Respond to the following questions in the comments section below:
In "Spike Lee at the Movies" Amiri Baraka writes of Do the Right Thing:
"The killing of Rahim, attributed to the loud radio, trivialized the Black Liberation Movement in the same way that the bugged out movement for Black photos in the pizza parlor does...Spike's repeated response is that he has no answers to state, that art was, by his definition, vague, general and noncommittal yet could utilize the saleable aspects of Black consciousness as an umbilical cord of social 'relevance'."
From your viewing of the film, do you agree with Baraka's critique of Lee's "art"? Does Wahneema Lubiano's discussion of realism and essentialism (Section III) complicate and/or expand upon Baraka's reception of the film?
Read Gabriel Thompson's article "The United Nations of Brooklyn" (The New York Times, October 21, 2007)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/nyregion/thecity/21bens.html
In what ways does the multi-ethnic make-up of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn described by Thompson differ from the society envisioned in Lee's 1989 film? How is it similar? In this new context, is Lee's work still salient?
In the Thompson article which describes Brooklyn and its residence as of October 2007 shows what Lee depicted in Do the Right Thing. A community that is ever changing culturally, socially, ethnically and racially. Although in comparison to Do the Right Thing the neighborhood is becoming culturally more diverse than the predominant Italian American and African American residents that the movie represented. Lee's work I felt is still relevant in regards to the neighborhood where new cultures are taking residence and older resident's ways of life are changing as well.
Gabriel describes a kind of multi-ethnic utopia where all cultures live together in perfect peace, which is quite a bit different from Lee's film. While Sal takes pride in the neighborhood, he still harbors certain views about the inhabitants.
There are many similarities to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn and the society in Do The Right Thing. The most prevalent similarity is the melting pot of all the different ethnicities in both settings. Also, both the article and the movie deal with an act of violence upon a black individual by the white man. One difference might be that the article doesn't really go into the different ethnicities not getting along (besides white and black) whereas in Do The Right Thing there is always conflict between the different ethnicities that make up the block. I think Lee's work is still salient when looking at it in terms of this article, since it seems like both neighborhoods are very similar.
In Do the Right Thing the majority population of the neighborhood is African-American, where in Bensonhurst, the population is less than 1 percent black. In Thompson's article, he states that about half of the population is foreign-born, whereas the black residents of Bed-Stuy in Lee’s film where not first generation immigrants. Also, Thompson writes about the attack and murder of Yusuf Hawkins by a gang of white youths, whereas Lee describes a scene where a white bicyclist is harassed by a group of black youths. The two are similar in that they both involve a mix of cultures, and Spike uses this in a clash that makes the film relevant in the present time.
The society in Lee’s film discussed that anyone not Black or Italian-American did not have a voice of their own—they simply aligned with one side or the other. However, Thompson argues that 2/3 of all families in Bensonhurst do not speak English at home, making the idea of the “one Asian family” on the block quite a joke. His statistics of non-Italian, non-African people that inhabit Bensonhurst make Lee’s film seem dated. While the tensions in the film may still exist, and the misunderstanding across cultures still causes problems today, the singularity of the problem being between blacks and whites is no longer the central issue.