Rating of
4/4
Nothing is ever so Black and White
SIngli6 - wrote on 06/27/17
Do The Right Thing remains one of the best examinations of American racial politics. Its dialectical style, especially its subversion of political melodrama archetypes (the sympathetic minority victim, the brutal racist, etc.), intend not to manipulate audiences into feeling pity for black people but to get them to think about why these humans of both races, with all their flaws and prejudices, are the way they are.
As the film ends with two juxtaposed quotations from MLK and Malcolm X on the ethics of violent residence to oppressive regimes, we are left to wonder, with all that we have seen and heard, how we can respect each other as human beings without compromising our autonomy. Such a query should be so simple, but the world keeps making it so complicated.
