“Do the Right Thing”

[Alcibiades]

If I had to pick, I would probably say this was the best film of the 80s (although that is a topic for another day), but, regardless, it definitely raises many enduringly pertinent political and social questions, especially after the events of the summer of 2020.

The film’s title inevitably leads to the question of who does do the right thing? Is the burning of Sal’s (who is generally portrayed as sympathetic until he says the n-word) pizzeria following the police’s murder of Radio Raheem the right thing? And does Mookie do the right thing by throwing a trash can through the pizzeria’s window? He incites the destruction of the building, but he arguably saves Sal’s life by directing the crowd’s anger away from him as a human and towards his property. Spike Lee leaves no clear answers to this question by ending the film with two contradictory quotes, one from Martin Luther King Jr. deploring rioting and violence, and one from Malcolm X saying that it is a legitimate recourse against oppression.

Of course, as Lee himself has later suggested in interviews, you may think that asking who did the right thing is missing the point of the film, and we should instead focus on how the complex interplay of racial, social and economic factors portrayed throughout the film might lead to its climax.

[If my soul was made of stone]

I don't really have anything to add to your analysis of the film itself, but I feel obligated to note that "Fight the Power" is a masterful and era-defining piece of music and a hell of a theme tune. Perhaps in a just world it would've been showered with Best Original Song-type awards, but it works greater being separated from that biased and bigoted field of self-congratulation as a middle finger towards the entire enterprise.

[Alcibiades]

I don't really have anything to add to your analysis of the film itself, but I feel obligated to note that "Fight the Power" is a masterful and era-defining piece of music and a hell of a theme tune. Perhaps in a just world it would've been showered with Best Original Song-type awards, but it works greater being separated from that biased and bigoted field of self-congratulation as a middle finger towards the entire enterprise.

I completely agree - it really helps make the movie.