Rights and Wrongs: A 'Do The Right Thing' Analysis
By Taylor Linn
Collage by Primcess
Let me paint a picture on a film screen for you. It is the hottest day of summer in Bed-Stuy, a Brooklyn neighborhood lined with four-story beige and brown walk-ups. Neighbors sit peacefully on their sidewalks under umbrellas, fanning themselves, in the heat. Children play in the fire hydrant to ward off the heat. As the sun sets on this dreadfully hot day, a verbal altercation begins between Radio Raheem, a young Black neighbor, and Sal, the white owner of the local pizza joint. Within minutes, a violent fight ensues with the entire neighborhood taking part. When white police officers arrive, they apprehend only Radio Raheem, choking him with their baton until he has taken his final breath.
This is the story told by Spike Lee in 1989’s Do The Right Thing. However the brutal murder by police and the ensuing mayhem amid protesting and rioting is not limited to Lee’s cinematic imagery of Bed-Stuy on a hot summer day. It is embedded in our American history. It is Michael Griffith’s murder by a white mob in New York City in 1986. It is Rodney King’s death and the Los Angeles riots of 1992 televised on national television. It is George Floyd’s death and the national peaceful protests spreading across every social media platform in 2020.
Amid the current state of events in the US, Spike Lee has released a short film entitled “Three Brothers,” featuring Radio Raheem’s death alongside footage of the murders of Eric Garner and George Floyd. One cannot unsee the brutal similarities. The wrongful death of an innocent black man or woman is not a picture painted on the film screen for our entertainment. It is an ever-present threat to the black community.
After Radio Raheem’s murder at the hands of police, Mookie (played by Spike Lee himself) aids in inciting a riot by throwing a trash can through the window of Sal’s pizza shop. The restaurant is destroyed, with the crowd setting it ablaze and watching it go up in flames. Firemen and riot police arrive to break up the scene and make arrests. Just like that, a normal summer day resulted in a neighborhood divided by race, through a series of chain reactions.
As a general rule, we as a society agree that murder is wrong, violence is wrong, brutality is wrong, property damage is wrong. All of these are to be punished by the law. Do we still believe that holds true when something generally deemed “wrong” must occur in response to something else inherently “wrong?” With this film, Spike Lee has us leaving the movie theater asking ourselves, “who did the right thing?”
In this last month the country has joined together to protest, lest we accept systemic racism and police brutality as our new normal. As Trevor Noah stated, “there is never a right way to protest, because that’s what protest is, it cannot be right because you are protesting against a thing that is stopping you.”