Lee has been accused of potentially inciting violence through the abovementioned scenes towards the end of the film. Mookie’s decision to act out against Sal, despite being his employee, initially seems jarring and hateful. Throughout the film, his character never displays any visible signs of anger or agitation. When Buggin’ Out first demands representation of black personalities on the pizzeria’s Wall of Frame since its customers are mostly black, Mookie pacifies him and prevents an altercation with the white owners of the eatery. Moreover, as the protagonist, the onus is on him to do what is supposedly “right”—which would be to diffuse the situation, ask the angry crowd to disperse and restore peace. Thus, given his previous mellow countenance, one does not expect him to stand up to his employer and deface his own place of work. It is, therefore, a significant choice on the filmmaker’s behalf to have such a mediating, likeable, generally passive character perform this act of violence since it serves to amplify the outrage.

Mookie’s protestation raises pertinent questions in the film. It makes one wonder whether he did the right thing, and if he did, for whom was it “right”. While the objective of this paper is not to explore morality, it is crucial that one enquires into Mookie’s unprecedented, unexpected, rebellious behaviour. One way to understand this is to focus on the events that lead to this climax. It is not sufficient to view his one act of rebellion in isolation. As W.J.T. Mitchell observes, Mookie’s motivations are unclear: “his action seems subject to multiple private determinations— anger at Sal, frustration at his dead-end job, rage at Radio Raheem’s murder” (897). In addition, Pino’s (John Turturro) constant demeaning remarks about the lazy, insincere, and sub-intelligent African-American (with respect to Da Mayor, Mookie and Smiley) may have been another plausible reason for Mookie’s action. However, while all the reasons are largely a subtextual reading, Radio Raheem’s murder clearly becomes the poignant driving factor. It is, therefore, evident that Mookie throwing the garbage can is not simply a disjunctive action, but rather a reaction to his immediate repressive circumstance.

In the film, the sequence of shots right before Mookie breaks the window of the pizzeria shows that his body language does not exhibit anger as much as it does horror and shock at the gruesome, unwarranted murder of a friend. He stands on the same side of the street that Sal and his sons do, facing allegations from the mob. Even as he exits the screen, there is an air of defeat and resignation about him rather than aggression. One is led to believe that he was choosing to leave the scenario and perhaps go home, away from the chaos. Instead, he calmly walks over to the dustbin, empties it and hurls it at the window. It is a well-thought out, calculated move, not purely impulsive. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that one reads his act in accordance with all that has preceded it and the way it has been depicted on screen. Mookie defacing Sal’s property was a way to demonstrate his condemnation of the crime of racial violence and police brutality committed against Radio Raheem, rather than a thoughtless act of violence.

Mitchell further notes that Mookie redirects the mob’s anger at Sal’s property rather than Sal and his sons. When he decides to throw the bin at the eatery, the onlookers have just witnessed Raheem’s murder and have accumulated in front of Sal’s pizzeria to accuse him. Thus, he performs this act at a moment when

the mob is wavering between attacking the pizzeria and assaulting its Italian-American owners… This choice breaks the film loose from the narrative justification of violence, its legitimation by a law of cause and effect or political justice, and displays it as a pure effect of this work of art in this moment and place. (Mitchell 897-898; italics in original)

Thus, Mookie’s action is strictly tethered to the narrative and, recalling Lee’s interview with Gavin Edwards, it would be irrational to believe that the audience witnessing it would not be able to tell the reel from the real. Lee, as a filmmaker, decides to break away from the conventional narrative choice of depicting his protagonist as a consistently peace-loving character. Instead, he decides for Mookie to be a part of the turbulence, which under different circumstances may be construed as violence, but who does “do the right thing” in this particular situation.

Given that Raheem was killed by white policemen, the onlookers were aware that the murderers would not be prosecuted. Moreover, the entire event would be covered up by the NYPD as a means to maintain its reputation, which would mean that Raheem’s death would have no real consequences. The real-life conditions of New York at the time the film is set, saw such instances of racial violence by law enforcers, one of which is alluded in the film through a graffiti saying, “Tawana told the truth” (ii). In a 1988 article published in The New York Times, authors Martha A. Miles and Richard L. Madden describe how the Tawana incident highlighted the deep distrust the black community had in the American judicial system: “the allegations touched a nerve among minorities that showed clearly that just underneath the surface there is a strong perception of unequal justice” (Miles)(iii).

