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Spiking the Joint
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16509 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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11 / 1989 |
1,418 Words |
| Author
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Paul Coates
Paul Coates is professor of literature at McGill University,
Montreal, Canada. |
Emerging from Do the Right Thing, dazed by the Dolby stereo sensation of having been bounced around inside a ghetto blaster for two hours, the audience may be forgiven for wondering just what the right thing is. Spike Lee's new film is clearly of two minds on the subject. For much of its duration two opinions jostle one another, with neither achieving dominance; in the end they deadlock, as a quotation from Martin Luther King unconditionally condemning violent protest is followed by one from Malcolm X justifying it, and the two men are shown in a beaming handshake whose utopian promise mocks all that has preceded it. The quotations and the photograph are a despairing cop-out; unable to sort out the relative value of opposed strands in the black heritage, Lee concludes (mocked by his own title) by refusing to choose.
Acridly gifted
Spike Lee, acridly gifted writer, producer, and director, is also the central actor: Mookie, Dodgers fan and delivery boy for Italian-run Sal's Famous Pizzeria, is a slouching, diminutive stoneface whose tormented eyes belie his stoical set expression. His seeming impassivity is a holding action against the immense tension of furiously opposed forces. These are teased out in the film's kaleidoscopic aesthetic, which alternates a quasi-pastoral image of summer life on a Brooklyn block, where old-timers exchange cracks and gently wafting soundtrack music diffuses a Porgy and Bess atmosphere, with--on the other hand--the jagged passion implicit in expressionistic canted angles, red-painted walls, and threatening wide-angle low shots of Radio Raheem's face as his overpowering ghetto blaster pours out Public Enemy's vitriolic gospel ("Fight the Power"). The ghetto blaster pumps out the sound of the young, who can no longer vent frustration in self-deprecating jokes ("I'll kick your black ass for you," one black tells another), for to be self-deprecating is to identify with the racial (racist) enemy.
Throughout the film these two strands shuttle back and forth. Calculatedly sweet scenes between Mayor, the block's aged and exquisitely mannered inebriate, and Mother-Sister, who snipes at him from her window but grudgingly admires his brave, fleet rescue of a child from an oncoming car, are diced with moments of sheer cacophony, as contentious voices drown one another out or the ghetto blaster crushes every other sound like an empty beer can tossed into the gutter. The sweeter scenes are associated with the old, who share Sal's belief that the races can subsist in harmony, even if they do have an occasional propensity to unbottle frustrations in murderous harangues. (In an amazing tour de
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