Spike Lee’s approach to genre in Do the Right Thing (1989)

This essay will discuss how Spike Lee approaches genre, using examples from two of his films: Do the Right Thing (1989) and BlacKkKlansman (2018). Lee was nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for Do the Right Thing (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1990) and won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for BlacKkKlansman (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 2019). Both films are comedy dramas, with BlacKkKlansman also taking on a biographical role. Lee deploys various techniques associated with comedy to tell the story and are far from subtle and drive home strong statements on race and equality. Just as you are laughing at a comedic scene and he has your attention, Lee will move onto a serious discussion or statement about race and equality.

Do the Right Thing tells the story of Mookie (Spike Lee), an African American living in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York. He delivers pizzas for Sal (Danny Aiello), an Italian American whose pizza is a staple food within the community. His sons Vito (Richard Edson) and Pino (John Turturro) help run the pizza joint. A local radio station run by Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) is housed in the building across the street, with Señor Love Daddy acting as a fly on the wall for much of what happens in the street. When Buggin Out (Giancarlo Esposito) enlists Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) and Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) to participate in a boycott of Sal’s famous pizzeria because there is no representation of African Americans on the “wall of fame”, tensions break and result in the death of Radio Raheem at the hands of the (white) police, and the destruction of Sal’s pizzeria.

Whilst there is tension between the African Americans and Italian Americans, there is also tension created by the Korean business owners who have opened a grocery store across the street from the pizzeria. ML (Paul Benjamin) expresses to Coconut Sid (Frankie Faison) and Sweet Dick Willie (Robin Harris) “I bet you they haven’t been off the boat a year before they open up their own place” and that the fact that they already have a business “occupying a building that has been boarded up for as long as I care to remember” must mean either the Koreans are “geniuses” or the locals are “just plain dumb” – with Coconut Sid expressing that it must be “because they are black”. This represents American capitalism, whilst also posing a question as to why the local African Americans aren’t running their own business. For Mookie, it is Sal who “represents the ‘discursive universe’ of American capitalism. He is an embodiment of the white patriarchy to which Mookie must be accountable if he is to be granted a continuing position, trifling as it may seem, in the dominant economic order.” (McKelly, 2008, p.66). Here Lee is posing the question of why African Americans don’t own more businesses in a discussion which starts and ends comically.

Many of the scenes which deal with race are preluded by comedic scenes, designed to catch an audience off guard and grab their attention. One such scene is where Pino opens up to his father and expresses his resentment of where he works. He feels that they should move the business to an Italian American neighbourhood, but Sal does not want to do this, expressing that there are “too many pizzerias already there” and “what am I going to do, that’s all I know, I’ve been here twenty-five years, where am I going?”. Pino explains how he feels like he is in Planet of the Apes (Schaffner, 1968) and that his friends make fun of him for serving black people. Sal argues “do your friends put money in your pocket, Pino? Food on your table. Do they pay your rent, your roof over your head?” and “If they were your friends, they wouldn’t laugh at you”. Here Sal is attempting to mitigate his son’s racial bias and trying to get him to see the bigger picture. The scene which sets this discussion between Sal and Pino up comes after Señor Love Daddy’s eighty-second-long monologue listing the names of prominent black music artists and at the end includes a comical joke about a character’s ears. They are of stark contrast to each other: A scene designed to slow the pace of the film down and get the audience laughing is immediately followed by a discussion about race.

Another example is a critical scene in the film. It is out of place but perfectly represents the racial tensions in the community. Mookie calls Pino’s aggressive comments out, asking him who his favourite basketball player, movie star and rock star is and pointing out that they are all black people. Mookie is attempting to have a serious conversation, and Pino is trying to justify his comments by saying that these people, to him, are not black, but as soon as Mookie asks if he wishes he was black, Pino raises his defences and mocks African American history. The scene is quickly and suddenly followed by an out-of-place tirade of racial insults with Señor Love Daddy closing the scene with “you need to cool that shit out and that’s the double truth, Ruth!”. This scene sends an extratextual message to an audience, sending the message that one should think about their own predudices.

Lee uses the concept of “two-ness” in Do the Right Thing in the characters of Radio Raheem and Buggin Out, and Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) and Mother Sister (Ruby Dee). Radio Raheem shows his “LOVE” and “HATE” brass knuckle rings to Mookie, with a fourth wall break – he tells a story of how love conquers hate directly to the camera. However, it appears Radio Raheem goes against these values in his part in the boycott and destruction of Sal’s pizzeria. “Radio Raheem, like the large majority of Black youth, is the victim of materialism and a misplaced sense of values.” (Lee, 1988, as cited in McKelly, 2008, p. 63). Da Mayor and Mother Sister have been unable to get along throughout the film, however after the destruction of the pizzeria, they appear to put aside their differences, showing that their disagreements were unimportant.

At the end of the film, Lee reinforces the idea of two-ness or dualism by scrolling quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. “The most controversial imagery, however, came during the closing quotations when excerpts from the speeches of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were displayed as a choice of two paths to take (dualism).” (Stephens, 2009, p. 12). This sent a strong enough message so that Lee was accused of inciting violence. (Alter, 2020).