I thought this film was supposed to be about the problems of racial tension in society and shit, but all the black people in it (except the old drunk guy, and the DJ) seem absolutely irredeemable. They are feckless, obnoxious, unintelligent, entitled, touchy, aggressive, and duplicitous. It may be one of the most racist depictions of black people I've ever seen in a film. They completely take advantage of the good will and kindness of a local Italian-American pizza joint owner called Sal and then destroy his business for something that was completely beyond his control. I get that they are angry that the police killed their friend, and of course it was totally fucked up of the police to kill him, but it was entirely his fault that the police came; you can't just walk into a pizza joint with a ghetto blaster at full volume. Sal's reaction was completely reasonable. I don't think I ever saw him do anything out-of-order, but the black characters in it just completely destroyed him and business, mercilessly and without any remorse, with Mookie even going to him the next day to ask for pay, as his boss stands in the burnt out shell of the pizza joint, which Mookie himself broke the first window of to initiate the looting. I don't see how I'm supposed to get anything from out other than that the black people in it were fucking dicks, and I don't see how their environment or socio-economic circumstances explain how they behave.
Do the Right Thing has left me confused
Spike Lee explains everything in Malcolm X. If you make it as a brother, you have to degrade other brothers and help keep them down or else The Man will kill you.
Black lives matter more than white property is supposed to be the message.
>They are feckless, obnoxious, unintelligent, entitled, touchy, aggressive, and duplicitous.
exactly
But the white property had nothing to do with harming any black lives.
That's basically my take away too.
You missed the point.
All of the characters basically only had to do ONE thing to avoid the outcome of the movie.
All the Italian guy had to do was put up a picture of a black dude. Would it have killed him to put up even one picture to satisfy the people who literally give him all his business?
All Rahim had to do was turn off the stereo. Did he really NEED to have it on so loud or on at all?
All that instigating ass nigga who brought up the wall of pictures to begin with had to do was let it go. Was it that important to him how someone else chooses their idols?
All any of the central characters had to do was let one small thing go and not be so damn stubborn but none of them could let it go. If any of them had changed their behavior in the slightest the ending would have been avoided.
Mookie throws the trash can through the window to redirect the crowd's anger towards the pizzeria and actually saved the owners by doing so from physical harm.
So the title is more of a question. Did Mookie do the right thing? Did any of them? And if we want to believe that they all did by sticking to their principles then how could doing the 'right thing' lead to this outcome? Where does the blame lie?
The law doesn't say a business owner has to put up pictures to prevent illegal behavior.
No, an Italian guy does not need to put up pictures of negroes in his own restaurant
Don't like it, eat somewhere else. The sense of entitlement these cunts had was astounding
In the end their actions resulted in another closed business in a black neighborhood
"do the right thing" achieves the impossible by creating a situation that forces the average moviegoer to empathize with italian-americans
I think it's a great movie, but Spike's own interpretation does seem like BLM nonsense when he talks about it.
It's an honest enough depiction of race tensions rising into a situation where someone gets killed or riots happen, and just because at the end of it Spike Lee is a nigger that thinks mookie did the right thing, it doesn't mean you have to interpret it that way.
Everything isn't a question of legality.
This film is the best example of black hypocrisy in America. It started the downward trend that led us to the problems of today
The law is pretty irrelevant to the matter at hand.
It's about social interaction and the way that people's choices effect each other. If you want to believe that the law is the supreme moral judgement of the universe then you're right but this wasn't really a story about the law. It's a story about people and their choices. If you want to view a story like this through the lens of the law then you're always going to miss the point and be missing all sides of the story but one. it might make things more clear cut but if that is the kind of story you're looking for then you should stick to old school legal dramas not movies about social interaction.
I thought there had to be more to it. Thanks for the info.
One thing that still bothers me though is that Sal had no obligation to put up a picture of a black person. He had a wall of famous Italian Americans, because he was Italian American, so where would a black person fit into any more than just a white guy who wasn't Italian American? If he had had just white people on the wall and didn't have any black people, I could understand, but it was specifically a wall of people of his own ethnic minority. But even still, it's his shop, he can do what he wants with it. It is other people's obligation to turn their fucking music down if they are on his property and he has told them to turn it down.
Actually yes it is, that's the purpose of the law.
The common law reflects accepted social interactions, that's how laws come to be established. What else do you think its purpose is?
This got a good laugh from me, thanks
>I thought there had to be more to it. Thanks for the info.
I suspect you're responding to your own post, but if not, please be aware that the poster you're responding to is not only wrong but also wrong-minded.
Well, the law is supposed to keep things fair. So generally its a good measure of fairness if something is legal or illegal.
If you believe that the law is meant to reflect all social interaction and moral decision making, then you are, at the very least, not American, and therefore not the film's target audience. Sorry Muhammad, this film isn't for you.