In another context, while discussing the film Mississippi Burning, Judith Butler notes “[t]he film appeals to a widespread lack of faith in the law and its proceduralism… [It] shows that violence is the consequence of the law’s failure to protect its citizens” (167); this is directly applicable to Do the Right Thing as well. Radio Raheem’s violent end is not simply a portrayal of the loss of a friend for Mookie and his community, it is an instance of “ritualized practice” (Butler 157) since it alludes to the history of police brutality and hate crimes against African-Americans. Therefore, it would not be too far-fetched to argue that if not the right thing (ethically speaking), Mookie certainly did not do the wrong thing by taking matters into his own hands and trying to assert agency for his community that was consistently denied to them. The film shows that “his unlawfulness is the only efficacious way to fight racism” (Butler 167).

At this juncture, it is significant to discuss the way the film ends— with two quotes, one by Martin Luther King Jr. and the other by Macolm X. While King espouses a peaceful path to achieve racial justice and condemns the use of violence, citing it as “impractical and immoral” (qtd. in Mitchell 899), Malcolm X advocates an entirely different modus operandi. He says that violence is required to be used for self-defence because that is intelligent. What is interesting to note is that Lee does not pit these two famous activists’ ideologies against one another. The film’s intention is not to emphasize the “split” between “the two ‘very’ different approaches to attaining equality in America” (Abuku; quotation marks in original). Throughout the film, there are close ups of the picture of both these personalities amicably shaking hands which Smiley persistently tries to sell in his neighbourhood. This becomes an important part of the mise-en-scene since it signifies the auteur’s ideological position. Just because Malcolm X’s perspective is not congruent with that of King’s more passive, peace-loving ways, does not put the former in the wrong. From an ethical point of view, violence and destruction of private property is fundamentally wrong, but Lee urges the viewer to examine these aspects through a contextual cause-effect framework, rather than merely making moral judgements by removing oneself from the situation.

Mookie’s garbage-can-throwing act, in isolation, is still wrong. The film does not try to justify that, but instead, coaxes us to acknowledge his frustration at the continual atrocities committed against his “black brothers” and the continual dismissal of the same by the whites. His action tells the audience just how disillusioning the situation is, in that someone like him also feels compelled to take such an extreme step and herein, along with the glass windows in Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, our selectively blind attitude to the glaringly evident injustice is meant to be shattered.

The Complexities in Lee’s Characters

Many critics have regarded Sal as not a racist but a character that simply makes bad decisions. Dan Flory coins the term “sympathetic racist” for Sal, keeping in mind mainstream white audiences. He describes the term as “characters with whom mainstream audiences readily ally themselves but who embrace racist beliefs and commit racist acts” (Flory 67). The complexity of reading such characters is precisely what Lee intends to stress. The film compels viewers to feel for Sal. He tries to help out Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) by giving him odd jobs, humours Smiley by trying to purchase one of his pictures (before Pino stops him), and reprimands Pino for being too harsh on Mookie. In addition, one sees him work hard in his pizzeria and attend to his customers’ needs (he decides to keep the eatery open a little longer than usual to serve Ahmad and his friends). However, despite all his likeability, one also notices frequent spurts of racial hostility in him.

