Racial Tension In 'Do The Right Thing'

At the very beginning of “Do the Right Thing”, the audience is introduced to an influential song that will be heard throughout the movie called “Fight the Power”. This song, sung by Public Enemy, made a point of calling people out to fight for the equality blacks rightfully deserved. The main character in this movie, Mookie, is a lazy African American boy who works for an Italian-American family in a primarily black neighborhood. He’s a pizza delivery boy and wants to get paid for taking hours to deliver a simple pizza down the block. He has a son named Hector, and while Hector is not in the movie much, it reinstates the fact that Mookie has no ambition to “do the right thing” and support his child and girlfriend, Tina – who is seen at the beginning of the movie dancing to “Fight the Power”, which sets an intense tone for the rest of the film. The man Mookie works for is named Sal and he has two

While Vito and Pino couldn’t be more different, it doesn’t change the fact that in the end, the blacks in the neighborhood still end up destroying the men’s pizza place. There are many other powerful and important characters that help shape the theme of “Do the Right Thing”, but all in all, this is a movie about racial tension and a very, very hot summer day. The mise-en-scene of “Do the Right Thing” is one of the most important aspects of the movie. As I stated before, “Fight the Power” was playing at the beginning of the film and we saw Tina dancing to this song. Every time the words “Fight the Power” play, Tina is seen in a boxing outfit. This sets the mood of the movie because of the aggression in the way Tina is dancing. When Mookie is first introduced in the movie, he is wearing a baseball jersey. But this is no random baseball jersey – the jersey he is wearing was Jackie Robinson’s, who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was the first to play in the Major Leagues as an African American