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Friday, June 27, 2014
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER
"Do The Right Thing", Then And Right Now
Spike Lee as
Mookie, a pivotal character in the
director's legendary
"Do The Right Thing", which turns 25 on June 30.
Universal
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Friday,
June 27,
2014
June 30, 1989. That was the date that Spike Lee gave the world "Do The
Right Thing". I'm not sure the world has been quite the same since.
That summer in 1989 -- what a hot, feverish New York City sweat bath it was! --
I saw "Do The Right Thing" on the big screen in the very early morning hours of
Sunday, July 2, the last "Saturday" night show, at forty minutes past midnight,
at the-then East 59th Street Cineplex Odeon in Manhattan. I had waited
three hours in "Star Wars"-length lines to see it. The Odeon theater was
packed. I sat at the very back. The audience was racially mixed and
age-diverse.
"Do The Right Thing" was an intense, vivid experience. Every frame was
vibrant. Every shot had life. Nuance. Humanity. Every
colorful, eye-popping image spoke volumes. I felt this film in
unmistakable ways: in my heart and soul. The final confrontation in Sal's
Famous Pizzeria and the death of Radio Raheem I replayed over and over in my
mind. I saw "Do The Right Thing" again a week later. Then again
about a week or two after that. The feelings I had remained the same each
time. They still do.
Mr. Lee's third feature remains the zeitgeist of New York City and America in
terms of race relations and racial justice. In racial, sociopolitical and
economic terms "Do The Right Thing" evoked what was happening in America in 1989
and now. The film's atmosphere and setting was Brooklyn, specifically
"Bed-Stuy Do-Or-Die". In 1989 the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn
was predominantly black. In the film, characters debated gentrification
passionately, as if they knew what the future held. In 2014
Bedford-Stuyvesant is diverse, populated by many whites, some of whom would
likely have seen it as a no-go zone in the early 1990s.
Mr.
Lee himself talked about gentrification and culture and its affect on
New York and other U.S. cities earlier this year.
At the time "Do The Right Thing" was shot in the summer of 1988 revelations by
Tawana Brawley had unfolded. Two years earlier Michael Griffith was
murdered by a white mob in Howard Beach, Queens. Both of these events, as
well as other New York City racial flashpoints and injustices, were
incorporated, either purposefully or accidentally, into "Do The Right Thing".
An encounter between a Korean grocer and two black characters in one climactic
scene ended in edgy conciliation in the 1989 film. Less than a year later
about two miles away in the same borough of Brooklyn in real life, a black woman
was assaulted inside a Korean grocery, prompting a nearly year-long boycott.
In March 1991, a sixteen-year-old black girl, Latasha Harlins, was shot dead by
a Korean grocer in Los Angeles. That same month Rodney King had been
brutalized by L.A. cops for all the world to see. Neither event resulted
in convictions.
As its theatrical release arrived a few white film critics like Joe Klein of New
York Magazine, among others, declared that "Do The Right Thing" would cause
riots by blacks in New York and across the country, essentially saying that
white people would be better off staying at home and avoiding theaters. It
was racist fear-mongering at best. Such ignorant sentiments arguably kept
a sizable number of white moviegoers at home. Mr. Lee often laments that a
large number of whites have since accosted him, saying they first saw "Do The
Right Thing" on video, not on the big screen.
As for those film critics' predictions of blacks rioting, the only thing that
happened that summer following the release of "Do The Right Thing" in the U.S.
was the murder by several whites of Yusef Hawkins, a black teenager who had
merely answered an ad for a used car in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.
I had marched through Bensonhurst a few months after "Do The Right Thing" was
released. Police were the only line of safety between a few hundred
marchers and a full-scale white riot. It was a scary, ugly sight.
The climate of racial hatred had been so vicious on that autumnal Saturday in
1989 that it felt like 1964 Mississippi. Throngs of men, women and
children, young and old people -- just like those who attended Klan lynchings of
blacks -- lined the sidewalks on either side of us, five or six deep, screaming
racist invective, holding up watermelons and basketballs, mooning us and
spitting at us.
Today Bensonhurst, like Bedford-Stuyvesant, is far more diverse.
The art-imitates-life aspect of "Do The Right Thing" was astounding.
Inseparable. The fictional, authentic characters uttered the realities of
everyday life. When one of the characters shouts of Radio Raheem, "he died
because he had a radio!", you could easily think of Jordan Davis, who was killed
in 2012 by a white man who said the hip-hop music coming from the car Mr. Davis
sat in was loud.
You may think of Trayvon Martin, killed in a not so dissimilar manner from Mr.
Hawkins. Just minding his own business. Sal Frangione and Michael
Dunn could be the same person. Both had a distaste for blacks. Sal
and Donald Sterling could be twins: business owners who liked operating in and
benefitting from the attributes and financial success blacks brought them while
secretly or overtly despising blacks at the very same time.
The political ramifications were also clear in "Do The Right Thing". The
motifs burned bright. Mookie wore Jackie Robinson's Brooklyn Dodgers
jersey, a symbol for a man whose legacy was activism and justice-seeking.
Ossie Davis's Da Mayor character resembled then-New York City mayoral candidate
David Dinkins. The film's "Dump Koch" graffiti was evident. Mr. Lee
said he hoped his film would help oust Ed Koch, who had accentuated the climate
of racial tension and division in New York throughout his decade-plus long
tenure as the city's mayor, from office. Mr. Lee's wish was granted.
Mr. Koch lost to eventual mayor Mr. Dinkins in the Democratic primary three
months after "Do The Right Thing" was released.
Posters of Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential run were a backdrop in Mr. Lee's
film, and now, over 25 years later, an often pilloried and disrespected
President Obama sits in the very office Mr. Jackson ran for. Mr. Jackson
was a disciple and close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, whose quote, along
with Malcolm X's, form a coda to "Do The Right Thing". Both quotes, on the
impact of violence and its effects, speak to much the same points and are closer
in commonality than some may wish to think.
"Do The Right Thing" is a series of minor and major incursions and invasions of
space, territory and assumption. Each of these elements is played out then
countered like moves on a life-sized chessboard. Calculation, percolation,
escalation. The mechanics of the film's characters, predicaments, social,
cultural, historical and racial realities were emblazoned throughout in ways
large and small. In all that the memorable characters of "Do The Right
Thing" said, felt and did, their naked honesty pierced the screen.
I maintain that Spike Lee's film represented one of the most honest and genuine
conversation starters about race and racism in America. In that summer of
1989 I had discussions about the director's film with my white work
colleagues. We viewed "Do The Right Thing" very differently. Two
colleagues I spoke to were worried about Sal's pizzeria being destroyed. I
was concerned about Radio Raheem being killed for no reason at all.
There's "Imitation Of Life" and numerous other films, but "Do The Right Thing"
was one of the signature films about race, class and conscience. It
confronts you and compels a reaction. Complex, even-handed and nuanced,
the film is an open-ended question rather than an attempt at an answer to the
deep, still-very real (and worsening) problems of institutional racism, and the
casual racism within those who believe they aren't racist.
"Do The Right Thing" was the groundbreaker, in lots of ways.
One of the questions I still ask myself and others 25 years later, is, why
didn't Sal simply call the police? As he smashes Radio Raheem's stereo box
to pieces with his baseball bat, a pay telephone, which we have seen used in the
film at least once before, is less than two feet from him. The police had
visited Sal's Famous Pizzeria just moments before. Why didn't he use it?
"Do The Right Thing" has its 25th anniversary on Monday, June 30.
COPYRIGHT 2014. POPCORNREEL.COM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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