“Everyone is a little bit racist.” The 2004 Broadway hit “Avenue Q” plays a lighthearted tune. It’s funny because it’s true.
Humans are tribal in nature. We tend to distrust and stereotype outsiders. Recognizing this can ease tension and lead to honest and productive conversations.
Spike Lee has spent his career provoking such conversations as effectively as his 1989 film. “Do the right thing.” Lee’s film, which depicts the smoldering racial tensions of a hot summer day in Brooklyn, initially appears to be primarily on the side of its black characters.
But as the story progresses, Lee also reveals the complex humanity of his white antagonist. Like everyone else in the movie, they’re just trying to get by and live their lives. They have more important things to worry about than race.
one scene In particular, it captures Lee’s “we’re all in this together” approach. Various characters – a black protagonist (played by Lee himself), a Korean grocer, a white police officer, a Puerto Rican neighbor – speak rapidly to the camera. -Make racial slurs. The creativity and fluency with which each character slurs another race makes it interesting. The genuine anger behind it makes it uncomfortable.
When tensions finally explode in violence and destruction (one can’t help but think of the summer of 2020, if not the current campus unrest), “Do the Right Thing” once again unsettles Choose to soothe. No one has proven that point. No one ever “won.” Like the audience, the characters ponder the seemingly insurmountable human urge to scapegoat strangers and turn them into enemies.