Liberals will desperately try to spin this movie in a positive light but that's impossible. It is the most open, brazen, contemptuous example of black and liberal hypocrisy in all of cinema history.
And much of Spike Lee's angst comes from the fact that his father Bill Lee married a white woman, whom he hated.
This film is designed to create racial hatred and division. That's it's express purpose and goal. It's also designed to make blacks feel their behavior is justified no matter what they do.
>moral
No, the law reflects ethics and yes, it's entirely about acceptable social interaction. And don't call me Muhammad just because you can't grok philosophy of law beyond the level of a five year old.
Definitely not. Spike Lee isn't afraid to criticize blacks in his films, and both this and Chiraq are really good examples of it. He's still empathetic, as a member of the community and, you know, a decent human being, but that doesn't mean he's just sucking their dick.
The law should not and does not encompass the entirety of either morality or social interaction. I'll call you Muhammad all day long and worse, and the law has nothing to say about it. Except, of course, in your country with its hate speech laws, but like I said, this movie's for Americans.
And in the end Sal's resistance to show even the slightest bit of deference to the people who give him all his business cost him that business.
How hard is it to hang a picture on the wall?
If Sal had known how it would all have turned out he probably would have just done it but the point is that every character is so stuck in their ways that this is the end result of not being able to see another person's perspective.
Of course Sal had no real obligation to do it but tha overwhelming majority of his business came from black patrons. Some of the black patrons mention how they grew up on Sal's pizza, so to them he is a part of the neighborhood, but they are not a part of his neighborhood to him and his sons. He sees them as a source of income not as people who have fond memories of his place or an emotional attachment to it. He had a chance to reciprocate the attachment that the community felt towards him at the begging of the film but didn't and that was his right of course. But we know how it turns out and Sal and the others don't. Had they known how all these seemingly small things would escalate they likely all would have behaved differently. None of the people involved deserved what happened to them.
All Sal did was not want to put up a picture. Not worth losing his pizza place over.
Radio Rahim wanted to play his stereo, definitely an asshole but not worth dying over.
All that instigating nigga wanted was a picture on the wall, he had no right to it but he isn't wrong in thinking that for all the loyalty Sal's customer's show him, Sal doesn't seem to like them more than if they were all there for the first time, minus Mookie's sister.
Please reread the thread so that you understand what the argument is about.
I felt really embarrassed reading your post.
Completely wrong. "Do" is an ugly, hateful movie that panders to the most negative, hateful and destructive behavior of black people in America. It's Lee's personal vendetta on film. People who defend it are genuinely bad human beings
Should just kill a few cops to placate BLM, right? That's the type of apologist you are.
>And in the end Sal's resistance to show even the slightest bit of deference to the people who give him all his business cost him that business.
No, a mob of looters cost him his business. The moral is to move your business to gentrified areas and leave places like Ferguson to decay.
So you're just refusing to take the film as it is. Instead you drag the law into a story where it isn't really the focus in any way. That's a good way to avoid having to think about things complexly. If the law is supreme it makes things clear cut but you're going to miss out on a lot of nuisance and this might not be the right board for you if that is how you insist on seeing film.
Shitty dodge, friend. The law is irrelevant to the conflicts that spark the fires in this film, because there's no law that says you have to be reasonable in your interactions with others. There are no laws stopping us from being assholes. The law has nothing to say about the hurtful words we use when we speak to others.
The desire to simplify these things to basic rules and laws is honestly a serious sign of autism. If you haven't already been diagnosed, you should get on the waiting list now so you can see a doctor in 18 months.
you keep repeating yourself as if we don't understand it's not all one sided.
The point is when all is said and done, Sal has the right to be a dick even to the people who grew up on his pizza and not put up pictures. Raheem and Buggin Out were breaking the law by causing a disturbance, and then broke the law again by trashing the place. You want to send Sal a message? Don't buy the fucking pizza, and certainly don't work for him (if you could call Mookie's lazing throughout the whole movie "working")
Los Angeles user here.
Please let me tell you a little story. Back in 1993 we had the LA riots. Black people freaked out and destroyed hundreds of businesses in their own neighborhoods.
Now more than 20 years later the vast majority of those businesses have never reopened.
South LA and Watts blacks complain about not having any decent stores in their area. But if you were a business owner you would never take the risk of opening a business in a black neighborhood
Do the right thing pretty much proves this point entirely
>WAAAH
>user IS TALKING ABOUT FILM INTERPRETATION ON THE FILM BOARD
>WHY WOULD HE DO THAT?!?!
The mob wouldn't have formed if any of the characters had just been a bit more flexible in their choices, not just Sal. If you want to believe that causality doesn't exist that's fine but there's no children's Sup Forums board so you might want to leave.
