Do The Right Thing Essay

The film Do the Right Thing is set in Bedford-Stuyvesant. It begins with Sal, an Italian American, and his sons who run a pizzeria in a neighborhood where minorities live. Mookie, played by Spike Lee, is the pizzeria’s delivery boy who is working on the hottest day of summer which ends up being the same day everyone decides they are fed up with the subtle racism that goes on between races. This separation between races leads to Buggin Out, a frequent customer of the pizzeria, boycotting the establishment because there were no pictures of black people on Sal’s wall. This anger cause Sal and eventually Mookie to explode and react to the situation with violence. Sal’s anger leads to the death of an influential man in the community while Mookie’s anger leads to the destruction of Sal’s shop.
Mookie’s initial action of throwing the trashcan through the window of Sal’s pizzeria was done through impulse. I think Mookie did the right thing but not to the right people. I believe this because Mookie’s reaction did show that he was angered by the actions of the police but the police were not affected in any way from Mookie’s reaction. The police came right back to the same corner the fight had just broke out at and once they return they see Sal’s place burned down. Because Mookie acted on a whim he didn’t think about what would be reported in

the long run meaning, if the police could kill a man and throw him in the car like nothing happened, they would mostly likely be perfectly fine with lying and creating a false story on what actually happened in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood which in turn discredited Radio Raheem’s reputation. I believe Mookie should have had more of a legal approach. I think he should have taken the issue to the courts and made sure people knew this was a frequent occurrence in the community and that is was wrong.
Another reason I believe Mookie did the right thing to the wrong people is, once Mookie threw the trashcan it seemed as if he compared Radio Raheem’s life to the property of Sal’s pizzeria.

When Mookie attacked the pizzeria it moved the crowds anger from Radio Raheem’s death and the treatment of the police, to Sal’s undercover racism. In “Why Mookie Did the Wrong Thing”, Natalie Hopkins writes “property cannot and will not ever equate to a human life” (Hopkins p. 2). Although we disagree on whether or not Mookie’s actions were right or wrong and what reasoning behind them, we do agree that a life should not be compared to a

building.
Considering the recent killings of minorities by the police, this film Is still very relevant. Black people still don’t trust the cops and the inner cities are still over policed. These concepts are shown in the movie The people living in the communities are also still pretty accurate. In Do the Right Thing the Brooklyn neighborhood is made up of many different minorities. This is similar to most urban neighborhoods which are still made up of Blacks, Hispanics, and some Asians. Another thing that is relevant to today is how people interact with each other, meaning people in the neighborhood know each other even if they don’t actually talk to each other. In “Still a Racial Rorschach” written by Viveca Greene and Chris Tinson, Jared A. Ball, a student at Morgan State University says, “Today, Mookie still bends to pick up the scraps thrown to the ground by his white benefactors” (Ball p. 3). This statement is still very true seeing how people in cities are still having to follow the orders of their white counterparts in order to get ahead or even survive on daily basis. The scene where the white man is found in the community is also relevant to today because many poor neighborhoods are being gentrified because of the cheap housing.
Spike Lee’s does an effective job of setting the scene of the whole film. One way he does this is through the outfits of the characters. Everyone in the film dressed like normal person who lived in the neighborhood. The man who stepped on Buggin Out’s shoes is wearing a Larry Bird shirt. Once the audience sees Larry Bird they automatically know this man is white. Another piece of the movie where Lee uses mise-en-scene effectively is his choice of location. Lee made sure he picked the perfect block to shoot the film. By picking a real block it made the audience feel like this same story can happen on their block or in their neighborhood. The scene with Radio Raheem and his “love” and “hate” brass knuckles are also an example of Lee’s use of mise-en-scene. By adding these pieces of jewelry to Radio Raheem’s costume it represents the fight between love and hate in the neighborhood and Radio Raheem’s anger with the racism that is shown later on in the film. Another important prop used by Radio Raheem is his boombox which is always playing Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”. This boombox embodies who Radio Raheem was. Radio Raheem was loud, like his boombox but he never really harmed anyone. His boombox also showed what the culture was like during the time the movie was shot.
Mookie did do the right thing in the sense of responding to the injustice of what had happened with Radio Raheem and the police but his exact actions were not the right thing to do. Knowing Mookie didn’t think about what would transpire with the crowd, one can understand why Mookie threw the can through the window. Sal had just called everyone in the shop the n-word and Mookie finally saw the real Sal and understood Sal was only in the neighborhood because there was no need for a pizzeria in his own city. Although Lee did not know this film would still be relatable to life in America today, he did an excellent job of showing how a community works.