Edgewood College
Socially Constructed Binaries and the Cultural Entrepreneurial
An Examination of Do the Right Thing
Emily Culver
5/16/2014
Within every history class, English class, and even some science classes, the art of storytelling is a primary foundation for human communication and understanding. Whether it be through myths – Greek, Roman, Egyptian, you pick – or wives tales or even Grandpa telling his old war stories, stories have power. Now, through technological advancements in the last 150+ years (thank you Thomas Edison for your obsession), we have film as a mode to tell stories. Fictional or not, films tell a story; they have the power to give you not only entertainment but enlightenment too. Through continuing advancements, filmmakers have the ability to challenge and manipulate the power of the story through creative resistance; by exploring other elements of storytelling via film, filmmakers can create dramatically different films from similar ideas by using a multitude of techniques. Films are even used to create social commentary.
In Spike Lee’s critically acclaimed film Do the Right Thing, Lee offers audiences a glimpse into 1989 Brooklyn; inequality, racial tensions, claustrophobia, and heat: combined together create the perfect recipe for disaster. Simplistically, this film demonstrates a symbolization that some things just can’t mix; however, this film, and Lee himself, examines the human – specifically in the realm of socially constructed binaries and the culturally go-getter (entrepreneurial) situation of the African American subjects within. Looking closely at the film and deconstructing some of the more obvious constructs within it we can investigate the simplistic binary oppositions t...
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...elivers to the politically marginalized an experience of that binary’s arbitrary and constructed quality. The film helps to free “justice” from the violence of its designated confinement within terms forged by a racist symbolic supremacy helps make “justice” available. Thus, Do the Right Thing’s illumination of the culture of ambiguity, and the internally dialogic subject which negotiates that culture, represents an elegant erasure of the logic of “two-ness” in all of its ideological formations. Spike Lee’s film, Do the Right Thing holds power; it creates a conversation about racial tensions that are still present; it diagrams, symbolically and literally, the white hegemonic hierarchal entrepreneurial and consumer pyramid; and it gives a realistic look into unfair binaries that are still attached to a particular culture. This film, this story, is powerful.
Do The Right Thing was Spike Lee’s first landmark film. Do The Right Thing is a movie that brings awareness to the racial tensions when people in a Brooklyn neighborhood of different racial and cultural backgrounds coexist, which ends in a tragedy. The film was a great success receiving many of awards and earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporti...
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 first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
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;
Being one of the few black students to attend Tisch School of the Arts, the aspiring filmmaker’s first year at New York University was a particularly difficult one. Lee’s experiences, race, and upbringing have all led him to create controversial films to provide audiences with an insight into racial issues. Spike Lee’s first student production, The Answer, was a short ten minute film which told of a young black screenwriter who rewrote D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. The film was not well accepted among the faculty at New York University, stating Lee had not yet mastered “film grammar.” Lee went on to believe the faculty took offense to his criticisms towards the respected director’s stereotypical portrayals of black characters (1).
The 1989 film Do the Right Thing explored the conflict of racial tension and unique camera elements. Directed and produced by Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing combined a series of low and high-angle shots while also incorporating close ups and slow motion. Through the use of panning, the audience was able to get a break from the action and reflect on the events of the film. Spike Lee’s collaboration of film components added humor and realistic emotions to the story. While the controversy of whether Mookie “did the right thing” will always be in favor of the viewer. Depending on how an audience member connects with the film will spark a variety of different emotions for that person. Do the Right Thing is a film that reflects both controversial ideals and unique film elements.
In conclusion, this film gives one a sense of what it is like in the inner city for all races. Spike Lee shows how the “ghettos” can become a destructive place and bring an end to many innocent lives. Do the Right Thing, sends this message to viewers, despite the harsh conditions that surround those in the film.
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.
The film observes and analyzes the origins and consequences of more than one-hundred years of bigotry upon the ex-slaved society in the U.S. Even though so many years have passed since the end of slavery, emancipation, reconstruction and the civil rights movement, some of the choice terms prejudiced still engraved in the U.S society. When I see such images on the movie screen, it is still hard, even f...
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.
Spike Lee is brand name when it comes to the film industry. When you try to ask any group of people their opinion about this man, you will probably receive numerous positive responses from the film community as well as the African American community. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989) is a film that illustrates how racial conflict can become a reality while showing the repercussions that come with racial segregation. Spike Lee uses a number of tools to write and produce the film in order to ensure the message reaches his intended audience in the best way possible. The use of location, soundtrack, and dialogue is abundant in this film. Therefore, this film analysis paper is for Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989). It is a film in which racial segregation ignites riots in a neighborhood dominated by the black population. The heightened scene of this film analysis is where Spike Lee throws a trash can and it is from this that hell breaks loose and riots begin.
Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.
Films are necessary in our time period because the human eye can articulate the message intended through sight allowing visual imagination to occur. In the book, world 2 by Max Brooks, he creates a character by the name Roy Elliot who was a former movie director. Roy Elliot manages to make a movie titled “Victory at Avalon: The Battle of the Five Colleges” and some how it goes viral. Similarly, Frank Capra’s film, “Why we Fight” expresses a sense of understanding the meaning of wars. Films do not inevitably portray truth because they display what the film director views as important and beneficial for people to know.
Often racial injustice goes unnoticed. Television tries to influence the mind of their viewers that blacks and whites get along by putting them on the screen to act as if interracial relationships has been accepted or existent. “At the movies these days, questions about racial injustice have been amicably resolved (Harper,1995). Demott stresses that the entertainment industry put forth much effort to persuade their audience that African Americans and Caucasians are interacting and forming friendships with one another that is ideal enough for them to die for one another. In the text, Demott states “A moment later he charges the black with being a racist--with not liking whites as much as the white man likes blacks--and the two talk frankly about their racial prejudices. Near the end of the film, the men have grown so close that each volunteer to die for the other” (Harper,1995). Film after film exposes a deeper connection amongst different races. In the text, Demott states “Day after day the nation 's corporate ministries of culture churn out images of racial harmony” (Harper, 1995). Time and time again movies and television shows bring forth characters to prove to the world that racial injustice has passed on and justice is now received. Though on-screen moments are noticed by many people in the world it does not mean that a writer/ director has done their
Movies take us inside the skin of people quite different from ourselves and to places different from our routine surroundings. As humans, we always seek enlargement of our being and wanted to be more than ourselves. Each one of us, by nature, sees the world with a perspective and selectivity different from others. But, we want to see the world through other’s eyes; imagine with other’s imaginations; feel with other’s hearts, at a same time as with our own. Movies offer us a window onto the wider world, broadening our perspective and opening our eyes to new wonders.