Legendary New York City-based director Spike Lee has posted a harrowing video showing how his 1989 movie Do The Right Thing remains relevant. The movie, which was nominated for two academy awards, including one for Lee's screenplay, follows the events of a hot summer's day in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. It stars Lee as Mookie, and Danny Aiello as Sal, his boss at a local pizza place. As tensions mount in the neighborhood, a fight breaks out, resulting in one of the main characters, Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), being murdered by a police officer.
Lee's film has been widely praised in the 31 years since its release, and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1999. It was deemed a film of cultural, historical, and aesthetically significant importance by the Library of Congress for the way in which it deals with its subject matter.
And on the weekend, Lee posted a harrowing video showing how relevant Do The Right Thing remains. In it, footage of Radio Raheem's on-screen death is intercut with footage of the real life murders of Eric Garner and George Floyd. The video begins with a title card saying, "Will History Stop Repeating Itself?" The video, which we caution contains sensitive material, can be seen below:
3 Brothers-Radio Raheem, Eric Garner And George Floyd. pic.twitter.com/EB0cXQELzE
— Spike Lee (@SpikeLeeJoint) June 1, 2020
Lee's video is a comment on the current protests taking place across the United States. The civil action was prompted by a video that was released last week, showing a police officer in Minneapolis kneeling on the neck of Floyd during his arrest. Those actions resulted in Floyd's death, and the officers involved were fired, with the main officer in the incident, Derek Chauvin, later being charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
It is a reminder from Lee that these issues are not new to the USA. He was making films about the very same thing 31 years ago, and it is a sad indictment of the justice system that these kinds of events are still happening in 2020. The similarity between the fictional death in Do The Right Thing, and the real deaths, is eerie, and shows how accurate Lee's film was.
Since releasing Do The Right Thing, Lee has remained a potent voice in the film world. His subsequent movies have focused on social justice issues and raising awareness of institutionalized racism. His 2018 drama, Blackkklansman, explores the work of Ron Stallworth, a black police officer in Colorado Springs who infiltrated the KKK in an attempt to expose their activities in the city. Many of Lee's other movies focus on racial justice, and interrogating America's approach to race. Lee's latest film, Da 5 Bloods, follows a group of black soldiers in Vietnam and will be released on Netflix on June 12.
Source: Spike Lee/Twitter
