Jeanne McDowell observed, "Looking for racism at every turn, [Lee] finds it." An August 1990 cover of US asked, "Spike Lee: Why Is He So Angry?" And in a classic example of ironic racism, an October 1992 Esquire headline declared: "Spike Lee Hates Your Cracker Ass."The nation decided to ask for some reactions to the 20th anniversary and I found these two particularly interesting:
Two decades and considerable mainstream success have done little to change the portrayal of the director and his films. In a New Yorker profile of Lee published last year, writer John Colapinto describes--and thereby confirms--Lee's reputation as that of "a filmmaker obsessed with race." For Lee the consistency with which his films' messages regarding race are overshadowed by fear and paranoia is frustrating to say the least. He recently observed, "White people still ask me why Mookie threw the can through the window. No black person ever, in twenty years, no person of color has ever asked me why."
it's interesting how a lot of white people were quick to say that we were now in a post racial America after Obama's win (despite what we saw at McCain/Palin rallies). That was put to rest after the racism at the tea parties, the racism with Sotomayor (even before she was nominated!!), the racism at the healthcare town halls, and the absolute backlash against Obama with the Skip Gates stuff - and that was only in the past year! Eric Holder was right.
Jared A. Ball
Morgan State University
Do the Right Thing still relevant? Well, none of Spike's characters likely still live on that block. "Larry Bird" hasn't just stepped on Buggin' Out's new Jordans. He has taken the entire neighborhood. The same killer cops patrol the newly displaced in their now-suburban colonies in precisely the same manner, mildly harassing Harvard professor "Mookies" while killing the everyday Oscar and Sean Raheems. Today, Mookie still bends to pick up the scraps thrown to the ground by his white benefactors; but Love-Daddy can no longer tell us "the truth, Ruth" because he is syndicated by Sal's nobles, assuring that that either a Hot 97 or a hot 50 kills Radios everywhere, in vestibules, cars or while awaiting trains. And worst of all, throughout black America radical change is simply individual, disorganized, stammering signifiers of defeat. Relevant? It is so relevant that nothing of its kind will again grace a mainstream screen.
Ed Guerrero
New York University
Regarding the chemistry of the cinematic and the social, the most interesting "thing" about Do the Right Thing is both how little and (perhaps) how much "things" have changed since '89. As I have argued elsewhere, the "new black film wave" started to plateau at the end of the '90s with about twenty or so black-focused or -directed features of varied scale and quality released yearly by the mainstream film industry. Here, nothing has really changed. Accordingly, Do the Right Thing's social themes--police profiling and brutality; urban, ethnic conflict; the crisis in black families and relationships--all endure, if they haven't intensified. Conversely, the "Age of Obama" suggests some remedy to these issues. Yet the rhetorical jujitsu of "race" continues. Note some senators accusing Judge Sotomayor of "racism" during her confirmation hearings, or the "Skip Gates police affair" blowing up and sustained in the national media. Tellingly, we now need many more filmmakers with the cultural, aesthetic creativity and social focus of Spike Lee, as evinced in Do the Right Thing.
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