Though the viewer can pick out several obvious exceptions – the Korean grocery storeowners and Sal and his two sons among these – Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy: Do or Die!), as depicted in Spike Lee’s film Do The Right Thing, is clearly a predominantly black neighborhood. And though the African American community does make up the majority of the population in this small homogenous neighborhood, it does not stop racial and ethnic tensions between this majority and the racist non-black minority from soaring through the roof right along with the rising temperatures on the single day during which the film plays out.
Sal’s oldest son, Pino, never ceases to vocalize his distaste for the Bed-Stuy neighborhood and for its black inhabitants – from the first moment he appears on screen with his father and brother to open the pizzeria to the very last, when the pizzeria is nothing more than a scorched foundation. The seeds of hate are sown, but the actual conflict between black and white does not start until after an angry Buggin’ Out – sitting beneath a towering wall filled with photographs of Italian American celebrities – complains that there are no “brothers” on the pizzeria’s “Wall of Fame” and gets himself kicked out for disturbing the peace. Buggin’ Out vows to boycott the pizzeria as he bounds off to find support for his cause. From this moment on, things go downhill.
The imposing figure of Radio Raheem – introduced in each of his scenes by a close up of his boom box and Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” blasting at full volume – escalates the tension by strutting into the pizzeria and attempting to order a slice of pizza while Sal yells at him to turn the music off. The film employs shot-reverse-shot during this exchange – showing a close up of Radio Raheem’s calm expressionless face as he orders his slice of pizza, then switching to a red-faced Sal yelling at him to turn the music off, and back again – and though this technic makes the incident seem a little absurd, the viewer can sense the tension increase ten-fold when Radio Raheem finally shuts the boom box off and silence falls over the pizzeria.
These two scenes make conflict during any future encounters between Buggin’ Out, Radio Raheem, and Sal and his sons an absolute certainty in the viewer’s mind. And this prediction is brought to fruition when the two young black men return later in the evening to protest against Sal’s treatment of them and the exasperated pizzeria owner – after another shot-reverse-shot exchange of loud words with them – finally smashes Radio Raheem’s boom box with a baseball bat. Once again, the music is silenced, and all hell breaks loose. A fight breaks out between the Italian family and their black patrons, and when the cops arrive – also wound up after a previous incident with a bunch of young black boys who opened a fire hydrant and soaked a white man in his car – they only make the situation worse.
Radio Raheem is strangled to death by a white police officer, who immediately flees the scene after he realizes what he has done, and the other cops follow suit. Sal and his two sons being the only ones left, the rage of the mob that has formed in the heat of the conflict is focused on them. I believe that Mookie, who does feel ties to his black community but who may also have some positive feelings toward Sal and his sons – or toward Sal’s youngest son, Vito, at least – realizes in this moment that he must do something to prevent the mob from retaliating for one death with another. That is why he throws the trashcan through the window of the pizzeria – he does it to divert the hatred from the people toward the store.
