Do the Right Thing

March 22,2002

The weather is sizzling hot and tensions are slowly coming to a boil in this Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn neighborhood. Slowly but surely we see the heat melt away the barriers that were keeping anger from rising to the surface. The Blacks and the Hispanics own the streets the Koreans own the corner store and of course the Italians own the pizzeria, the Cops who happen to be all Caucasian, prowl the streets inside out, looking for anyone to harass. Toes are then stepped on and apologies are not made. Spike Lee creates the perfect set-up for a modern day in Bed-Stuyvesant. Without fail Spike Lee is transformed into an anthropologist. Spike Lee's goal is to allow viewers to glimpse into the lives of real people and into a neighborhood they call home. After all this isn't just some flight into an imaginary ghetto. It's a journey into real life, real people and of course real circumstances. In the words of the local DJ Mr. SeÐ"±or Love Daddy its time to, " Waaaaake up!" and see what real life is really about.

Our main character is Mooky, a black teenager, who works in Sal's famous pizzeria. Mooky is the pizza parlor delivery boy and he is the only one of his friends to have a job. Sal and his two sons run the pizzeria. Sal is one of the very few white Italian business owners remaining in this predominately black neighborhood. Despite obvious tensions, Sal holds his ground in the neighborhood and remains proud of the fact that these people, meaning the kids of Bed-Stuy, have grown up on his pizza. Along the way we meet other characters such as Radio Raheem who is a neighborhood kid who walks the street with an oversize radio and decorates his fingers with the symbolic Ð''love' and Ð''hate' rings. Smile, a mentally disabled individual who runs around the streets selling the one existing photograph of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Then there is Mooky's Puerto Rican girlfriend, who is raising their son and constantly nagging Mooky for being a deadbeat father. We also meet The Mayor, an alcoholic, elderly man who wanders the street looking for any type of chores to do in exchange for a small about of money. Lee's choice of characters and actors seems noticeably ideal. Each character is full of life and more importantly each is an individual. Each character is created to retell a part of our society that we sometimes over look. This obviously makes Spike Lee a good anthropologist. Lee was able to study the neighborhood of Bed-Stuy or one just like it, and observe the inhabitants in their own environment, by observing their unique qualities and behavior, he was able to create characters for his film "Do the Right Thing". Lee would have been very meticulous about recording his findings, very much like an anthropologist today.

When we try to understand why the characters act as they act and what drives each of them, the viewers are inevitably drawn to the conclusion that they are just like them. They realize they are human; they have both good qualities and bad qualities. Spike Lee also makes them understand that at times they may make terrible mistakes, and that at other times they may display admirable heroism, and that sometimes they simply act without knowing why. Spike Lee does more than try to show his viewers that despite tensions, this Black neighborhood is a community. What Lee does is he makes the viewers think. He simply presents events as they are leaving the viewer to figure out the motives of the characters and the Ð''why' behind the course of events. Lee doesn't really put a positive light on any particular