Do The Right Thing – Does Anyone? (contains spoilers)

It’s the hottest day in Brooklyn. The sweat-drenched inhabitants of the “Bed-Stuy” neighbourhood move about in a haze, while Sam Jackson (before he became Samuel L) plays some tunes on the local-local radio station that nobody seems to be tuned into.

Pick a beat and let me lay out a fresh verse.

Hot days and nights/ I swelter/ runnin from the fuzz/ helter skelter/ two hundred degrees don’t need no sweater/ blast Fight the Power on my sound dispenser.

Grab a slice at Sal’s/ I see walls/ wait a minute/ where’s magic Marley Marl?/ Fuck Sal/ Fuck up his joint/ Wait stop! What bout ma pizza? Man fuck yo pizza, this man don’t ‘preciate none of us brothers.

So what we gonna do? Boycott? Violence? What’s the right thing?

Left fist hate/ Right fist love/ Fight the Power/ A sign from above.

Call on X, call on Martin, one of these brothers/ They Do the Right Thing.

If you want to add a few bars, please do so in the comments!

Does anyone do the right thing?

Let’s analyse.

Sal, owner of Sal’s Pizzeria, refuses to put up pictures of black men on his wall, despite majority of his customers being black. Is he doing the right thing?

Young Giancarlo Esposito wants to boycott the pizzeria because of this. Is he doing the right thing?

Radio Rakim wants to play his music inside Sal’s, despite being told not to. Is he doing the right thing?

The local old drunk saves a boy’s life. But he still gets shit for it. Did he do the right thing?

Three black men are bitter because a Korean family that only just came into town already have a thriving business. Is that the right thing?

Spike Lee, who works for Sal, takes the additional $250 thrown at him towards the end of the film, even though he didn’t earn it. Did he do the right thing?

My two cents

The truth is, nobody does the right thing. Nobody does the wrong thing. Right. Wrong. These are two bookends on either side of a whole lotta grey matter. And it’s that grey matter that actually… matters.

In fact, if you ask me, Sal sits perfectly at the intersection of these two extremes. He is equanimity personified (except for his final outburst).

He doesn’t really see black and white. He just sees customers. And his only job is to take care of these customers so they can keep coming back.

And he says so himself:

I never had no trouble with these people. I sat in this window. I watched these little kids get old. And I seen the old people get older. Yeah, sure, some of them don’t like us, but most of them do. I mean, for Christ’s sake, Pino, they grew up on my food. On my food. And I’m very proud of that.

So… do you think anybody actually does the right thing? I’d love to hear your thoughts! All said and done, this was a masterclass production by the one and only Spike Lee.