It's a film about showing all sides involved what an asshole they are, and its efficacy at making absolutely everyone angry is a really good sign of its success.
All of this is true.
Irrefutable argument
>if you had put up a picture of a black guy, we wouldn't have ruined your business
And this is supposed to make blacks look better?
>law
You seem to keep missing the point of the movie. Actually I think you're just choosing to ignore it.
No, it's not supposed to make anyone look good. Everyone looks terrible in this film, that's the point.
ITT: Sup Forums hates niggers and ignores the Sup Forums aspect of the Sup Forums board
Fascinating
>this
Everyone is a dick, but no one deserved what happened to them in the end.
>people getting bamboozled by a spike lee film because they somehow need an unambiguous moral lesson from every piece of media they consume
lmao
>Shitty dodge
Do as I say, nigger. Reread the thread, boy.
>AAAGH IF THEY HAD JUST KEPT THE MOVIE GOING AND SHOWN THE TRIAL THEN THE JUDGE WOULD HAVE SIDED WITH THE WHITE(ISH) GUY AND I WOULDN'T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT
Not an argument
Inciting anger through hypocrisy is never a good thing
Yes, because terrorist threats of violence are always acceptable when your black
>movie all about people not compromising, leading to a painful end result that benefits no one
>/tv works hard to be as reductive as possible, take sides, fixate on random points
this is legitimately a great thread so far
It's almost like the board is full of retards.
hmmm....
I bet you haven't actually seen this film. Did you read the summary off of Wikipedia, or are you just playing it by ear?
*throws a brick through your window*
>pander to obnoxious black people or they will loot and destroy your business
damn really makes me think
>painful end that benefits no one.
Not a single black person I know felt that way. All of them felt the blacks in the film were justified.
And obviously you're too young to remember the reviews for this film when it first came out
That's the lesson user. The black is the eternal victim.
>people are falling for this contrarian bait
They weren't always that way. Blacks used to own businesses and be family people.
I'm sorry to say this but liberal politics starting with President Johnson deliberately instilled in them a sense of hopelessness and futility. The eternal victim complex.
This intern destroyed their families, businesses and communities, making them dependent upon the welfare state, which was largely provided by democrats
>Sup Forums, lacking self-awareness, charges ahead to prove the post right
>series of rational statements
>contrarian
Please don't burn down my house for disagreeing with you, blackfella.
>Of course Sal had no real obligation to do it but tha overwhelming majority of his business came from black patrons. Some of the black patrons mention how they grew up on Sal's pizza, so to them he is a part of the neighborhood, but they are not a part of his neighborhood to him and his sons.
And most of his black patrons treated him like shit. They bad mouth him, slam on his door even after he has closed, expecting to open just for them (which he does very kindly), they walk into the shop blasting music and don't turn it down, they rip him for his pizza not having enough cheese on it, and even his employee Mookie is totally lazy and feckless, and really rude to him, and yet he still treats him really well and even says that he sees him like a son. It seems very willing to be a part of the neighbourhood.
>He sees them as a source of income not as people who have fond memories of his place or an emotional attachment to it.
He literally says at one point that he is really proud of watching his customers grow up on his food. He totally defends his customers against his racist son's remarks.
>He had a chance to reciprocate the attachment that the community felt towards him at the begging of the film but didn't and that was his right of course.
As I explained before, I reckon he does reciprocate that attachment. But he is one Italian American living in neighbourhood entirely filled with black people. He is proud of his ethnicity and likes to celebrate it by hanging pictures of Italian Americans on his wall, and yet his patrons couldn't respect that. I don't see why he really needed to stand up for black people in an area where everyone is black. Plus, it's his restaurant. How is looting it and burning it down an understandable response to the fact that he didn't change the decor in a way that a couple of his customers wanted?
I remember that the best discussion I ever had about this movie was where the one black dude in the room stayed quite until the very end of the discussion.
>"Everyone has been talking about how it was wrong to destroy Sal's pizzeria and you're right, it was wrong. But not one person in the hour and a half we have been here, said one word against the cops that killed Radio Raheem."
That shut the room up since it was full of middle class white kids, minus myself(Spic here).
I stayed the fuck out of it since no one ever really wanted to hear it from either me or the black dude anyway.
>that level of insight
>that broad perspective
wtf do you think this is, a television and movies board?
Yea I know, Johnson helped them become this way, and now they are too comfortable to ever go bac.
>Go into a black owned business and ask the owner why doesn't he have any pictures of whites on the wall
How would that work out for you?
The answer to this proves the basic hypocrisy of blacks and liberals, that creates so much racial hatred in our nation
Remember that at the end of this film a black character enters the burned out pizza parkour and tacks a picture of a black man on the wall,
That is the ultimate expression and justification for black violence we see in the film. The final triumph over the evil white man
>>"Everyone has been talking about how it was wrong to destroy Sal's pizzeria and you're right, it was wrong. But not one person in the hour and a half we have been here, said one word against the cops that killed Radio Raheem."
