Gender Dynamics in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing (1989)
Inspired by a series of racially-charged incidents in New York City, Spike Lee’s acclaimed drama Do The Right Thing (1989) attracted intense scrutiny upon its release for its audacious treatment of ethnicity. To this day, much of the existing popular and academic discourse on the film concerns notions of African-American identity and the legitimacy of Lee’s status as a “black director”. However, despite being an overtly political film, Do The Right Thing’s treatment of gender has garnered considerably less attention. Though Mark Reid’s (1993) “Black Comedy on the Verge of a Genre Breakdown” effectively critiques Lee’s rendering of “black womanhood” in his feature-length debut She’s
