Times critics Justin Chang and Glenn Whipp discuss why Spike Lee's 1989 film 'Do the Right Thing' is one of the great summer movies.
is under way, and voters have chosen “Do the Right Thing” as their winner for Week 9, dedicated to movies first released in theaters from June 26 to July 2 . Times film critic Justin Chang sat down with entertainment columnist Glenn Whipp to discuss the greatness of Spike Lee’s film and how it has always spoken to a nation in turmoil.intercutting the final moments of three Black men who died violent choking deaths while in police custody.
Those moments — specifically, the scene in which Raheem’s angry, grief-stricken friends and neighbors destroy Sal’s Famous Pizzeria — drew some hand-wringing criticism from white film critics 31 years ago. For years Lee has dismissed those jabs as racist, and history has vindicated him and the movie on a number of counts.
In some ways, all those criticisms were the ultimate backhanded compliment to “Do the Right Thing,” a collective acknowledgment of just how close to the bone, how unsettlingly recognizable Lee’s Brooklyn was. To say that it is just as recognizable today, in the era of Garner and Floyd and so many other Black lives taken too soon, is to point out the obvious: It’s hard to think of a moment in the last 31 years when “Do the Right Thing”timely.
It’s interesting how “some people” can look at a movie — or a protest or any kind of pointed discussion about racial inequity in America — and completely miss what’s being said. After watching “Do the Right Thing” again the other night, I flipped over to the disc’s bonus features and watched the press conference that followed the movie’s
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