Do the Right Thing(1989)
dir. Spike Lee
A hot day in Bed-Stuy. Who's right when it burns?
Where to watch: Rent on Fandango at HomeLetterboxd ↗
The hottest day of the summer on one block of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. A neighborhood pizzeria run by an Italian-American family, a gentrifying block, a wall of photos that someone wants changed, and a heat wave that wears everyone's patience thin until a police killing sets the block alight.
Why it’s here
The punk move is the refusal: Spike Lee ends the film by quoting both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X back to back and declines to tell you which one is right, or whether the climactic act counts as the right thing at all. The pedagogy follows from that. Every character gets a real argument, so the film works as a discussion engine instead of a lecture, and it shows how everyday friction (a wall of photos, a boombox, a bike scuffed by a sneaker) builds toward something state violence then ignites. It has also drawn real critique over how it handles its women and its Korean grocers, so watch it as a contested argument, not a verdict.
Where This Film Lives
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
Something Happened in Our Town: A Child's Story about Racial Injustice
Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard
The book for the conversation you've been avoiding.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Hate U Give
Angie Thomas
Witness. Target. Survivor.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
Phillip Hoose
She refused first. History forgot her anyway.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Dear Martin
Nic Stone
Letters to MLK from a kid in handcuffs.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
March: Book One
John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell
The blueprint for nonviolent revolution.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
The history of racist ideas — who made them and why
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin
Two letters. One hundred years after emancipation. Still waiting.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
bell hooks
Who gets to count as a woman?
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST