Two key issues emerge from the film, Do the Right Thing - race relations and the use of neighborhoods in cinema. Young, in her book entitled Fear of the Dark, explains how race and racism are often heavily highlighted in movies. It is as if Hollywood draws breath from them. Mennel in her work, Cities and Cinema, she observes that the use of cities and neighborhoods is provides powerful excitement to scripts. Even if the movies themselves are potent in dazzling viewers, the cities and neighborhoods that are used give a unique feel and realism. This paper discusses the two themes and how the film, Do the Right Thing uses them.
Race & Do The Right Thing
Set against a Brooklyn neighborhood backdrop, the story takes on tensions between African Americans and Italians. Specifically, the belief systems that in the individuals, Sal, who is Italian and Raheem, who is Black. Both individuals are very hung up on color. Sal believes that Black people do not have a place in the neighborhood, let alone society - and Raheem believes the same. Young writes that cinema tends to offer an explicit representation of the positions of race in society. When Hollywood chooses to deal with race and the relationship with the races, cinema typically taps into it being a force that each of the races in the film have (134-135). This is what occurs in the movie, as both the Italian and the Black races are shown to have similar beliefs and present similar actions.
The use of the racial statements that each character makes only provides a more substantial display on the frankness of the director, and society as a whole. The essential picture is that there is still a ways to go in terms of each race singing kumbaya, and working alongside one another. While it can be said that race relations have gotten better over time, the film offers a perspective that in certain cities, even ones as large as Brooklyn, that old attitudes die hard.
A key element of the film is in how it poses a questioning to the viewer regarding how race and racism are viewed. For Sal, he believes that his responses to race, more importantly, Black people do not need to be edited. While Raheem and other people of color are more relaxed in their frustrations about race. In other words, Sal is more to the point than Raheem in providing his views on race. For Raheem, the message is one of being a part of society and working together with others (even if they are not of the same color). Sal, on the other hand, is committed to maintaining the status quo with race relations. He wants everything to remain the same, which reflects a denial of the intertwining of races in society. One specific scene in the movie is the climax where Raheem is insulted for blaring his boombox and this leads to Sal calling him a racial name. After, a violent fight breaks out and Raheem is killed by a police officer who tries to end the fight. The realization of the scene is powerful in the sense that it makes the skin crawl because of the fear that manifests.
Young stresses that cinema which includes race and its relationship with society, tends to serve up the consequences in a tightly woven manner (135). Essentially, movies that depict race illustrate the problems with it and the foolishness associated with it as well. Young continues by stating that race in cinema is a cultural parasite. It is represented through behavior that is often viewed as abnormal, even if it is realistic (136-137). The point with the scene is to showcase to audiences, both Black, white and otherwise the display of silliness that racism is – and how society’s ignorance of it still existing is not only problematic, but potentially ruthless as lives like Raheem are lost senselessly because of it. Do the Right Thing, of course, is only a message relayer in that sense. Yet, the film has remained one of the most potent in Hollywood film in its depiction of race relations.
The Use of Neighborhoods and Cities in Do the Right Thing
ewis Mumford in his work, The Urban Prospect, writes that "the key to a fresh architectural image of the city as a whole, lies in working toward an organic unit of urban order which will hold together its component parts through success changes in function and purpose from generation to generation" (153). The argument posed here is that cities and their design work together with the people in them. There is an order to urban cities, and this order should be upheld throughout the years. Despite Mumford's stance on urban design and social complexity, Do the Right Thing represents a different Brooklyn from the one that viewers may know or hold in their mind.
Brooklyn, New York is often cited as one of the more populated areas of New York City, and its development throughout the years has been discussed a lot by media. This is due mostly to the fact that so much has occurred in the area - including sports teams, a job market and just the overall functionality of the area. In their observations on the urbanization of Brooklyn, Gibson and Jung write that the neighborhoods have shifted dramatically in the last 50 years due to gentrification. It has forced a kind of equilibrium that otherwise would not have come without it (2005). This is reflected in Do the Right Thing. The background is a changed Brooklyn, with the buildings being quite different because of the interactions with those living in them, and the overall updating of the design because of gentrification.
Mumford writes "one of the great causes for the wholesale exodus now taking place into the suburbs is that those who can make a choice are no longer content to put up with depleted physical environment and the often degraded social conditions of our great American cities" (155). This is heavily shown in the film as the characters in the film love and hate Brooklyn. One scene in the movie that shows this in the opening scene which showcases each of the individuals that will play a particular role in it and the distinctions of the personalities. This is done so that the viewer understands how distinct the neighborhood of Brooklyn is and how it has distinct personalities as well. The film, which was released to the public in the middle part of 1989, observes what Mennel calls, "a sociological exodus of central cities," (157), where Brooklyn's gentrification and "ethnographic accounts objectify its inhabitants. As a consequence, the film purports to show the truth about the ghetto and leave viewers with the illusion of a privileged knowledge of the parts of America that are simultaneously invisible and hypervisible" (157). Basically, the film is committed to bringing a realistic showing of how Brooklyn really is as opposed to an illusion, or a pre-gentrification neighborhood. The director’s point in using Brooklyn is to simultaneously reveal it as solely Black, while also displaying it as being designed to be non-Black, with the placing of Sal’s Pizzeria within the space of a predominantly African American culture.
Mennel believes that these kinds of images reflect a social cinematic view that is appropriate for audiences. It represents just how centralized certain cultures are against an urban narrative. The "mainstreamed, high production-value [puts] and exploits fantasies of poverty against the constitution of the ghettos" (153-155). For Do the Right Thing, the magic of Brooklyn is to take the viewer into the world of what is real, so they understand just how decaying the neighborhood has become – or at least one space, or area. The director uses this magic to highlight a central theme about urban neighborhoods within major cities. Essentially, that what has often been thought of as a generalized perspective of certain neighborhoods like Brooklyn, is only a slice of the pie. In other words, while the film shows an intersecting of Black culture against Italian – if the camera had panned outside of that space, the viewers would have obtained a completely different view of the Brooklyn design.
Works Cited
Gibson, Campbell, and Kay Jung. "Historical Census Statistics On Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For Large Cities And Other Urban Places In The United States." U.S. Census Bureau, Feb. 2005. Web. 14 Mar. 2016. <http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/lps75196/twps0076.pdf>.
Mennel, Barbara. Cities and Cinema. New York, NY: Routledge, 2008. Print.
Mumford, Lewis. The Urban Prospect. San Diego, CA: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968. Print.
Young, Lola. Fear of the Dark: 'Race', Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996. Print.
