Fight the power (a look at 'Do the right thing')

This image of the two “circulates throughout the film, ending up as the single picture on the burned and “blackened” “Wall of Fame,” and it returns to close the film, following on the citations from the two leaders that Lee juxtaposes there without comment.” (Willis 790) 'Do the Right Thing', produced in 1989, is director Spike Lee's attempt to explore the human particularity of this system of binarisms (a principle of analysis requiring that a linguistic system, as a phonological, case, or semantic system, be represented as a set of binary oppositions)and the culturally entrepreneurial situation of the African-American subject within it. The film's use of the metonymic (A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated) figures "King" and "X" as well as the ethically divergent meta-narratives, an abstract idea that is supposed to be a comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge, of which they are the cultural signifiers suffuses its dramatic structure with the ideological tension generated by the trope of "double-consciousness."( in its contemporary sense, is a term coined by W. E. B. Du Bois to explain an identity that has been divided into several facets).The vehicle by which 'Do the Right Thing' represents the black community reminding itself, so to speak, of the presence of these figures is the ubiquitous Smiley, a young man with cerebral palsy who earns money selling photographs of African-American heroes to his Bed-Stuy neighbors. The film calls attention to one image in particular: the famous photograph of King and Malcolm shaking hands and smiling during their first and only meeting.

'Do the right thing' uses "gender dynamics, struggles around property rights and consumerism, and competing masculine postures.(FA 784)" as a point of origin for social commentary. The moral cosmology Radio Raheem narrates here is very compelling. In it, "good" is not only identifiable and absolute, but ultimately more powerful than "evil," which, correspondingly, is equally pure and clear. The faith and lucidity of this formulation are potent. Yet the film complicates Radio Raheem's vision with its depictions of his role in the confrontation at Sal's Famous Pizzeria and his murder at the hands of the police. It is not clear that Radio Raheem is purely "good"; according to the film, Radio Raheem, like the large majority of Black youth, is the victim of materialism and a misplaced sense of values. This critique, ironized as it is by Lee's highly visible and controversial promotion of various product lines (including his own) which vigorously target the young-African-American-male demographic, nonetheless identifies a salient feature of Raheem's characterization. And it is tragically obvious during the murder scene that "evil," at least in this particular match, is far stronger than Radio Raheem's "story of Life" implies.