The movie Do the Right Thing takes place in a lower-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York and is taken place on one day during the summer, the hottest day of the year. In the neighborhood, there is a family owned pizzeria owned by a man named Sal, an Italian American. He works with his two sons Pino and Vito, meanwhile has a delivery boy working for him, Mookie, who is about 20 years old. Mookie is African American and lives with his sister Jade. Mookie also has a son named Hector and a "girlfriend" named Tina. Mookie isn't very responsible and does not take his job seriously. There is also a man named Radio Raheem, also an African American, who walks around the neighborhood blasting his boombox playing Fight the Power. The movie focuses on how race, ethnicity, and social class effects the decisions and actions of the people in the neighborhood. A common theme displayed throughout the movie is tension. There is so much tension between the people in the town which ultimately leads to fights, arguments, and disrespectful actions. In Sal's Famous Pizzeria there are pictures on the wall of a lot of famous Italians, such as Frank Sinatra and Sylvester Stallone. When a customer named Buggin' Out comes into the restaurant for a slice of pizza, he realizes there are no pictures of black people up on the wall. Buggin' Out feels that there should be some brothers on the wall since most of Sal's customers are black. Sal's reaction consists of him saying this is my store if you want brothers on the wall get your own store. There is a lot of question about how these people in the neighborhood treat one another and whether they are doing the right or wrong thing. Most of the time, the reactions are not kind and very disrespectful. In one scene, Radio Raheem was walking into Sal's Pizzeria to get a slice and he was blasting his music, still playing Fight the Power. Sal asked Radio Raheem to turn off the music because he couldn't even hear himself think. He does not do as Sal asked which makes Sal get very angry and causes him to start yelling. Eventually, Radio Raheem lowers his music and then gets served his slice of pizza. This whole unnecessary argument could have been avoided if Radio Raheem had just obeyed Sal's wishes. It is uncertain about who did the right thing because Sal did not have a nice tone and Radio Raheem was just not respecting what Sal wanted. Although the movie does not state what the right thing to do is, there is an underlying sense that being respectful is what everyone expects from each other. A lot of the arguments that take place are simply because no one is respecting each other's thoughts, feelings, and opinions. The movie does a great job of portraying the theme tension and really gets the point across that everyone in the neighborhood has many differences. Often, due to these differences, the people of the town do not see eye to eye. There are many incidents in the movie which tend to push different races further apart, instead of bringing them together. Most of the time, the right thing to do is to try and get along with others and be kind, however, this movie demonstrates the complete opposite. Although it demonstrates hatred and negativity that occurs between the people in the neighborhood, it does a good job of accurately representing the truth.
