BlackPerspective.net

Spike Lee’s ‘Do The Right Thing’ 20 Years Later

December 4th, 2009

Twenty years ago this summer Spike Lee released a touchstone film that still stands out and stands the test of time. Not many have pierced the consciousness in the way that Do The Right Thing did, garnering both praise and disdain.

NPR took a look back at the film and it’s social-cultural impact, and here’s part of what they had to say, followed by my commentary.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane.

20 Years Since Spike Lee’s ‘Do The Right Thing’
From NPR.org
June 24, 2009

Twenty years ago, the film Do The Right Thing debuted in theaters and aggressively shifted the focus to the realities of a divided America. The iconic 1989 production by film director Spike Lee told an unflinching tale of racial and ethnic tensions, as experienced in the multiethnic neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, N.Y. — all on the hottest day of the year.

“I sort of read it back then, and now, as a black nationalist manifesto,” reflects Natalie Hopkinson, an associate editor for theRoot.com. “[Do The Right Thing portrayed] a purging of elements out of the community that did not respect black people and the black presence in Bed-Stuy.”

The movie was seen as both groundbreaking and inflammatory. Memorable characters from the movie brought baggage from their many walks of life, such as Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), a towering young black man who leisurely blasts his boombox radio with the early sounds of hip-hop music while strolling the streets; Sal (Danny Aiello), the Italian-American owner of the neighborhood Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, whose establishment is also the scene of both cultural collisions and crossroads; and Mookie (Spike Lee), who works as the socially conscious deliveryman at Sal’s.

“If you’re trying to give a representation of where black cultural nationalism, in particular, was at a particular point in time, I think the film does a wonderful job of that,” says blogger Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of black popular culture at Duke University.

Rest of the article

I think this previous paragraph is exactly right. This film encapsulated the young black paradigmatic outlook of the black consciousness movement of the day, which was largely being revitalized by Hip Hop music and culture at the time. It’s not coincidental that socially conscious and black nationalistic platinum selling group Public Enemy was picked for the movie’s theme song “Fight the Power”

From my personal perspective, I was an 11 year old black adolescent male at the time who was coming into a racial consciences and what it all meant. I didn’t actually get to see the film until about a year after it came out, and it had a strong impact on my psyche.

It was layered with great characters, and had a very strong, entertaining, thought provoking and comical look at the way we see each other: both interracial stereotypes going each way, and even looked at some interracial ones.

Much like Spike Lee’s School Daze before it, Do The Right thing explored important issues and realities that were hardly address in any significant way in pop culture or general society before it; and still, even, not so much since it.

Spike Lee & Rosie Perez

And in contrast to the article quoted here, Mookie (Spike Lee’s character) was not exact socially conscious. At least not in the way we commonly use the phraseology of Black social-consciousness.

Mookie was basically about his money hustle. He wasn’t socially ignorant, he was a pretty aware and intelligent person; but he didn’t really care about the social stuff, or the political ideology that others in the movie would talk to him about. At best he would acknowledge their point, then brush it off as irrelevant to him making money.

The Black social consciences of the movie was represented by Buggin’ Out, with assists from Radio Raheem and Jade.

On another note about the article, where it points out that some have called the movie inflammatory. Yeah, it was meant to inflame your thinking about those things which are so oft swept under the rug, and only dealt with at best with pared down and sterilized Martin Luther King quote that do not actually get at the issue.

What happened with this movie from some quarters was the same demonization and demagoguery applied every single time a Black person addresses racism and white privilege in any substantive way. You can go back from Malcolm X, to Marcus Garvey, to Martin Delany; and even Martin Luther King, especially at the end of his life, until this modern fairytale was spun in the 80s about everyone loving him. It’s the same play book of dismiss and denounce. Dismiss that there is even an issue other than the fact that the rabble rousing Blackie is making an issue of it, an then, well, denounce the person as nothing but an angry, hateful rabble rouser. But never honestly deal with the issue.

posted in Cultural, News & Events, Racial Injustice, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | | | View blog reactions |

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Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.

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