Scarlet Masque Theatre Journal New Beginnings and Fond Farewells Vol. 1 | Page 81

Maloney 18
movie.” She points out the spots where one youth hit another over the head with a
baseball bat, where one boy stabbed another, where a woman stuck her boyfriend with
a butcher knife because “he smoked more crack than she did” (Kunen).
Little in this passage is saying that this movie is not a call to action for black audiences. It
is a representation of the violence that already exists in neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy. One of
the more interesting assertions about ​ Do the Right Thing ​ that speaks to this lack of awareness
that white audiences may have comes from Klein. His line of interest is, “​ Do the Right Thing ​ . . .
opens on June 30 (in not too many theaters near you, one hopes)” (Klein). This quotation
speaks directly to an ignorance of the culture Little knows all too well. No black person will be
driven to rage because of dramatized violence; he may be driven to rage because of the ​ actual
violence his friends, family, and community have experienced first-hand.
So why throw the trash can? Perhaps Lee (through Mookie) is suggesting that black
people find an outlet for their outrage that inflicts violence on “the system,” which “Sal’s” could
represent. W.J.T. Mitchell, in his article “The Violence of Public Inquiry: ​ Do the Right Thing ​ ,”
explains this altruistic motivation as “Mookie ‘doing the right thing,’ saving human lives by
sacrificing property” (Mitchell 897). But Spike Lee has spoken against even this interpretation,
scoffing at the idea that “Mookie is designed to be the nice black guy whom white people
would take home for dinner, so when he shouts ‘​ Hate! ​ ’ and smashes the window, white people
feel more comfortable thinking he’s doing it for ​ them ​ ” (Sterritt 74). Time and time again, this
film evades certainty, slipping through the grasp of concrete understanding.
Movie reviews such as those written by Corliss, Klein, and Kunen are at a loss when they