3430_Keri_scene analysis
**Posted by jolly at 11:21 AM
Yu kun Tan
Scene Analysis
August 16. 2010
As I sat in class to watch Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”, I couldn’t help but notice that a 20 year old movie could carry such overwhelmingly true, contemporary social aspects. Many of the themes in the movie which lead up to the inevitable chaos of the movie are problems which we face today.Scene Analysis
August 16. 2010
The first example I would like to give is the first scene of the actual movie, Mookie(Spike Lee) counting his money. Bearing in mind, this is one of the happiest time’s where we see Mookie, when he is counting his money. This comes up time and time again, when he is working, he insists that Sal pays him his money early, because he “Gots ta get paid”, he also uses it as an excuse to neglect his responsibilities (i.e. his girlfriend, and his son), and justifies this negligence because he is making money. Sal, on the other hand, believe he can make all of his problems disappear by throwing money at them, like what he does with Da Mayor, and Smiley, he hands them a couple of bucks to make them go away. Many people today are driven by the almighty dollar, it drives people to commit crime, and ultimately destroy themselves. Sal’s character represents to me the notion that simply throwing money at a problem will make it go away; a modern day example of this can be seen with the public school system and things like the No Child Left Behind act.
Another interesting point which I noted was the incessant batte between Love and Hate. Radio Raheem narrates this when he explains his knuckle “love and hate” rings. We see a squabble between the two brothers of Sal’s pizza (one wearing black and one wearing white, fitting) about trusting black people. Pino, the biggot wearing white, tells his brother Vito that they aren’t to be trusted, and attempts to make his brother, who is wearing black, to submit to his beliefs, but the battle continues. During the riot sequence of the movie, when Mookie tosses a trash can through Sal’s window, he yells “hate”, and at that point, hatred has ultimately won. At this point the title of the movie comes to mind, and I ask myself, in the movie, is anyone really doing the right thing?
There are many injustices in our society that outrage, and could even justify violence, but is it really the right thing to do? The beginning credits start with a song by Public Enemy “Fight the Power”, with people dancing and mimicing a fight sequence, this shows the rage that many people have, but the closing sequence, the quotes from Malcom X and MLK Jr. lead one to ask themselves is rage really the right path, and will it help solve the problem at all. This is the question that I asked myself, and I believe that Spike Lee’s movie did achieved this wonderfully.
One last bit of irony that I noticed, is that when I was researching the movie, I learned that the characer that played Buggin’ Out, that person that led the campaign to get Sal to put black people on his Wall of Fame, is himself part black, part Italian. Just something to think about .
Color Usage: the main color of the film is red. We can see the big red wall in the background that gets darker and lighter from time to time; there is also a girl wearing a red dress. Then it goes to a shot of a girl in a blue dress, her color stands out from the red wall. We also see the colors black and white when the red disappears for a while. These will be the main colors through out the film.
Spike Lee uses different tones of red, yellow and orange to show us that the day is hot. In the opening scene where Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) is sleeping we can see that the whole room is tinted with a mix of yellow, red and orange. This symbolizes the heat and the sun light. In some cases, I think the color red is used in reference of love or hate.
Hey Keri...much of the material that you used here is from this website:
http://english131blog.wordpress.com/2007/11/15/who-really-is-doing-the-right-thing-a-critical-analysis-of-do-the-right-thing-and-how-it-pertains-to-our-society/
You can't use material from other people without giving them credit. I spoke with Nikki and asked if it's ok to give you an extension so that you can make changes - it is.
Don't worry about it right now...I'll talk with you about it next week during or after lecture, k. =]