Do The Right Thing

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It goes without saying that Do the Right Thing is one of the best films of all time. It was released to critical acclaim and was nominated for two academy awards. Despite all this, the film does deal with controversial topics that some people felt were handled inappropriately. The biggest topic that was depicted in this film was racism in America. Near the end of the film, a fight breaks out between the owner of a pizzeria and some members of the community over the pizzeria owner’s refusal to put pictures of African American celebrities on his wall of fame. One thing leads to another and eventually the police are called in but they only make matters worse and it leads to one of the police officers killing Radio Raheem, one of the main characters …show more content…
Afterwards, Cooper began her analysis on how people might view the film through different lenses. This was tested by having a group of students write a personal reflection after viewing the film. The analysis that was written by non-African Americans sympathized more with Sal about his actions and what happened with the hall of fame while the students who were African American sympathized with Mookie and the other black people in the community and sort of defended the actions of the riot. Cooper also touched on different topics such as realism, identification, and relevancy of the film’s title. Cooper reflects on how the non-African American viewers tried to justify the racism depicted and found it concerning. Cooper states “It is discouraging that many White and Hispanic spectators respond to the film’s depiction of racism and its subsequent controversy by attempting to justify rather than question or challenge racist attitudes.” (Cooper 13) Even though there are some scenes in this film that are controversial, Spike Lee wanted to show the point of view of how African Americans were treated in