WhileDo the Right Thingwon several important
critics’ awards, including those of the New York, Chi-
cago, and Los Angeles film critics’ associations, it
received only two Academy Award nominations:
Danny Aiello was nominated for Best Supporting Ac-
tor and Spike Lee for Best Original Screenplay. Nei-
ther Aiello nor Lee took home the Oscar.
Impact Do the Right Thinghelped pave a path for so-
cially conscious urban dramas such asBoyz ’N the
Hood(1991) andMenace II Society(1993). These films
were written and directed by African American film-
makers John Singleton and Albert and Allen Hughes,
respectively. In the ensuing decade, Lee continued
to make edgy films about provocative subjects, such
as his essay on interracial relationships,Jungle Fever
(1991), and the biopicMalcolm X(1992).
Further Reading
Fuchs, Cynthia, ed.Spike Lee Interviews. Oxford: Uni-
versity Press of Mississippi, 2002. Collects twenty-
two interviews on topics including race, politics,
and the media.
Guerrero, Ed.Do the Right Thing. London: British
Film Institute, 2002. Focuses on Spike Lee’s rep-
resentation of race inDo the Right Thingand the
rise of multicultural voices in filmmaking.
Reid, Mark A., ed.Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.”
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press, 1997. This volume from the Cambridge
Film Handbooks series contains essays that ana-
lyzeDo the Right Thingfrom a variety of perspec-
tives, as well as reviews by influential critics.
Corinne Andersen
See also Academy Awards; African Americans;
Bonfire of the Vanities, The; Boom boxes; Film in the
United States; Multiculturalism in education; Public
Enemy; Racial discrimination.
Domestic violence
Definition Abuse, especially habitual abuse, of
one family or household member by another
During the 1980’s, the inappropriate and damaging na-
ture of family violence received increasingly powerful public
recognition, although intervention by the police, courts,
and other social services operated with little uniformity
across the United States.
Evidence of domestic violence has been identified in
Native American archaeological remains, and it was
observed in American Indian cultures at the time of
European contact, as well as in colonial America.
The U.S. Constitution provided legal rights to citi-
zens of the new republic, but those rights were miti-
gated by an English common law tradition that in
many respects treated women as chattel of their fa-
thers, brothers, or husbands. While the legal rights
of all American women were vastly improved by the
1980’s, American culture still retained traditional
associations of women with the private, domestic
sphere. On the average, men enjoyed greater politi-
cal and economic power and privilege than did
women. As a result, for many years domestic violence
committed by men against women often received lit-
tle public recognition as a social issue worthy of con-
cern. It was frequently assumed, moreover, to affect
only a minority of American women, who were even
sometimes blamed for their abuse. The problem was
seen as neither serious in individual cases nor en-
demic to American society.Abuse in the 1980’s The assumption that women
were responsible for their own abuse—still prevalent
in the 1980’s—both caused and was used to excuse
the frequently poor quality of police response, legal
advocacy, and social services for victims of abuse.
Some civil servants, however, were well aware of the
plight of American women, and they invested great
effort in promoting change. Partly as a result of
these efforts, courts in most U.S. states by the mid-
1980’s had acquired the statutory authority to issue
immediate restraining orders to protect abused
women from their abusers.
The first structured services offered to battered
women in the United States were provided in the
mid-1970’s by community-based organizations
founded by activists, usually informed by feminist
theory, who acted as advocates on behalf of women.
Such feminist advocates often believed that violence
was a result of gender inequalities perpetuated
by American patriarchal culture. Thus, they saw re-
form of the public, political sphere as necessary to
counter violence occurring in the private, domestic
sphere. The experiences of shelter staff exposed
them to horrific accounts of male violence toward
family members and also demonstrated the chal-
lenges of encouraging male-dominated governmen-
tal institutions, such as the police, the legal system,The Eighties in America Domestic violence 295