Because there was no need to do so. Everyone knew it was wrong and no one would defend it.
That doesn't justify the actions of the mob.
Simple answer is that they were pissed that Radio Raheem died over something so fucking small. Basically for no reason. He died over a stereo being too loud. He was massive asshole but that shouldn't mean your life is completely forfeit.
Cops tend to overreact to blacks for some very legitimate reasons seen here Everyone is afraid to talk about the truth, but police officers see it every single day
Why do you keep making an appeal to legally? Why are you strawmanning peoples' posts into an assertion that the actions of the black characters were lawf, when absolutely no one ITT has made that claim?
He didn't die because his stereo was too loud. He died because he was strangling a guy to death who completely justifiably asked him to turn his stereo down when he was on his property.
Exactly.
sal did nothing wrong.
Professor backed up the black dude by saying that he was waiting for that to come up but it never did. They just talked about Raheem's death as "after what happened" or "when the guy dies".
Basically, it was a whole speech about how the level of scrutiny between the destruction of property and the loss of a human life(no matter how rude or inconsiderate) was completely out of balance.
The discussion never came around to Radio Raheem's death in a real way because everyone was preoccupied with the destruction of the pizzeria. We got asked if what we thought the cops did was unjustified, not whether Raheem deserved to die(he said we all know he didn't deserve to die) but whether their methods of restraint were justified given his size and the intensity of his resistance. One dude said that Raheem shouldn't have resisted and after that no one really talked very much.
Last fucking movie we watched in that class thank god
A police officers job is to put themselves in dangerous situations. "I'm scarred because statistically you might try to hurt me" is not a justification for unlawful use of force on any level.
If a police officer is too nervous around people of a certain demographic to act in a lawful manner, then he shouldn't be a police officer.
But there moral ambiguity about Raheem's death, so that's why no one talks about it.
I'm missing no point, and I'm not the guy you were originally arguing with. The point still stands, just because both parties share blame doesn't mean it's an equal amount. If Sal's a racist, then he's a racist. Don't buy his pizza, and certainly don't do illegal shit.
Yes it is. When that person is ten times more likely to react in a violent manner the behavior of a cop is completely understandable.
I'm not saying it's justified, just understandable
reminder that michael brown and trayvon martin both deserved to die
I have had photographic evidence of Spike Lee giving me oral sex for years.
I will use it when he grows older and senile to ruin his life or recieve money out of it.
Samefag.
I never said anyone said what buggin out or raheem did was lawful. I'm a different user. I'm still not wrong either
You have to remember though, blacks and liberals see black violence as being completely justifiable under any circumstance
The whole point of the class was to talk about these kind of things and eventually the professor figured he was wasting his time and ours by trying so we didn't watch any more controversial movies since no one wanted to talk about them.
That's what happens when you have no principles. Bigotry of soft expectations.
>film
It's a joint. A Spike Lee joint.
Why don't any other groups riot and burn down their neighborhood businesses on a regular basis?
Yeh, and I feel like The Wire illustrates that quite well while also illustrating how blacks have such hatred for the police.
HEY
Super old fag here.
Doesn't anyone here still use the +extensions that assign IDs to unique users on this site?
Are you all such pathetic new fags?
The only reason I'm saying this is because there is one faggot in this thread who is playing both sides of the argument and responding to his own posts
His writing style is unmistakable, and you should be able to see this if you're not fucking retarded. You don't even need the +extensions
Now ask yourself, what kind of serious mental illness drives this sort of behavior?
fuck off back to redit with your ebonics
freddie grey too
it's just about bein a nice dude in the community
it's against the law to steal candy but is it wrong for a shop owner to give a local kid a sucker once in a while knowing it'd make his day?
he's not obligated to do it, but it's a nice thing.
that kind of attitude tends to deescalate tensions in dire situations.
Of course its not an equal amount. But the law still has nothing really to do with this. That's something people want to drag into the story to make it more clear cut but the movie isn't trying to make a point about the law. So bringing it up is just a cop-out.
i feel like white people are nice enough to allow black people the gift of not being genocided for the worthless filth that they are
>that kind of attitude tends to deescalate tensions in dire situations
And if you don't exhibit the required "nice" attitudes, then you get terrorized.
He clearly cared about his wall full of pictures, they had no right to ask him to add something just because.
also MLK
Nice one. You did the right thing by posting this.
>Be a complete dick to your only customers
They didn't destroy the place because of the picture retard
The law has everything to do with it, you fucking moron.
How often do you respond to your own posts?
good post
no wait
great post
>story about choice and unwitting consequence
>HUR DUR DAH LAW THAYZ
And Emmett Till