Composing Cultural Disease: A Comparison of Chi-raq and Do The Right Thing Shelton “Spike” Lee is an auteur known for his narrative style and his strong presence within the black community. His movies often portray an issue all too common for black and brown communities. His hit Do The Right Thing (1989) brought to light the casual racism within a community and the still controversial issue of police brutality. This was what audiences assumed they would receive with Chi-raq (2015). Chi-raq also focused on the importance of a strong sense of community and the lack of love within one but it did so by turning a mirror in the face of the black and brown men in gangs. Do The Right Thing focused on the interconnection of a community; Chi-raq focused on what we allow to divide us. Along with this theme of community, the movies held stark differences in narrative style, tone, and editing. Discussing racism within a single community, in a way to not completely anger people, is a great task almost …show more content…
Based off of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata the women in the warring community band together to force the violence to end by prohibiting the men from being sexually active until it is done. Lee takes this idea, pumps it up and sets it on fire. Set in 2015 Southside Chicago, a community named Englewood is ran and torn apart by gang life. The Trojans and The Spartans have been “at war” since as long as they can remember and things don't even begin to look better until seven year old Patti Carmichael is murdered in the street. After this occurs, our protagonist, Lysistrata, gathers all the women of Englewood in a resistance. Their motto? “No peace, No pussy”. The usage of adaptation instead of purely original work immediately separated Do The Right Thing from Chi-raq. Though Aristophanes work isn't obscure, not many people know of it taking away the familiarity audiences had with Do The Right
Spike Lee was the director and producer of the 1989 movie “Do the right thing”. Do the right thing is a movie about a boy name Mookie (Spike Lee) that lives in a black and Puerto Rican neighborhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn with his sister name Jade. He works at Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, which is owned by an Italian-American owner who has owned it for 25 years, name Salvatore “Sal” Frangione. Sal has two son, Pino and Vito, and his oldest son known as Pino is a racist and detests the place likes a sickness” and holds many racial scorn for all the blacks in that community. Do the right thing is an ordinary film that pro different cultural meaning behind it and deals with mostly with racism between Blacks and other groups;
The first word that comes to mind when thinking about Do the Right Thing is HOT. Everything about this movie was hot, from the weather down to the themes and issues it brought up. It’s interesting too watch this movie while living with a heat wave in NYC. There’s plenty of room for debate as to whether or not anyone did the right thing in this script, in my opinion most of the characters did the wrong thing. What’s interesting to me is to think about what Spike Lee considered the right and wrong thing to do in this screenplay. It’s not just his words as an actor playing a role, he also wrote, directed, and produced the vehicle for those words and actions to come to life. So it’s hard to separate Spike from Mookie, and I don’t think Spike would even want us to. I also wonder about some changes from the screenplay and the film, and the effect the have on the overall message of the film.
This week’s readings of the reviews of Spike Lee’s ‘Do the Right Thing’ and Marilyn Fabe’s “Political Cinema: Spike Lee’s ‘Do the Right Thing’, raised a number of questions regarding not only the moral issues the film addresses but also the intention of the artist. This dialectical opposition, which Pamela Reynolds suggests “challenges the audience to choose” (Reynolds, p.138) between the narrativized hostility shown between that of the hero and villain. More specifically Lee’s portrayal of violence vs passive opposition. This can be perceived through Lee’s technical employment of contradictory quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcom X at the conclusion of the film, which not only highlights this concern but also deluges further into themes of political opposition. Marylin Fabe discusses this where she states that Spike Lee’s film carries a “disturbing political message” (Fabe, p.191). Arguably, ‘Do the Right Thing’ acmes themes of racism (Black vs White); with underlining motifs of imperialism (colonisers’ vs colonised), psychoanalytic (power vs powerlessness) and even Marxist theory (ownership vs public space/consumption), with Clarence Page stating that Lee provides a “public service… (not trying) to provide all the answers, but raising the questions.” (Reid, P.144). In saying this we explore this concept of the role of the artist, with Georgopulos stating that the role of the artist is to create a consciousness within the audience by revealing a fraught set of truths about the human condition. Thusly, the reactions and responses to the films reveal Lee to be successful in conveying his intentions, which back in its zenith, explored this issue of racism in a way that had rarely been seen, and presented the ways in which t...
The film Do the Right Thing is a film written, produced, and directed by Spike Lee. In the film the main character is Mookie, is played by Spike Lee. Mookie is a black male in his younger twenties who delivers for the neighborhood pizza parlor Sal’s Famous Pizzeria. The film takes place in the Brooklyn, New York neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, also known as Bed Stuy. Throughout the movie we do not know if the weather plays a role in the story, but the tension between racial groups’ increases. We see tension increase within the Blacks and Hispanics, Blacks and Asians, and most importantly between the Blacks and Whites (Italian.) Sal 's Famous Pizzeria is a pizza parlor in the neighborhood that many of the kids in the area grew up eating.
Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing mixes racial tensions surrounding the main character Mookie, played by Spike Lee, on one of the hottest days in Brooklyn. Mookie represents a medium between his neighborhood, a primarily all black community, and his employer, a white Italian pizzeria owner. Several class concepts connect with this film’s controversial, yet blatant topic of racial prejudices, stereotypes, and discrimination. Every character in the film is racist. The characters represent many racial and ethnic perspectives including African American, Italian American, Korean, and white American.
This film, directed by former gang- member Cle Sloan, shows how racism between whites and blacks during the civil rights movement played a significant role in the formation of many Los Angeles gangs that we would see today. T...
