in Atlanta and nicknamed Spike by his mother Mary,
Shelton Jackson Lee was raised in the Bedford-Stuy-
vesant (Bed-Stuy) neighborhood of Brooklyn, New
York, where the action ofDo the Right Thingtakes
place. Lee received a B.A. in mass communications
from Morehouse College, a private, all-male, histori-
cally African American, liberal arts college in Atlanta
before earning an M.F.A. in film from New York Uni-
versity in 1982.
Plot Summary and Major Themes Do the Right Thing
opens in the early morning of what is predicted to be
the hottest day of the summer. Radio deejay Mister
Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson), who serves
as narrator, sets the scene. One by one, audience
members are introduced to the neighborhood’s
residents, including Sal (Danny Aiello), an Italian
American who owns a local pizza parlor. He operates
the restaurant with his two sons, the domineering
Pino (John Tuturro) and Vito (Richard Edson),
the frequent target of Pino’s abuse. Mookie (Spike
Lee), a likable slacker, delivers pizzas for Sal and
scrounges to earn enough money to take care of his
Puerto Rican girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez) and their
infant son Hector (Travell Lee Toulson).
Despite changes in the racial and ethnic makeup
of the block, Sal’s Pizzeria has remained a fixture in
the neighborhood. Its proprietor takes great pride
in the fact that his food has nourished the residents
of the block over the years. Pino, however, harbors
resentment toward many members of the commu-
nity and would prefer to close up shop. Tensions rise
when a young African American, Buggin’ Out (Gian-
carlo Esposito), threatens to boycott the restaurant
unless Sal puts some photographs of African Ameri-
cans on the restaurant’s walls, which currently display
famous Italian Americans. Buggin’ Out’s confronta-
tional black nationalism is balanced by the peace-
keeping tendencies of the patriarch of the street, Da
Mayor (Ossie Davis), a benign old drunk.
In many ways, the characters of Buggin’ Out and
Da Mayor embody the divergent philosophies of
two prominent civil rights activists from the 1960’s:
Malcolm X, who advocated the use of violence for
self-protection, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who
supported strategies of nonviolence. Throughout
the film, a mentally retarded African American man
named Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) tries to sell
photographs of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King,
Jr., to various people on the block. Most view Smiley
as a pest and try to ignore him, perhaps suggesting
that the messages of the two slain civil rights heroes
have also been largely ignored.
Tempers reach the boiling point when an African
American man, Radio Raheem, nicknamed for the
huge portable stereo he supports on his shoulders,
refuses to turn down his music as he orders a slice of
pizza at Sal’s. The song that blares from his box is
“Fight the Power” by the politically aware 1980’s rap
group Public Enemy. This song, which calls for an ac-
tive resistance by African Americans to white cul-
tural hegemony, serves as an aural motif throughout
the film. Its aggression is tempered, however, by the
mellifluous jazz score composed by Bill Lee, Spike’s
father, that rounds out the film’s softer moments.
Radio Raheem, who wears gold jewelry that spells
out LOVE across the knuckles of one hand and
HATE across the other, eventually has his radio com-
pletely demolished by Sal’s baseball bat. The scene
quickly turns chaotic. Caucasian police arrive on
the scene and, in their attempt to restrain Radio
Raheem, choke him to death with a nightstick.
Upon witnessing this, Mookie, who has been advised
by Da Mayor to “always do the right thing,” picks up a
trash can and throws it through the front window of
Sal’s Pizzeria, inciting a riot that leads to the total de-
struction of the restaurant.
As the sun rises on the next day, Sal and Mookie
make a tenuous reconciliation. The film closes by
zooming in on a photograph of Martin Luther King,
Jr., and Malcolm X on the charred wall of Sal’s
restaurant. Finally, quotations encapsulating each
leader’s philosophy are slowly scrolled down the
screen. The film does not suggest whether or not
Mookie did the right thing by smashing Sal’s win-
dow, nor does it suggest which civil rights leader’s
message bears the greater truth.Stylistic Innovations and Awards While the film
provides an unflinching, realist portrayal of racial
tensions, its overall style is better described as ex-
pressionistic. Shooting on location, Lee transformed
several city blocks by painting Brooklyn brownstones
with bright, hot colors. In terms of cinematography,
the film makes use of striking canted angles that con-
tribute to the mood of chaos and uncertainty.Do the
Right Thingalso contains an innovative montage in
which characters of various races and ethnicities
spew out a litany of racial epithets as if in direct re-
sponse to a viewer’s provocation.294 Do the Right Thing The Eighties in America