Member-only story
Do The Right Thing Should Not Still Be Relevant
A day in the life of the systematically oppressed that hasn’t changed in over 30 years
Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing came out over 30 years ago in 1989, and it feels like it could have been made this year. It is the first AFI Top 100 film I have seen so far that still feels relevant today.
But the film, especially the ending, really shouldn’t be quite so relevant. In the over three decades since its release, there should have been more progress. This should be a history lesson, not a current event.
I didn’t know what to expect from this film. I didn’t read a synopsis before I watched it, so for a while I thought I was watching a hangout movie, a day in the life of the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
I even caught myself wishing I could live in a neighborhood like this where everyone knows their neighbors. Some of them hate each other, some of them love each other, some of them protect each other. But they all know each other far better than I know my neighbors. I wouldn’t recognize mine if I saw them at the grocery store and they showed me their IDs, so I envied the close-knit relationships of the characters in this film.
