Show some Respect for Spike Lee!

OKAY guys I’m going to try to be different. Everyone is hating on Do the Right Thing. Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing was not the best movie we’ve seen but it did have a very strong clear message that wasn’t a mystery to everyone. The characters in the movie did not have any subtleties in their manner but were very outspoken in expressing the direct message of racism and cultural tensions. “Why are there no brothers on the wall of fame?!” “Those Koreans are geniuses.” “RADIO RAHEEM!!” I will always remember what they did to Radio Raheem.. so sad.

Yes the movie wasn’t a better movie than Maria Full of Grace but I cannot really compare the messages because Maria Full of Grace was about girl Colombian drug mules while this was about the racial tensions in the ghetto neighborhoods of New York. I think both are interesting but after watching Do the Right Thing I really started to feel confused and scared the next day while in class. The youtube videos we watched about the riots that occurred in 1992 Los Angeles showed an actual reality to Spike Lee’s movie. The movie was an over exaggeration of events that happen but it was funny that the movie was made three years before the Los Angeles riots.

Now that I think about it, I think the videos of the Los Angeles riots affected me more than Do the Right thing did although the exaggerated events of the movie prepared me for the videos we saw. The message that Spike Lee wanted to show was not at all a joke even though it sometimes seemed that way for example when the white boy brownstone owning bicyclist (like what I did there?) runs over Buggin Out’s new Jordan’s. This stuff really happened in REAL LIFE except people didn’t fight about little problems like messed up shoes, black people not being accepted on Sal’s wall of fame, or Radio Raheem playing music too loud. They rioted and burned and looted for SIX DAYS because Rodney King was not brought to justice and the cops that beat him to death were acquitted of all charges. The people were angry and they knew no one cared about them in their society. Like the people of Bedford Stuy they lost a member of their community due to police brutality and violence was their answer.

How do these things happen? Why does racial tension occur so often in our nations history and how does it cure itself? I think it is because the world is slowly shrinking and people are unwilling to accept people that are unknown to what they already know about people. Over time this goes away but only for that one group of people. There is always racial tension however and society decides who is on top and who is not and will do so forever until there are differences between people on this planet. Even now I feel like these racial tensions exist and it is more subtle in our society. Its not politically correct to discriminate any more but people still do. We all do consciously or unconsciously. Even when the whole world mixes together and everyone is beige there will still be differences that separate factions on this earth. Do the Right Thing is an important movie because it illustrates a real time of social tension in history and although exaggerated can be very eye opening when you know that the LA riots occurred only a few years later.