Over the course of history, the societal roles of both men and women have changed with the times. The play Lysistrata, written by Aristophanes, gives the reader a glimpse of what life was like in Ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian war. The war was fought between Athens and Sparta with their respective allies, (however Aristophanes’s play provides humour about gender, sex and war). Throughout the play, women play a unique role in that they are presented as people who are involved with politics and were people who made decisions. Through the use of comedy this play demonstrates the absurdity of women acting like men and the play shows how dangerous situations can get when people change too abruptly. Internal conflict weakens both the city-state and the gender relationships.
Spike Lee is a filmmaker who has generated numerous controversial films that unapologetically bring delicate social issuest o the media forefront. He honestly portrays life's societal obstacles. He challenges the public to cogitate on the world's glitches and disunion. Spike Lee created a name for himself with films such as Do the Right Thing (1989) and Malcolm X (1992), and with documentaries such as 4 Little Girls (1997) and When the Levees Broke (2006). Lee’s goal was to portray African Americans in a more accurate light.
Racism is a dark word; it is as black as the night, as black as the soul of those that harbor this hate. Yet, I want to talk about racism - not just in far away places, but here in the United States. Actually, I want everyone to talk about racism. Only by talking about it can we begin the process of overcoming past and present injustices.
In Aristophanes play Lysistrata, the women of Greece take on the men to stop the raging war between the Athenians and the Spartans. To stop the war, the women withhold sex from their male counterparts, and take over the Acropolis for themselves. The women are indeed triumphant in their goals to stop the war, and the Athenians and Spartans come to an understanding. What is blatantly ignored, however, is that Aristophanes creates a gender war that, although seemingly rejoices the actions of the women, instead mocks the women’s power-struggle in a male dominated society, focuses on the male-privilege seen throughout the entirety of the play, and should be disregarded in the fact that this play is not even from a women’s perspective.
In the play Lysistrata, Aristophanes chooses an unconventional medium of protest to symbolize his female characters’ fight for gender equality. The protagonist known as Lysistrata rallies together a group of women in order to stop the ongoing war. In doing so she employs the idea of a ‘sex strike’ which involves the women refusing sexual acts with their husbands until they agree to sign the peace treaty. I will argue that while Lysistrata’s plan to suffocate the men with a sex strike succeeds in ending the war, it fails to invoke a shift in the views the opposing genders have due to sexual desires, a system of patriarchy, and gender stereotypes.
For centuries racism was the norm in America. Director Spike Lee can be considered as the modern day racism opponent. His films investigates the racial disagreements that surround populations, every day in America and in other multi-racial regions. Lee does not strive for political correctness, nor does he lecture. He establishes a group of characters, creates a situation, and then lets events unfold by themselves. His approach is unbiased, many people accuse his films of being harsh but they may not understand what Lee wants to convey. Lee is known as the kind of director who provokes enormous reactions such as “Do the right thing”
“Lysistrata” is a tale which is centered around an Athenian woman named Lysistrata and her comrades who have taken control of the Acropolis in Athens. Lysistrata explains to the old men how the women have seized the Acropolis to keep men from using the money to make war and to keep dishonest officials from stealing the money. The opening scene of “Lysistrata” enacts the stereotypical and traditional characterization of women in Greece and also distances Lysistrata from this overused expression, housewife character. The audience is met with a woman, Lysistrata, who is furious with the other women from her country because they have not come to discuss war with her. The basic premise of the play is, Lysistrata coming up with a plan to put an end to the Peloponnesian War which is currently being fought by the men. After rounding up the women, she encourages them to withhold sex until the men agree to stop fighting. The women are difficult to convince, although eventually they agree to the plan. Lysistrata also tells the women if they are beaten, they may give in, since sex which results from violence will not please the men. Finally, all the women join Lysistrata in taking an oath to withhold sex from their mates. As a result of the women refraining from pleasing their husbands until they stop fighting the war, the play revolves around a battle of the sexes. The battle between the women and men is the literal conflict of the play. The war being fought between the men is a figurative used to lure the reader to the actual conflict of the play which is the battle between men and women.
Do the Right Thing is a dramatic comedic film that was directed by Spike Lee. The movie was released in 1989. Lee served in three capacities for the film: writer, director and producer of the movie, Ernest Dickenson was the cinematographer and Barry Alexander Brown was the film’s editor. For this film, Lee garnered together some notable actors and actresses, including Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Rosie Perez, Samuel L. Jackson, John Tuturro and Martin Lawrence. The setting of the movie is in Bedford-Stuyvesant; which is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. This particular neighborhood is made up of several ethnic groups that include African Americas, Italians, Koreans, and Puerto Ricans. The movie takes place on a particularly hot day during the summer time. The extreme heat causes tensions between the different races in the neighborhood. In this paper, I will attempt to show how mise-en-scène, camera work, editing, and sound are used to convey “explicit” and “implicit” meaning in one scene in Do the Right Thing.
I have strong convictions that enable me to believe that not standing for the national anthem is disrespectful in a number of ways. Louis Lane led me to believe that not standing for the national anthem is insulting to veterans, men, and women in the armed forces. The national anthem’s purpose is to show your respect for the people who have worked for your freedom, but people are turning it into an abomination. In the article, “Refusing to Stand for the National Anthem: Top 3 Pros and Cons” by Lane, she encapsulates the essence of how not standing for the national anthem is disrespectful, and a distraction.