Moreover, Sal insults his black patrons with terms like jungle music, Africa, and niggers. Similarly, in two scenes, Sal wields a baseball bat-a symbol of white-on-black violence in the 1980s. For instance, Sal refers to his black customers as these people, language that distances himself from them and, in essence, “others” them. Aiello, however, interpreted his character otherwise. “He’s a nice guy,” Aiello claims, “and he sees people as equal.” Aiello further points out that in the film’s climatic scene-when he destroys the boom box of Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn)-Sal has to look deep inside himself “to find the most insulting words he could to throw at those who made him angry.” As a result, Aiello argues, his character “ends up acting like a racist, even though he is not one.” It appears many of my white students make similar conclusions.īut as Dan Flory points out, several anti-black cues pepper Sal’s actions and speech, each of which should make viewers think twice about Aiello’s interpretation. Spike Lee has said he wrote Danny Aiello’s Sal as a racist. After all, a spectator of any race, ethnicity, class, age, or sexual orientation can connect with a character of any race, ethnicity, class, age, or sexual orientation.īut as Dan Flory points out in “Spike Lee and the Sympathetic Racist,” perhaps there is a tad of truth to this rather naïve assessment about identification and audience reception. This conclusion, of course, is too simplistic. Is Mookie doing the right thing here? Is he not?Ī first thought is this: students of color readily identify with Mookie because he is the film’s lead black character while white students relate to Sal because he is the film’s central white character. What’s more, the large cast-compiled mostly of secondary characters-theoretically uneases filmgoers since Hollywood normally offers only two or three leads for us to follow.īut undoubtedly, it’s Lee’s characterization of Italian-American pizzeria owner, Sal (Danny Aiello), and Mookie’s decision to hurl that trash bin into Sal’s restaurant window that challenge many viewers. (always non-violence) without explicitly informing the spectator which is the better choice. For starters, Lee consistently rams together the conflicting ideologies of Malcolm X (violence as self-defense and when necessary) and Martin Luther King, Jr. Like most of Spike’s Lee’s films, Do the Right Thing challenges viewers. And each term, they react similarly to the scene in which Mookie (Spike Lee) throws a trash can, igniting a neighborhood riot by breaking the window of the pizzeria where he works. Most students of color feel Lee’s character “did the right thing” while the majority of white students cannot understand why Mookie “would do such a thing to his boss.” Why this reaction-term after term, year after year? The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR.Įach term, my film students watch Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989).
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