Right Hand/Left Hand: Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing

Right Hand/Left Hand: Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing

By Keith Uhlich on July 4, 2009 in Film Jump to Comments (0)

Released 20 years ago this month, Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing was one of the most controversial films of its time. It was praised in many quarters for its script, direction, photography, acting and music, and singled out by some prominent critics as a rich and multifaceted drama about racism, police brutality and the dynamics of an urban community. Others condemned it as contrived, unrealistic, shrill, even irresponsible—a potent work of propaganda intended to stoke racial resentment, perhaps even incite violence.

That there were no notably violent incidents at theaters showing Do the Right Thing is a matter of public record. But one doubts this was merely a lucky break on Lee's part. A close look at the movie's construction confirms not just its entertainment value and political relevance, but its generosity of spirit. Do the Right Thing is not a film-as-argument. It's a film about arguments. More specifically, it's about the roots of the grievances people hold and the anger they unleash.

To view the video essay at The L's website, click here. To read a transcript of the narration, click here.

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[Editor's Note: This is the original comments section for this entry, which did not transfer in the Blogger to WordPress import.] GLI said... Wow. I think this is the first analysis of "Do the Right Thing" I've ever read that didn't look at the film through the context of *Spike Lee: Angry Black Director.* I think Lee's persona gets in the way of the film world seeing just how brilliant a director he is. One day "25th Hour" is going to get the acknowledgment it deserves... Really, really great points you made here, Matt. Thanks for your fantastic work - and keep it coming! 7/04/2009 4:02 PM Bruce Reid said... "It's a film about arguments. More specifically, it's about the roots of the grievances people hold and the anger they unleash." Absolutely. Lee's best films, for me, are almost overloaded with ideas, ideologies, rants, sermons, piss-takes, somber admonishments, bullshit pronouncements, arguments both good-natured and bilious, rationalizations justified and half-assed. He loves listening to people talk as much as any director ever has, especially the way deeply held but little-reflected beliefs lead to speech that shields as much as it reveals. I wouldn't call this even-handed so much--Lee's sympathies are rarely in doubt, even without his offscreen interviews--as open-hearted and observational. However many of his films wind down to tragedy (and however good he is at invoking it) Lee's fundamentally a comic director, attuned to the bright bounce of dialogue as worldviews collide, noticing every banana peel we're too self-absorbed to spot as we barrel down the street. Jungle Fever piles on incident and secondary characters like a madcap farce; Summer of Sam's married couple is '30s screwball peeled raw; Inside Man, with its slick heist structure used as an excuse to skewer bureaucratic infighting and revel in New York's boisterous ethnic mosaic, was the true remake of Sargent's Taking of Pelham One Two Three. He'll never make a film as "perfect" as Do the Right Thing again, because those Aristotelian unities turned out to be a one-off in a career (stage adaptations notwithstanding) that thrives on bustle and community too much to stay in one spot, or with one narrative thread, for very long. (This lively voraciousness is precisely what makes When the Levees Broke a masterpiece.) Which prompts me less to think "contrived, unrealistic, shrill, even irresponsible" as Altmanesque. Thanks to you and Rosenbaum (who probably wouldn't care for that last comparison) for this reminder that Lee has never been about "either/or." My favorite example of his balance, remembered happily this Independence Day, is how the credits of Malcolm X alternate between burning an American flag and the Rodney King video; but when we're down to the iconic X that marks both the man and his movie, it proudly stands as pure red, white, and blue. 7/04/2009 9:00 PM Anonymous said... Twenty D, muthafucka! 7/05/2009 9:42 AM Jason Bellamy said... Nice job, Matt, as usual. Do The Right Thing has always been a difficult movie for me to watch, less because of its challenging content than because of its unusual rhythms. It's a film filled with stops and starts and lots of seemingly disjointed dead-ends. I've always thought this film hits me the way that rap music in the 80s must have hit the ears of older white males. I assume that's the point. Though it's still a worthy argument to try and determine whether this film has, or intended to have, a clear singular message, I agree with GLI that it's refreshing to see this film analyzed beyond that narrow context. Good work. 7/05/2009 10:38 AM Fritz Novak said... Often when a film's dialogue or story engages political issues, viewers often get so worked up about them that they miss the subtext entirely. Look at Team America, which was a satire of American's myopic obsession with Hollywood cliches (the most prevalent comic subtext of South Park as well), and mostly inspired more uninspired left vs. right backbiting. Great job cutting through to the relevant thematic content of Do the Right Thing: Some people will use any pretense to exert force and others often get caught up in it, despite their own reservations or the pointlessness of the cause. Spike Lee will be the first to tell you that race matters, but in Do The Right Thing it often functions as a smokescreen for both the characters and the audience. 7/08/2009 10:28 AM Steven Boone said... This video only adds to my conviction that if Spike Lee is "the black" anything, it's "the black Sam Fuller"-- and that Do the Right Thing is his Shock Corridor/White Dog: Theatrical microcosm--yeah, like Thornton Wilder, but also with Fuller's tabloid-columnist way of bringing deeper readings inside a Trojan horse dressed to look like agitprop. This film is the ideal video essay subject, since so much of its lasting impact has to do with the way its Matisse colors and hot lights make the viewer sweat and palpitate. It was street theater, but, damn, that street was real. If I remember right, this was the same year I got to see Spike's and Ernest's inspiration, Lawrence of Arabia, in 70mm at the Ziegfeld. What a year. 7/09/2009 11:00 AM Matt Zoller Seitz said... Boone: " If I remember right, this was the same year I got to see Spike's and Ernest's inspiration, Lawrence of Arabia, in 70mm at the Ziegfeld. What a year." Yeah, that was '89. And that was a great movie year. 7/09/2009 11:59 AM Bryan said... What a wonderful analysis of this film. I also never saw it as a film meant to incite or propagandize. I'm sure others must have written about this in academic texts that I haven't read, but I always viewed Mookie's throwing the garbage can through Sal's window as a very human gesture. It was violent, but in turn turned the mounting violence toward the pizzeria, and (possibly, hopefully) prevented any physical harm coming to Sal and Pino from the gathering mob. Thanks for the deconstruction, really great stuff. 7/16/2009 4:13 PM Anonymous said... I have always thought this movie was an insightful and important commentary on the racism inflicting the United States at the time it was released. I analyzed it myself at: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1933150/spike_lees_movie_do_the_right_thing.html?cat=40 7/18/2009 7:08 PM
Posted by Keith Uhlich on 2010-06-06 02:51:20

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