Spike Lee: Summer Of Sam Vs Do The Right Thing

Do The Right Thing takes place on a hot summer day in an African American neighborhood(Bedstuy) located in an urban section o

the film that reflect Spikes Lee's views about the subject matter and how people actually think. With this in mind, Spike Lee illustrates how this is a film but, it is not just a film, its reality.

What is interesting in both Do The Right Thing and Summer of Sam, is when Spike Lee has characters talking into the video camera. In Summer of Sam for example, Spike Lee himself acts as a television newscaster named John Jeffries, and interviews the residents of Bed-Stuy (the same neighborhood represented in Do The Right Thing) concerning the Berkowitze killings. In doing so, there is extreme emphasis on one lady in particular, who says that she will give the "darker perspective" concerning the issue. At this point, the camera focuses in on her face as she stares into the camera commenting that, she thinks God that it is a white man killing white people instead of a black man killing white people. She further comment that there would be the biggest race riot in New York City if the killer was black. The characters in this scene are not only talking to John Jeffries but, they are also talking to us, the viewer. This signifies that there is a message behind these issues in!

Do Thing Right Thing is part of a tradition of Black films which show Black people using music that provides the key tool of conflict on diverse levels. Radio Raheem's music box is his weapon in the war of wills between him and the young Hispanics playing their Salsa and it also gives us (the viewer) the only person-to-person conflict with the Koreans. His box also establishes a tension between himself and Sal, and then it triggers a riot. When Sal ends his screaming fight with Buggin Out by snatching a baseball bat and smashing the box, then says "There, I've killed your music," the music not only is silenced but, African-American pride is silenced also.

An environment is established at the beginning of Summer of Sam when the camera follows Vinnie and Dionna (two main characters) into a 1970's disco. This scene not only introduce two of the main characters, but it also defines the 1970's time period through clothing, the disco, and popular music at the time. The bell-bottomed pants and the big collard shirts enable the viewer to associate the characters with this 1970's world. "Boogie Nights", a popular song at the time, helped initiate the scene escorting Vinnie and Dionna into the disco. It is at this point that we (the viewer) are taken into the characters' lives, identifying them with their surroundings. The disco in 1977, for example, was the place to be on a Saturday night especially if you were from the inner city. Addition to the disco, cocaine is the drug of choice, which is demonstrated by Vinnie and Dionna snorting it with people at a 'sex club'.

Filmed in 1989 in New York City, Do The Right Thing emphasizes an urban African-American environment with fashionable clothes worn by the neighborhood youth, as well as rap music by Public Enemy. Emphasis on wearing Air Jordan sneakers is demonstrated by Buggin Out while New York Yankee logos are visual on t-shirts and posters. Radio Raheem walks around with not only playing Public Enemy music on his boom box, but also wears a "Bed Stuy"(name of neighborhood) T-shirt with an African-American logo representing his pride of where he is from. Public Enemy is primarily known within black, urban culture, therefore representing this African-American environment from a musical perspective. Spike Lee portrays rap music and rap style as commercially suitable to the mainstream audience even though it raises political questions. In Do The Right T

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