It does not take much for Sal to threaten an African-American customer with his baseball bat for challenging the way he runs his pizzeria. Buggin’ Out’s demand for hanging pictures of “black brothers” on the restaurant’s “Wall of Fame” alongside Italian-American personalities, makes Sal react in a staggeringly (and surprisingly) defensive manner. For the first time, one witnesses him being overtly racist and inhospitable to his customer. This side of him resurfaces again when Radio Raheem walks into the pizzeria with his inseparable boombox and a blast of loud rap music. While these scenes serve as cues for the viewer to observe that the issue of racism will play a prominent role in the film, they also significantly mar the compassionate image that one had previously reserved for Sal. This crucial character arc forces the spectator to introspect the latent racist tendencies that many individuals harbour. At the outset, they may seem accepting and harmless enough, but have no qualms about reaching in for their inherent racist disposition to assault and insult a person of colour. For Sal, his erstwhile docile personality ends the moment Radio Raheem and Buggin’ Out question his subtle discriminations, and his violent ugliness comes leaping out. The film dispels all doubts about Sal’s stance on racism when the latter resorts to using racial slurs to counter his customers. Had he been looking to disagree logically, he would not have attacked the one aspect he knew would establish his hierarchical ‘superiority’. This acts as a wakeup call for the audience to consider that instances of racism may not always be explicit and consequently, to explore how seemingly trivial aspects may be a front for deeper racist leanings. (iv)

Flory argues that white audiences sympathise with Sal keeping in mind the film’s central and otherwise compassionate treatment of the character. However, this also implies that the prejudiced undertones of Sal’s behaviour are internalised not only by the character but potentially also by dominant white audiences. For all the allegations against the film as a potential incitement of violence for African-Americans, these accusations also undermine, if not normalize, police brutality and casual racism. This tendency arises out of their experiences as whites in a white-supremacist world, according to Flory. He says that Sal’s actions are justified because they are treated “as an aberration, an exception to his overall good character” since he is “merely the victim of a bad moral choice” (Flory 72).

As the film’s narrative progresses, one notices the different ways in which racism is perceived and practiced. The film attempts to intrude into the very depths of comprehending racism by allowing it to percolate into the behaviours of even a ‘likeable’ character such as Sal. Whereas Pino is explicitly racist in his manners (v) — refusing to attribute dignity to any of the African Americans he encounters— Sal’s racist leanings manifest less explicitly. Nonetheless, the fact that he is one remains indubitable (vi). Thus, Lee creates characters that are complex and multi-faceted. Some are openly racist while others will exhibit ‘invisible’ forms of racism that may not be violent at the outset but quickly take a turn towards assault and murder in order to maintain innate power structures.

As the owner of the restaurant, Sal has the right to maintain certain decorum inside the premises. However, each time he is confronted by one of his African-American customers, he resorts to spouting racist slurs to defend his position. Every time Sal is confronted by culture-specific demands, he is quick to use “niggers” and “black cocksuckers” (Lee), among other racial profanities instead of citing professional reasons. It is crucial to mention that because of the restaurant’s location, all of Sal’s regular customers are black and his pizzeria thrives because they frequent it. Yet reaching for his baseball bat (which Mitchell reads as a symbol of America, and Flory regards as the symbol of white on black violence) to thoroughly put an end to Raheem’s “jungle music” (Lee) comes as instinctively to Sal as distancing himself from the blacks by calling them “these people” (Lee). In a country that runs on capitalism and believes that ‘the customer is always right’, the film depicts Sal wasting no time in ranking his customers as subservient because of their race. This establishes the innate hierarchy that he espouses based on race, since one wonders if he would act as aggressively had his customers been white.

Sal’s biggest giveaway of his racist leanings is his reaction after Radio Raheem was murdered. The deafening silence in the aftermath of the gruesome violence is intensified when Sal stands defensively, not acknowledging the gravity of the crime. Even though the murder was not directly Sal’s fault, he does not admit the injustice and attempts to cash in on the police completely ignoring his or his sons’ role in the scuffle. Further, Mookie’s comment at the end of the film about how Sal will get his money back because the pizzeria was insured, suggests that the price Raheem had to pay would never be recovered. Dan Flory discusses this point when he says that “Raheem, who, in spite of his intimidating character and bullying ways, was nevertheless murdered by the police and therefore deserves something more than to be forgotten or valued as less important than the destruction of Sal’s business” (74). In this instance, the juxtaposition of vandalism of property with loss of human life is stark. Had both the events not succeeded one another and been unrelated, it is quite believable that a black person’s death would not invite as much traction as a white person getting his eatery destroyed. Here too, the politics of race is apparent to the viewer.

