Do The Right Thing

I saw Spike Lee's classic movie again.  Hadn't seen it in ... 15 or more years.  I'd forgotten most of what led up to the climax of the film.  I went back and listened to the commentary on the DVD to see what Spike thought about it.

A couple thoughts.  First, he kept saying, people always ask about the pizzeria being burned down, and asks, why don't people ask about Raheem being murdered?  The answer is simple: because we saw what happened and understood it.  We know Raheem was an idiot who got goaded on by another idiot and that he lost control and was rightfully subdued by the cops, who then went too far and killed Raheem.

There's nothing more to add to that.  How is Spike surprised that no one asks about what doesn't need asking about?  Yes, it sucks the cops killed him.  They could have subdued him without killing him.  What more is there to say?

But what is not easily understood is how the hell that justified burning down the pizzeria.  Sal did nothing wrong, at all.  He may have lost his temper, but what he did was entirely justified: he beat the crap out of Raheem's boom box with a baseball bat because Raheem would neither turn it off, nor leave the store.  It was stupid, but not wrong.

Lee notes, when the Mayor tries to stop the riot, "I don't think the Mayor is being Uncle Tom, I think he's trying to talk reason."  Why the hell would anyone think trying to stop a riot by telling people to go home and sleep it off is being Uncle Tom?  What kind of person thinks that makes any sense at all?  I know Spike didn't think it, but someone did,  that caused him to address it.  More nonsense.

Joie Lee (Spike Lee's sister in real life, and in the movie, who was also on the commentary) adds, when Spike's character throws a garbage can through the window to start the riot, that, "I think that was a choice that Mookie made coming out of his life experience, feeling less than, feeling inferior to.  I don't think of it in terms of right and wrong.  I just think that it was something that he finally had the balls to do."  Bullshit.  It was wrong.  This isn't about life experiences or culture.  It's about the fact that trashing someone else's store just because you're pissed off is wrong.

This makes as much sense as someone saying, the cops who killed Raheem, that was just a choice they made coming out of their life experience.  Oh, but since it's a human life it matters more?  Of course.  Yes, it matters a lot more.  But it doesn't suddenly make the justification any more or less valid.  If that justification works for Mookie, it works for the cops.

Then the rioters turn toward a Korean-owned store, and Spike adds in the commentary, "The Korean is unified with the black people.  He's mad.  He too witnessed the murder of Raheem and it's ironic that people turned on him."  Huh?  How is it any more ironic that they turned on the Korean, than it is that they turned on Sal?  Sal was much more a part of the community than the Korean.  It's only ironic because Sal is white?

Then Spike says, "And here come the cops and the firemen in full riot gear.  This is where it breaks out into a riot."  More bullshit.  A bunch of idiots broke into, tore apart, and burned down a pizzeria, and were jumping on top of cars and looking for other stores to tear apart and burn down.  It was already a riot.  And Spike attacks the firemen for turning the hoses on the rioters, but that was only after the firemen were assaulted by the rioters.  How can Spike so poorly understand what he put in his own movie?

One thing I also never got was why Mookie went and asked for his pay back at the end.  After he broke Sal's window and started the riot that led to the destruction of Sal's business, he wants Sal to pay him for his week's pay.  And I don't understand at all why Sal paid him (let alone why he paid him double).  I'd have told him to go screw himself.  And Lee goes on to say that he didn't think Mookie taking the extra money made him "unheroic."  He's right: being an idiotic jerk who smashed up Sal's store, and then asked for the money, made him unheroic.

Then over the credits, Spike started going on (this commentary was done in 1995) about how Newt Gingrich attacking affirmative action was evidence of racism.

I think I now finally understand this movie.  I now understand why the ending made no sense to me.  Because what Spike was actually doing was saying that these people did nothing wrong, that it's all the fault of The Man, the System created by people in Power who Oppress everyone, and how people react is just how they react, and it's not good or bad.  This seems obvious to me now, but I never dreamed 15 years ago, when I first saw it, that Lee would have ever actually been saying such a stupid thing.  I overestimated him, I guess.