#96: Do The Right Thing

I'm behind on my AFI Top 100 List updates! Oops! We actually watched #96, Do The Right Thing, before our family visit. I don't think I've ever watched a Spike Lee movie before...if I have I didn't realize it was Spike Lee, ya know? I actually commented to David in the early part of the movie that at the very least, watching the top 100 list was making me watch movies that I never before would have watched.

You see, Do The Right Thing starts off as a "day in the life" sort of movie. It's set in a Brooklyn neighborhood that is mostly black, with a pizza place owned by an Italian family and a grocery store owned by Koreans. There's a bit of plot built around the relationships between the community & the shop owners, but the movie starts off as an easy plot. Then it builds, with seemingly small things that happen or are said, and more and more of these, until things escalate to a point where you can feel the tension, you can feel the anger, you can feel the hurt. And then it explodes.

One might think with a title like this, the movie would *tell* the viewer what the right thing is, but it leaves that question open. What is an appropriate way to deal with racism? Is it ok to use violence to end violence? The movie ends with two conflicting quotes on violence, one from Martin Luther King Jr. and the other from Malcolm X. With these conflicting quotes, it is definitely left wide open. Maybe there is no right thing? Maybe the right thing for one person isn't the right thing for another? It's easy for me to sit here & say that it's never acceptable to use violence as a response to racism, but I've never been a victim of racism. I still can't support responding with violence, but I can understand it.

Up next: The Last Picture Show