Flory, in light of the mainstream white audiences, argues that they should perceive Sal as a “good-bad character, an alloy who possesses both positive moral traits as well as negative ones” (74). This enables one to fully comprehend his character and not try to take sides, he says. For Flory, white viewers will have to alter their schema to grasp how racism works; they must reposition themselves and consider the African-American experience while watching the film. Similarly, as has been mentioned before, Mookie’s character must also be understood as having layers and not just simply as a harmful stereotype of a black perpetrator of violence. Lee’s portrayal of Mookie is thus, as Stuart Hall observes, an example of what happened in American films post the Civil Rights movement: “there was a much more aggressive affirmation of black cultural history, a positive attitude towards difference and a struggle over representation” (Hall 260). Indeed this struggle for a responsible representation is what the film strives to achieve. Mookie is no longer a silent spectator, a product of historical suppression. He has already witnessed his friend die and that effectively pushes him into action.

The Representational Aesthetics and Metaphor in Do the Right Thing

Other than the abovementioned emotive plot situations that are depicted in the film that include violence and death, it also employs other cinematic techniques to communicate existing racial tensions. Throughout the film, there is an allusion to surging temperature. While this apparently denotes the weather conditions of the particular day, there is also an underlying meaning to this phenomenon. With a spike in the Fahrenheit scale, there is also a clear indication of the steady building up of tension and conflict between the two racial groups in the community. In an interview with Glenn Kenny for the Directors Guild of America, Spike Lee discusses the significance of setting the film on one of the hottest summer days in Brooklyn. He notes,

you don’t have to be a scientist to know after 95 degrees here in New York people lose their mind. Ninety-five degrees, 8 million people on top of each other, the heat, the cement, the tar, the air, the stink—people go off. So I wanted to do this film whereas the day progressed it got hotter and hotter and hotter until there was just an explosion. (Kenny)

This “explosion” is created on screen with the melee towards the end of the film. Thus, the simmering heat hurtles towards a full-blown riot ultimately leading to arson.

The film maintains a warm colour palette throughout, to give the viewers a feel of the sweltering heat and the soaring temperature. The colour tones used in the film are mostly red, yellow and orange. Buggin’ Out, Radio Radio Raheem, Ahmad and his friends, all don clothes with bright, warm shades of colour. The other characters wear white or grey to project a hot, summery feel. The most significant mise-en-scene is perhaps in the sequences with the bright red wall against which ML (Paul Benjamin), Coconut Sid (Frankie Faison) and Sweet Dick Willie (Robin Harris) sit. In the interview with Rolling Stone, Lee comments, “We wanted audiences to feel the heat. I wanted people to be sweating from watching this film, even though they might be seeing it in air conditioning…In many shots, our great cameraman Ernest Dickerson would put a butane lighter underneath the lens [to produce a smouldering effect on screen]” (Edwards). All of these techniques amalgamate seamlessly to create the hot, sweaty, uncomfortable feel of Brooklyn during summer for the viewers. This successfully works in tandem with communicating the tension and conflict prevalent between ethnic groups within the community which is supposed to make one feel just as uneasy.

While the weather in Brooklyn reflects the situations of a street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the film in turn reflects the conditions of America. The film is a reminder of the abject colonial hangover that continues to linger (vii). By alluding to Tawana Brawley (as was her story in 1989) through the mise-en-scene and then depicting Radio Raheem’s brutal murder at the hands of the police, Do the Right Thing restages social issues within a private, microcosmic sphere. The relatively long scene where Raheem is shown in a choke hold with the white officer desperate to overpower him at all costs can be read as a metaphor for “the media’s disservice to Tawana back in 87 (sic.), or… the relevance or the lack thereof of black entrepreneurship – within the context of a racist socio-economic system– or the… police brutality on today’s Radio Raheems” (viii) (Abuku). Moreover, the film represents the actual atrocities committed against African-Americans and the racial unrest in New York during the 1980s via the tense relationship between the blacks and whites.

