lovehateNYC and Spike Lee

I don't know where this came from, but somehow I channeled my writing muse and my thesis paper turned out fabulous...here's a tidbit about Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" that will make you want to rent it again right away...

Spike Lee’s awareness in the issue of love and hate goes beyond his relationship with New York City, for it is a central theme in his third feature film, Do the Right Thing. Too often viewers get caught up in the issues of racism and questions about who did the right thing when discussing this movie, but they fail to even acknowledge the complex underlying theme of the polarity between love and hate. At the start of the film we are introduced to the idea of the balance in opposition when Mister Señor Love Daddy mentions to his radio listeners that he is "doing the yin and the yang." From the very beginning Lee subtly interjects the concept of balance of duality in our lives. What soon follows is the most significant visual pairing of opposites in this film, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. (fig. 6)—this ironically foreshadows the ideal resolution to all conflicts in the film.


Smiley says as he holds up this photograph of the pair, "they are dead, but we still have to fight against...upon hate." The events that occur throughout this twenty-four hour period of the film are either motivated towards hate (i.e. the protest against Sal’s, the killing of Radio Raheem, the riot and burning of the pizzeria), or are attempts to turn hate into love (i.e. Da Mayor attempting to warm up to Mother Sister by bringing her flowers, Sal and Jude innocently flirting, Mookie telling Sal to put the bat down). Ultimately the lesson to be learned here is that if we allow hate to take over our lives, no one will ever win because letting hate consume us leads to complete annihilation. Anger built up in the end of the film as Radio Raheem and Sal fought each other, and hate finally plateaued when no one was capable of stopping the NYPD from murdering Radio Raheem. There was an opportunity to prevent hate from taking over, but anger persisted and therefore a snowball effect led to complete destruction. Even at the close of the film Lee wants us to walk away with the comprehension of balance in opposition by presenting us with quotes from both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. One must not chose a quote to live by, rather one must see the intelligence in both.