Do The Right Thing, Spike Lee's fiery pill

In 1989, the United States had been accumulating almost a decade of conservatism under Reagan and Bush father, a hardening of security policies, the rise of the “War on Drugs,” and an advancement of gentrification that expelled black and Latino communities from urban centers.

Racial tensions were far from easing, and in cinema, black representation still divided between stereotypical comedy and conciliatory drama.

It was in this scenario that Spike Lee released Do The Right Thing, a film that did not aim to appease. On the contrary, it wanted to force the viewer to confront the friction. The premise is simple: a neighborhood in Brooklyn, unbearable heat, and a single day where everything inevitably implodes.

It is a film that refuses to offer resolution during its plot, presenting from the first minute a thin line of tension, something like anything, at any moment, can fall apart and explode, a representation of anger, of accumulated problems, and of the feeling of war on the fringes of New York as the 90s approached.

The heat is the first character in the film. It seeps through the screens, intensified by Ernest Dickerson's saturated photography, which paints the frames in reds, yellows, and oranges. This choice is the visual materialization of a constant pressure, as if each frame were a thermometer about to burst.

The choice to film the feature in saturated tones, with red, orange, and yellow dominating the frame, is a dramatic choice that exposes the feeling of suffocation. The heat is the direct representation of the climatic, racial, urban, and historical visuals to be developed, and it is directly chosen to pressure the viewer's eyes with a high range of information and tones.

The narrative follows a set of characters who orbit Sal's Famous Pizzeria, a point of gathering and tension in the neighborhood. Mookie, played by Spike Lee himself, is a pizza delivery guy who transitions between complicity and detachment, observing more than acting. Radio Raheem, played by Bill Nunn, is a constant presence, carrying a radio that plays Fight the Power by Public Enemy on repeat—music that Spike asked Chuck D to compose specifically for the film.

The film was shot on a single real block in Bed-Stuy, specially adapted for the feature. The costumes and even the sound are built to be uncomfortable, background discussions, loud music, creating an environment that never allows for rest.

Sal, played by Danny Aiello, appears to be a traditional businessman but reveals himself to be inflexible when confronted about the absence of black idols on the pizzeria's mural. The conflict over the photos may seem trivial, but it carries layers of representation, belonging, and cultural invisibility.

The conflict is a microcosm. When Buggin’ Out questions why there are no images of black idols in a restaurant in a black neighborhood, the discussion reveals the dilemma of representation, Sal's refusal to change the mural is a symbolic trigger. The racialized city is made of minor disputes that hide deep tensions.

The editing intersperses almost theatrical moments with scenes of dry realism. Spike inserts an emblematic sequence where characters look directly at the camera and hurl racist insults at different ethnic groups. It is a sharp cut in the film's rhythm, a breaking of the fourth wall that forces the audience to confront the everyday, banalized hatred that weaves the fabric of urban relations.

The breaking point arrives when the police intervene in a dispute and kill Radio Raheem, suffocated in a scene that echoes, decades before, the cases of Eric Garner and George Floyd. Police brutality is shown unfiltered and triggers the outrage. Mookie, in an act of rupture, throws a trash can against the pizzeria's window, a gesture that divides interpretations to this day.

The establishment is destroyed, but there is no catharsis. The film ends without resolving the tensions, reinforcing that racial conflict is not something that concludes in a day.

Spike Lee closes the film with two quotes: Martin Luther King, advocating for non-violence; Malcolm X, legitimizing self-defense. The duality is not an invitation to choose but to reflect.

At the time of its release, Do The Right Thing was seen by some critics as inciting revolt. Some outlets even feared that the film would provoke “racial disturbances” after screenings. The accusation was not new; whenever a black work does not seek to please, it is seen as dangerous.

Thirty years later, Do The Right Thing seems to have predicted the 21st century. Structural racism, gentrification, police violence, competition for space, everything seems to follow the logic that life imitates art, and vice versa.

There is a detail that helps to understand the power of the film; it was released in June 1989, just two months after the Central Park Five case, when five black teenagers were falsely accused of rape in New York. The city was boiling, the tension was at its peak, and Spike Lee delivered a film about all possible cases.

Do The Right Thing is, to this day, one of the most surgical works on urban racial collapse. But it is also a film about micro-gestures, about the choices that shape a day. About the glance that averts, the word that goes unsaid, the window that does not open. It is a reminder that violence does not explode out of nowhere.