There are certain dramatized sequences in the film that enhance viewers’ interpretation of racism. For instance, the film’s beginning— with Tina’s (Rosie Perez) powerful and aggressive performance to “Fight the Power” expertly sets the context of the film. The song plays a vital role throughout the film via Radio Raheem. That he was the one who continuously played this forceful song on his boombox and his subsequent death because of it, is ironic in some ways since in the end, he is unable to fight the power of racism. Lee uses this song and other jazz scores as the soundtrack of the film as a means to depict and embrace African-American culture. In addition, Radio Raheem’s almost poetic monologue discussing love and hate is a scene that stands out and becomes an instance of melodrama in Do the Right Thing.

To further enunciate the already evident prejudice in the film, Lee overtly dramatizes a few other sequences. Pino and Mookie’s aggressive racial abuse standoff right at the camera acts as a rude interruption to the narrative, to remind the spectator of the still prevalent truth of racism. Further, the two white policemen driving past ML, Coconut Sid and Sweet Dick Willie in slow motion and commenting “what a waste” (Lee), is another example of the aforementioned phenomenon. In addition, with the use of close ups and tilted camera angles in certain scenes, the filmmaker establishes specific moments of hostility between characters of different ethnicities and races. For example, when Radio Raheem walks into Sal’s Famous Pizzeria with his boombox blaring rap music, the shots of Sal are close ups, from a slightly higher angle, creating a sense of discord and tension.

Thus, the use of cinematography and mise-en-scene accentuates the smouldering racial tensions represented in the film. An air of perpetual discomfort, that may catapult into something chaotic and ugly at the slightest provocation, is evoked in the film from the get go. Through the soundtrack and camera angles, Lee dexterously weaves the violent climax of the narrative into the very fabric of the film, right up to the moment that leads to it. This alerts the audience to anticipate the final explosion that is the climax.

Conclusion

Do the Right Thing is not so much about finding out who did the right thing or whether it was the right thing, as much as it is about jolting its viewers out of their passive, comfortable seats. The film leaves the audience with conflicting characters and situations and demands action and a change in preconceived notions from them. It does so by going beyond the stereotypical binaries of representing race on screen. As Chimamanda Adichie observes in her TED Talk, it is not sufficient to view a group of peoples as only one thing; the violent African-American or the angry Italian-American. Not only does this create harmful stereotypes and rob the individual of her/his own identity, but it also diverts attention from the reason behind an action. This film’s African-American protagonist is not inherently violent but resorts to vandalising his place of work seeing that as the only way to vent his frustration and anger at the injustice doled out to his community by citizens and law enforcers alike. Nor is he “everlastingly good [,] deferential to whites” (Hall 261) and a representation of the other stereotypical extreme.

Adichie argues that stories are influenced by “how they are told, who tells them, when they’re told, [and] how many stories are told.” These factors determine the formation of narratives and in turn, reflect the power structures of the world. Through layered, compassionate treatment of characters, Do the Right Thing achieves a nuanced and a little-seen-before take on race (that is, at the time when it was made). It delves into the intricate, complicated ramifications of racism and is unafraid to depict explicit violence to thwart complicity. Hence, Lee aims to avoid the “danger of a single story” of racism and jostle the racial hierarchy which remains a reality in the United States (and elsewhere) till date.

That said, the film is not without faults and conspicuous gaps. As previously mentioned, while trying to bring out the intricacies of racism, the film completely ignores the voices of its female characters. In the ice cube scene between Tina and Mookie, Lee fetishises her body with almost a minute long sequence of rubbing ice over her naked body parts. The camera focuses, in a tight close-up, on Tina’s breasts, subjecting her to an “extreme form of reductionism” (Hall 255), even as Mookie pays a “crooning homage to “the right nipple” and “the left nipple”” (Wiltz; quotations in original). In the shot where the ice cube circles Tina’s breast, she is “reduced to her body and her body in turn [is] reduced to her sexual organs” and she simply becomes “a collection of sexual parts” (Hall 255). Even the other coloured female characters like Jade and Mother Sister are robbed of their agency; despite being outspoken their narratives are overshadowed by a male presence. (ix) The film, therefore, fails to not only acknowledge the lived experiences of one marginalised section— despite having the opportunity to do so, given that there is black female representation— but also relegates them to stereotypical portrayals, while breaking the mould for another oppressed section. Herein, Lee’s male-centric point of view, ironically, faces “the danger of a single story”.

