Words that Speak in the Movie, Do the Right Thing by Spike Lee

Movies distort reality by creating an ideal conflictual ambience, from which all the subtle human emotions and the characters arise. Humans might appear as consensus beings, seeking conformation and avoiding alienation by “society”. However, referring back to Aristotle’s saying, “human beings are by nature political animals” (1999), humans continually strive for power and control inasmuch as they strive for pure oxygen to breathe. Movies unleash these “socially unacceptable” political animals, exposing the hidden moral corruption embedded within most humans. Movies accomplish such a task by distorting reality, by reshaping the truth into a collection of video shots, taken from different angles, creating different meanings to content; the true meaning. The three genres of literature – narratives, poetry and drama – establish the key to revealing the distortion, thus providing humans with the ultimate method of deciphering our reality through the eyes of a glass lens. In the movie Do the Right Thing, these genres come together to paint a “picture” of us.

Narratives are the fundamental organizing principle of our lives, chronologically orienting our existence to prevent the loss of “content”. In Do the Right Thing, the characters are portrayed as real-life people, constantly striving for a living, messing around with friends or engaging in sexual activity with their beloved partners. This incredible quality that the author was able to initiate in the characters, this freedom that he provided the characters with enabled them to shape their own narratives. The author provided the characters with a time and space from which the characters rose, a neighborhood predominated by black people and other rejected people from society, and a v...

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...eir criteria of a “human” being –lacking innocence and full of anguish. The last scene that marked the end of the peak showed Smiley hanging the picture on Sal’s Wall of Fame. Surrounded by the raging crowd, Smiley ignites a match and sets the place on fire –the flames of human rage and brutality. The innocence had been restored in their society through the act of rebellion that Mookie awakened. Smiley’s narrative was that of a naïve, weak person. However, through the final scene, Smiley seemed to be the only person who was truly “aware” of the human emotions that were at a peak then.

Smiley attempted, and succeeded, in calming the flames of anger, and in providing the audience with a few moments of emotional release to relish. Smiley opened the audience’s eyes to the reality of the human conscience; seeking peace through violence, seeking relief through tension.