Open Thread: Do The Right Thing Edition
The 20th anniversary of the release of Spike Lee’s ground-breaking movie Do The Right Thing, which dealt with a day in the life of a block in Bed Stuy, and in so doing brought the multi-layered issues of gentrification race coexistence and conflict in the inner city to a broader national audience. Two decades later,…
The 20th anniversary of the release of Spike Lee’s ground-breaking movie Do The Right Thing, which dealt with a day in the life of a block in Bed Stuy, and in so doing brought the multi-layered issues of gentrification race coexistence and conflict in the inner city to a broader national audience. Two decades later, how much has changed and how much remains the same?
I need to rent it again. The first and only time I saw it was in 1991 when I was living in Chicgo but at that time residing in Hong Kong. I got you beat etson, I was 9,000 miles away.
Yes, Heather, we have apparently imported this from China where you would see it all the time. Babies are never sick and never spread any disease so it’s OK. If i saw it I would tell the parent that it’s not done in a civilized culture just as I told someone I once saw in an office blow his nose into the bathroom sink.
It’s called DVD.
I never saw the movie either. Was finishing the equivalent of 8th grade 3000 miles from BedStuy when it came out.
Enjoying the interesting discussion so far though – thanks.
I loved the movie. Visually beautiful, great dialogue, a great cast. At once a highly stylized fable and grittily realistic, it spoke to and about simmering anger, frustration and tension in the City, particularly in many predominantly African-American neighborhoods. The movie was totally in your face and beautifully elegiac at the same time.
Gentrification was just one of many themes Spike was playing with. Anger at the police, racial and cultural stereotyping and misunderstanding and the role class has in that, big philosphical questions of whether Malcolm or Martin pointed the better way forward for African American, all while portraying a particular time, place and feel.
I remember the white guy with the Brownstone was wearing a Celtics jersey, yet said he was born in Brooklyn. And with that line, all the folks arguing with him just threw their hands up in the air in a wonderfully choreographed moment. But he was a bit character.
i think a better movie that deals with issues of race and class is The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love.
*rob*
It’s called “elimination communication,” Rob, and no, it ain’t pretty.
The school of thought behind it is, in more enlightened cultures, (like in the third-world where they have open sewers), babies never use diapers. And isn’t that eco-friendly? And so, there is an entire subculture of crunchy parenting that relies upon listening for baby’s “signals” that they are ready to go and then holding them over the toilet, sink or gutter when nature calls until they do go or your arms get really tired.
Mookie kind of starts out as the protaginist but gives in to the emotional tribalism stemming from the deadly episode between Radio Raheem and the police. At the end the stubborness of the two men (Mookie and the Pizza place owner) makes everyone a loser. No pizza for the block, no store for the pizzeria owner.
I think the part of the movie I remember most is when “Mookie(Spike Lee) takes Sal to task on why he doesn’t have any pictures of famous Black people up on his wall in the pizza place in an all Black neighborhood.
It’s a good movie that really makes you think about race relations between all the different races.