Do the Right Thing

“The  Right  to the  City in Do The  Right  Thing ” analyzes  the  right  to the  city theory from  Lefebvre’s and  Harvey’s perspective  as  represented  in  Spike  Lee’s Do The Right Thing (1989).  The  purpose  of  this paper  is  to  discuss  the  research  design,  the theoretical  framework  and  the  cinematic  techniques used  to  determine  who  has  the  right  to  the  city  through  the  appropriation  of  space  and  art by applying semiotic, critical  discourse, narrative  and aesthetic analyses to media Do The Right Thing.

Diese Arbeit widmet sich dem Black Independent Cinema, unter dessen Sparte das New Black Cinema mit Fokus auf Spike Lee verhandelt wird. Ausgehend von der Annahme, dass die Thematisierung von alltäglichem und systematischem Rassismus sowie die Dekonstruktion von Stereotypen über Schwarze zur Emanzipation der black community und zur Aufklärung von white people massgebend ist, soll eruiert werden, wie das Thema Rassismus im zeitgenössischen Black Independent Cinema filmisch repräsentiert wird. Wie stellt Spike Lee die Schwierigkeiten von Schwarzen narrativ und ästhetisch dar und wie geht er produktionstechnisch dabei vor?

Explores the ways in which Spike Lee positions hip-hop as both signifier and driver of black resistance in a post-civil rights American society in "Do the right thing". By utilizing hip-hop music and culture to propel the film's narrative, Gibson contends that Lee is drawing attention to the form's role in the historical meta-narrative of black protest against police brutality, societal inequality, and economic disenfranchisement and the way it has shaped a generation of black youths.

The distance between 1776 Declaration of Independence “right to happiness” and the empirical reality is enormous. Tragedies such as the one of Tamir Rice or Michael Brown are doubly revealing. On one side, these are clear cases of racial profiling, witnesses undisputable that the level of class-based conflict inherent violence is very high (I can think of a Martin Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha); on the other side, the drama tell us that gun culture dominates the stars and stripes popular imagination. Guns and weapons have become religious objects and brought with proud, just like Tamir Rice. I refer, of course, to a culture of violence, not a violent culture one. Culture of violence validates violence as legitimate self-defense system and as the only way to have a society without it. This concept is based on the argument that violence only fight by violence.

Abstract:A pivotal scene in Spike Lee's Oscar-nominated film Do the Right Thing (1989) happens when the protagonist Mookie, played by Lee, throws a garbage can through Sal's Famous Pizzeria following the death of his friend Radio Raheem, who has been strangled by three white policemen. The action made by Mookie incites a riot and causes a race war in the Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, neighborhood. Hip-hop, a cultural movement spawned from the Black Arts and Power Movements that articulates social awareness, consciousness of one's identity, social enjoyment, and creativity, drives Lee's narrative. The signature song "Fight the Power," performed by Public Enemy, is heard throughout the film and dominates characters' dialogue with one another. Most notably, Radio Raheem utilizes the song as a protest speech against the lack of racial diversity and respect among Sal, Pino, and Vito, who work at and own Sal's Famous Pizzeria—a business at which Black youth congregate frequently. This article contends that hip-hop drives the narrative of Do the Right Thing in which Lee places at the center a racial uprising that embarks on a historical trajectory of Black Americans challenging American democracy and inequality.

Written for a course on experimetnal research methods, this work is also very much about experimental methods of conveyance. It is a website, of sorts, including images and sound, and it doesn't conform to strict traditions of academic writing. Created during the early days of the u.k.'s covid-19 shutdown, by a master's student yearning to be done with an annoying university and ready to get back to the wider, quieter spaces of the rural u.s., it serves many contextual purposes. OR, it can just be explored as a little multimedia yarn on forests, wihtout all that other contextuality (but, you've already read it here, so...). It's imperfect, like all writing here. Thoughts are very welcome (and desired!).