Spike Lee is one smooth cat. Just watched Do The Right Thing and it was a great hour and 59 minutes. The hottest day in Brooklyn NY as common folk try to get through day alive. Every character displays both a sense of love and hate for the world that they live in. I believe that Spike’s message in the movie was that violence and hatred are a dead-end street. An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind and Spike shows what results in a community that is tearing each other apart rather than building each other up. A Malcom X quote at the end of the movie leaves the viewer with a burden. There are both good and bad people in America but the power belongs to the bad. Is it possible for the good people (like many in the movie) to one day achieve that power without becoming bad themselves? Violence creates bitterness in survivors and brutality in the oppressors. Can a different cycle ever exist or is Spike Lee’s work forever cementing the history of America as an oppressor rather than something better in the future?

do or die