The complexity of Do the Right Thing is also manifested in the divided opinions that have succeeded its release. The film urges one to not see characters as merely black or white (pun intended), but to rather locate them in the grey area of context. In today’s times, this film is an important reminder that there are multiple ways of protest. It is not the film’s objective to incite violence or educate the viewer on what is ethics. Instead, it advocates a nuanced outlook where in a particular context, the systemically oppressed is compelled to choose vandalism as a tool to make themselves seen and heard, ‘diplomacy’ be damned. The film brings to light the covert mechanics of racism that is rooted in everyday America. The message of Do the Right Thing is embedded in the stories of people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others (x) who become nothing more than ‘collateral damage’ in the white supremacist endeavour to maintain power structures. It yanks us out of our reverie and compels us to actively revisit the appalling references to our reality, even decades later, with the narrative of the film, where a black person must pay for unverified, perceived threats with their own life. The film is not just another piece of art— although if true art is measured by its continued relevance, then Do the Right Thing checks all the boxes— but a call to action that instructs us to protest the default, hegemonic use of violence on the basis of ethnicity and color. It refuses to let us ignore its pounding reverberations in present day America, thus, forcing us to rethink race relations, the covert presence of racism that may manifest into overt displays of violence at the slightest provocation, and the ways in which one must adopt anti-racism in order to right these wrongs.

End Notes:
(i) It is significant to note that almost thirty years later, Lee’s 2018 film BlacKkKlansmen was nominated for Best Picture and also won an award at the 2019 Academy Awards.

(ii) Had Do the Right Thing come out in recent times, it would probably also have messages of “Black Lives Matter” with references to Breonna Taylor and George Floyd— the latter’s death bearing a chilling similarity with Radio Raheem’s, three decades apart.

(iii) News reports later proved that Tawana had made up this entire story and implications of this will perhaps have to be dealt with in another paper. One can read more of the incident and the proceedings of the case here:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/05/209254781/the-racial-backdrop-of-the-tawana-brawley-case

(iv) More common, everyday examples of subtle, ‘invisible’ forms of racism are touching a black individual’s hair without their consent, or not making an effort to correct one’s pronunciation of an un-Anglican name.

(v) Even Pino’s racism has layers since, as Mookie points out, all of the former’s favourite celebrities happen to be black. However, he justifies this by saying that they are not “really black”.

(vi) Sal’s racism is reminiscent of those white people who defend themselves by claiming they have “black friends”, who have “voted for Obama” but who would also instinctively choose to vilify one race over another for their personal benefit. The recent Netflix show Ginny and Georgia deftly depicts such a character in the form of Ginny’s English professor.

(vii) I must mention here that the film can be read through a postcolonial lens as it critiques the dire consequences of colonialism. Due to the limited scope of this paper, I choose not to tread deeper into this context.

(viii) The most recent example being from a few days ago when an unarmed, black man, George Floyd, who was not resisting arrest, was filmed by helpless bystanders as he was choked to death by a white police officer in Minneapolis. The late Floyd is heard pleading “I can’t breathe” as the officer continues to press on the man’s neck with his knee. This shocking display of police brutality in the form of racism in broad daylight (even during a pandemic) is eerily reminiscent of Lee’s portrayal of Radio Raheem’s death.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/us/george-floyd-minneapolis-death.html

(ix) Tina is relegated to the domesticities of life— doing household chores, screaming at Mookie, and taking care of their child. Jade, Mookie’s sister, is a teacher who evidently earns more than her brother; enough to let him live at her apartment for free and dress with sophistication. Yet her only role in the film is to escalate the tension between her brother and Sal, the latter having a soft corner for her. The third female character, Mother Sister is opinionated and holds her own for most of the film, only to hysterically fall into the arms of Da Mayor in the end. Where the inclusion of female voices could have added to the radicalism, the women in Lee’s film lack agency and are denied a pivotal position.

(x) More recently, America has also been in news for the rise of (overt) racism against the Asian and Pacific Asian community. This interview provides some context about this issue
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-history-of-anti-asian-american-violence