The film “Do the Right Thing” illustrates a day in the life of a predominantly black neighborhood in Brooklyn. The growing tension and feelings of frustration which increase throughout the day, determine the characters to become impatient and violent and to rise against racial discrimination by the end of the day. The morale of the story is not difficult to understand. However, Mookie’s action, which attracts the attention of the crowd and determines them to destroy the restaurant, is ambiguous. While the violence escalates quickly and unexpectedly at the end of the hottest day of the year, the events must be understood as a result of the city planning. The neighborhood negatively affects the lives of the characters because it supports the social and racial stratification of the city, acts like a prison for the African-Americans who live there, and it is unsafe for its dwellers.
First, the neighborhood planning seems to support the social and racial stratification of the city by keeping poor African Americans grouped together in an area where everyone is poor and there are very few opportunities for work. Most people who live in the neighborhood share the same social and racial reality. This is a Black neighborhood, as one character notices and this label makes people self-identify with this part of the city. Neighborhoods are typically self-designed according to the structure of the population. Macionis and Paraillo notice that, because they are “distinguished by physical or social boundaries, neighborhoods contain people who share important social characteristics such as social class, race and ethnicity” (184). Thus, throughout the film, most characters seem to walk around aimlessly, and except for Mookie, nobody seems to have a job among African-Americans. There is no African American business owner in the film, although most characters are Black. However, this seems to be a closely tied community, as most people know each other and socialize every day. They sit on the stairs of their buildings, having nothing to do and nowhere to go. Most figures of authority such as policemen and employers are White, while African Americans seem to live on welfare. As Mookie’s sister points out, even Mookie, the only one who seems to have a job in the film, is barely able to pay his rent.
Apart from being poor, the characters also feel trapped in this environment. In the film, the entire action seems to take place on one street, and in the buildings on each side of this street. There seems to be no escape from this space. There is no beginning or end to the street, and no African-American character is seen driving a car. The only people who pass by in cars are Whites. No character is seen making plans to go outside the community, at least temporarily. This is a closed universe from which there is no escape. The outside world seems to barely exist for the characters. The three older men who sit under the umbrella talking throughout the film exemplify the fate of most people in the neighborhood, who face the same red wall in their future. These three characters summarize the problem of most people in the neighborhood, who “ain’t gonna do a god damn thing” to change their own life, despite their dreams. They seem to be too beaten down, or too used to poverty and to being defeated and under control, to try to break free from the visible and invisible barriers that keep them down. Apart from African Americans, the Italian Americans in the film seem trapped as well. Pino asks his father to sell the pizzeria and leave, because he feels that this place is not his home. He does not like to live in the predominantly Black neighborhood. However, Sal does not want to leave, having lived in this space for 25 years. He feels at home in this poor neighborhood, and he is emotionally connected to the people who ate his pizza for so many years. Consequently, Pino feels imprisoned in a space he does not relate to. He is not beaten down as African-Americans, but he is forced to live here by his father.
The limited space in which the characters move in the film seems to be reduced even more by overcrowding. Particularly in the scenes in which Mookie walks on the street, he seems to be surrounded by people all the time. While Jacobs (32) claims that solving the overcrowding problem will not reduce the level of violence on the streets, overcrowding is one of the problems that are present in the film, and which intensify interracial problems. For example, when a young White man bumps into Buggin’ Out and gets his shoes dirty, a racial conflict emerges, where Buggin’ Out demands to know what a White man is doing in ‘his’ neighborhood. The fact that the streets seem suffocated by people who linger on the stairs or walk on the streets with no purpose accentuates the feeling of space deprivation. People do not have enough space to extinguish tensions rapidly. Tensions are accentuated by the witnesses who are always present and who encourage fighting as spectacle, and as a means of breaking the boredom. Interracial conflicts become spectacles because neighbors are always present to assist and to act as eager audiences.
Finally, the lack of social control on the streets transforms them into unsafe environments, where anything is possible. Jacobs argues in this respect that typically, peace on the streets is “kept by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves” (Jacobs 32). However, in some communities, particularly in housing projects with high population density, the order can only be maintained with the help of the police forces (Jacobs 32). In this film also, the only people who seem to act as ‘guardians’ of the sidewalk are Mother Sister and Mayor. The nicknames of the characters themselves suggest authority statuses, which give them the right to interfere in the actions of younger members of the community, and maintain peace. In this respect, Mother Sister notifies Mookie that she is always watching him, while Mayor has an important role in trying to maintain order on the streets after the conflict breaks at Sal’s pizzeria. He is also the character to saves Eddie when he is about to be hit by a car. Apart from these characters however, most people seem to have no notion of order. For example, they open the hydrant, getting a car driver wet. No one in the area tries to control the situation, or to stop the youngsters, particularly since the man is White.
Therefore, the structure of the neighborhood seems to be the most important factor in the violence which emerges by the end of the film. The urban environment presented in the film shows a neighborhood which is overcrowded and populated by poor, unemployed African American youth. Racial conflicts seem to be determined to a great extent by the lack of private space, and by the lack of occupation which gives people time and interest to assist to, and encourage violence. Moreover, the characters seem trapped in this space, from where there seems to be no escape. Finally, the lack of social control at the level of the community, which makes the police the only ones responsible for public order, is characteristic for overcrowded urban neighborhoods, and leads to the final conflict and the riot which follows it. In this neighborhood, race and social class connect the majority of the dwellers, but exclude the members of the community who do not fit this representation. When too much emphasis is placed on the differences that separate a group of people from the groups who live in other areas of the city, hatred and violence are promoted and the neighborhood isolates itself from the larger society.
Works Cited
Do the Right Thing. Dir. Spike Lee. Perf. Danny Aielo, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, John Turturo. 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, 1989. Film.
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great Cities. New York & Toronto: Random House. 1961. Print.
Macionis, John and Parillo, Vincent. Cities and Urban Life. Pearson. 2013. Print.
