Favorite Film #94, 1989: Do the Right Thing. Directed by Spike Lee

Do the Right Thing still hits like a freight train. You’re never ready for it when it hits, even when you’ve already seen it before. In fact, it’s even worse on a rewatch. Because I’m watching the first few hours of one of the greatest hangout comedies ever made, knowing the other shoe is about to drop, and wishing desperately that maybe this time nothing bad will happen. And that’s how Spike Lee gets you. To really hit home the sheer horrors of systemic racism and police brutality, he spends most of the film developing one of the greatest ensemble casts of all time. Every single character, no matter how much of an asshole they are, are so fully realized I just love hanging out with them. Well, almost all of them. I’d watch an entire film focused on just one of these characters! I especially loved Giancarlo Esposito’s Buggin Out, Robin Harris’s Sweet Dick Willie, Ruby Dee’s Mother Sister, and Samuel L Jackson’s Mister Senor Love Daddy. Now, I’d like to take the time to talk about Sal. Because the first time I watched this film, I was also incredibly conflicted about the climax. But then I got older, a lot of shit happened over the next few years, and I came to my decision. Was Sal in the wrong? Yes. Is Sal a racist? Also, yes. Did Sal deserve what happened to him in the end? It’s a little complex, but yes, I think so. If you pay close attention to the film, you realize that everything that happened in the film was escalated by him. Buggin Out was definitely an asshole, who puts too much effort in frankly unnecessary conflicts. But his issues didn’t start from nothing. And he was probably going to forget the whole thing, until Sal decided to raise conflict in a way that’s very familiar to the film’s target demographic. Not to mention that his son John Turturro’s unapologetic racism didn’t come from nowhere. Sal isn’t a monster, but in a way he’s almost even worse. Only appreciating the Black community he’s a part of when they’re benefitting him. But when they inconvenience him in any way, or do something in a way he doesn’t like, that’s when the veneer drops. He’s a capitalist. Look, I’m a librarian, and also autistic. I understand and even sympathize with wanting to tell someone to keep the noise down in your establishment. Lord knows I’ve made a living doing that job. But there’s a thing we librarians like to call “de-escalation”. Once a problem arises you don’t rise to the same level as the person causing the issue. That just escalates into a catastrophe for everyone in the building. You approach the situation as calmly as possible, in the hopes that this attitude will show that you’re willing to listen, and get everything solved without a problem. And you only escalate one step at a time, when required. What Sal did, was take a relatively small problem and explode it with a bazooka. And since Sal was a white man creating a much larger problem from an issue from a few black men, he was the only one almost able to escape scot-free. He absolutely deserved everything that happened to him, and I feel no remorse about it.