Fight the Power

763 Words2 Pages

Aside from the leisure to watch movies, film studies is another step into the implicit movie analysis. In the award winning American comedy-drama film, Do The Right Thing (1989), Spike Lee portrays the racial and social issues over the plot duration of twenty-four hours during the hottest day of the summer in Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. The story centers around the ethnic tension between the Italian-American family that owns the local pizza place, “Sal’s Famous Pizzeria”, and a group of African Americans in the neighborhood. Throughout the film, Lee uses a variety of mise-en-scène that creates an overall look and mood of the film, including the decor of the neighborhood and pizzeria, lighting, camera angles, music, costumes, and other components.
One of the vital elements of the film that creates the tense mood is the setting. The film is set on the hottest day of the summer in a multicultural neighborhood—Bed-Stuy. The heat exacerbates the ethnic tension among the main characters: Sal, the Italian-American owner of the pizzeria; his sons Pino and Vito; his African-American delivery boy Mookie; Radio Raheem, the guy who blazes boom box with him everywhere; and Buggin’ Out, one who boyscotts Sal’s pizzeria for excluding Afrian-American stars, or ‘brothas’, from the all-Itatlian American “Wall of Fame”. The brightened colors further highlight the sense of the heatwave and emerging tension in the area.
Camera angles are another crucial components of the mise-en-scène. In the film, Spike Lee uses a variation of camera angles and shots to indicate different feelings of the character and setting. For example, the camera zooms in on Radio Raheem’s face to focus on his serious facial expression several time...

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...mately uses the mise-en-scène in the movie that “creates a feeling completely in tune with the movie’s narrative and themes” (Barsam and Monahan 173) in relation to racial and social issues in the film—Do The Right Thing.

Works Cited

Barsam, Richard Meran., and Dave Monahan. Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
Conard, Mark T. The Philosophy of Spike Lee. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 2011. Print.
Lee, Spike, and Cynthia Fuchs. Spike Lee: Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2002. Print.
Lee, Spike, and Terry McMillan. "Do The Right Thing: Film and Fury." Five for Five: The Films of Spike Lee. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1991. 77-115. Print.
Lee, Spike. "Do the Right Thing: A Spike Lee Joint." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.
"Quotes." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.

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