Topic > The relevance of the film "Do the Right Thing" today

The film Do the Right Thing, written, directed and produced with the help of Spike Lee, focuses on a single day in the life of racially diverse people remaining and paintings in a lower class neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. However, this normal day is one of the coolest days of the summer. The film explains how social class, race, and the moral choices made by characters have a direct effect on the way humans interact with each other. It begins evolving with the film's characters waking up to start their day and culminates in a neighborhood rebellion after police officers excessively detain and kill a young black man named Radio Raheem for impeding an aging restaurant owner Italian American named Sal to enter his pizzeria, and then out into the street. The film, although released in 1989, with its social statement on the impact race has on police brutality is just as relevant today as when it was released 26 years ago. Although the film ultimately suggests how dangerous it is to react to others based solely on race, ironically, Lee portrays the characters in a stereotypical manner within the film through their language and aesthetics. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Spike Lee indulges in stereotypes by using iconography to represent unique racial societies in the film. It does this in many ways, such as having the Italian-American characters wear crosses and tank tops. He also does this in his portrayal of Radio Raheem wearing an African medallion necklace while carrying a large box of augments playing loud rap music. Even tertiary characters, such as a group of Puerto Rican friends, are shown listening to salsa while speaking Spanish and consuming beer in their apartment building. Lee also emphasizes that his characters understand that their extraordinary ethnicity can lead to a struggle of strength by having them openly insult each other through ethnic slurs both comedically and critically. Lee also shows this as his black activist Buggin' Out tells Mookie, who is a black man employed through a white man, to "Stay Black" insinuating that Mookie should never try to be a Tom or a sellout. Throughout the film, the characters do not best take into account the differences in their race, but also show the ideas discovered in Marxism through their social interactions. According to Understanding Film Theory, “Marxism was conceived as a revolutionary idea that attempted to explain and reveal members of the power family in capitalist societies.” He also says that the founder of Marxism, Karl Marx, was “concerned with the evident division between the ruling and working classes.” In the film, Buggin' Out verbally assaults a white male property owner for taking a walk in his new Air Jordans and then asks him "What are you doing in my neighborhood?" In this short scene Lee manages to show how a character from a poor neighborhood feels the psychological need to compete economically with others. This is an example of the culture industry and Buggin' Out proves it because he buys cutting-edge shoes and doesn't want to realize that he has actually and symbolically been run over by a person who has turned into much healthier than he becomes. The film is set in a predominantly black neighborhood and the two most comfortable families as their agencies are both Italian American and Korean American. Therefore, some black characters like them because they might be owners of business enterprises and.