Black Images in Film - Coursework Example

The Final Paper-Black Images in Film This report intends to compare and contrast the two movies ‘Boyz N the Hood’ and ‘Do the Right Thing’. ‘Boyz N the Hood’ released in 1991 was the debut movie of John Singleton who wrote and directed it when he was just twenty three years old. ‘Do the Right Thing’ a 1989 movie was produced, written and directed by Spike Lee. He also plays one of the central characters in the movie. Both the movies are a commentary on the existing racism in a country that prides itself on being the land of equality and fraternity. Boyz N the Hood is the story of three young black boys who live in the ‘hood’ of South Central Los Angeles. (John Singleton, 1991). The movie is a story of their friendship, about the paths that diverge with time. Ricky Baker and Darin (nickname Doughboy) are half-brothers, as alike as chalk and cheese. Ricky is a soft character whose ultimate passion is football. Doughboy is aggressive and violent, yet sticking to his own code of honor and pride. The third boy Tre Styles (played by Cuba Gooding Jr) leads a life very different from the other two in that he has a father to lean upon. Though divorced from his mother, Tre’s father Jason ‘Furious’ Styles (played by Lawrence Fishburne) takes an active interest in his upbringing. This makes all the difference to young Tre’s life. The movie shows the young boys grown into teenagers living completely different lives. Whereas Tre is a responsible young man, Doughboy is a high school dropout hanging about in the neighborhood dealing with drugs and alcohol. Ricky is trying to win a football scholarship to the University of Southern California, he has also fathered a baby with his girlfriend. Their neighborhood is highly prone to violence and the police are more or less negligent about the safety of the area. Their attitude is that blacks are a violent lot. Problems start when Ricky gets killed by a rival gang shootout. Doughboy is determined to take revenge and Tre has to decide whether to risk his career and future for the sake of avenging his friend’s life and for the sake of self-respect. This moving chronicle of the trials faced by three young blacks is a mirror of director Singleton’s own childhood spent in a similar black ghetto. ‘Do the Right Thing’ is a movie that shows the happenings on a very very hot day. The movie is set in a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. (Lee Spike, 1989). The story revolves a pizzeria owned by an Italian American Sal (Danny Aiello). The pizzeria is located in a primarily black neighborhood. Sal runs the pizzeria along with his two sons Pino who is a bigot and Vito, a soft-hearted person who is close friends with one of the black delivery-boys, Mookie (Spike Lee). Mookie lives with his attractive younger sister Jade and keeps trying to avoid taking responsibility of his girlfriend Tina and their infant son Hector. Other major characters in this movie are Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) a black hothead of the street, Radio Raheem( Bill Nunn), a big unhappy black whose only interest in life is his huge boombox blaring music at loud volumes. His favourite is Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.” Another important character is Mister Senor Love Daddy (Sam Jackson), the local deejay who acts as both narrator and character in the movie. Sal has decorated his pizzeria “wall of fame” with pictures of celebrities of Italian descendents like Sinatra, Pacino, etc. Buggin ‘Out demands that Sal place pictures of African descendent celebrities on his wall of fame as the pizzeria was located in a black neighborhood. Sal refuses to compromise and insists he would not put anyone but Italians on his wall. Buggin’ Out attempts to make an issue of this but no-one but Radio Raheem takes him seriously because Sal had earlier that day reprimanded him for playing his boombox too loudly. Later Radio Raheem and Buggin’ Out barge into Sal’s pizzeria and state that they wouldn’t leave until Sal would change the pictures on the wall. Radio Raheem irritates Sal by blaring his boombox music ‘Fight the Power’ at the highest volume possible. Sal asks them to turn the volume down or leave the shop but the two refuse.Finally crossing the limit of his patience, Sal destroys Radio Raheem’s boombox with a baseball bat. Radio Raheem gets violent and tries to choke Sal. Sal’s two sons rush to their father’s aid but the other African American customers in the pizzeria begin to attack them leading to a full fledged fight spilling onto the streets as well. Vito and Mookie try to break up the fight but to no avail. A crowd of spectators cheer on the men. When the police arrive they apprehend Radio Raheem and in an effort to defuse the fight use excessive pressure, strangling Radio Raheem and he dies. The enraged mob rushes into Sal’s pizzeria destroying everything and starting a fire. The firefighters arrive and disperse the mob by turning their hoses on the mob and also control the fire but the pizzeria is completely burned. Sal and sons are out of business. Though both the movie basically deal with issues of blacks, Boyz N the Hood speaks about the problems blacks face within their own setup, how they seem to put themselves in a vicious circle of drugs, alcohol and violence, that the only way out is self-reform. It is a landmark film which manages to paint a deadly picture of the impending perils facing sensitive, immature and impulsive youth in the high risk teenage years. It should be noted that the United States Library of Congress deemed the film “culturally significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. ‘Do the Right Thing’ deals with how people hold prejudices against each other, how a series of seemingly unimportant happenings can on some days lead to very unfortunate incidents, how rash intolerance and stubborn decisions can totally destroy lives. It is a thought provoking movie which also stirred up much controversy at the time of its release. Though centered on a serious subject, the movie has its share of humor and is eminently watchable for entertainment also. A lot of topics are dealt with in Boyz N the Hood, maybe too many for a roughly 100 minute narrative. That is one flaw I felt, John Singleton seems to have tried to stuff all the issues facing blacks in the movie resulting in a heavy-tone feel. One aspect which is really commendable is the message it gives parents of how important the disciplining presence of a father is in contributing to the personality of a child. In the movie, Tre is the only one who has a father to learn from, a father who instills a sense of responsibility and stability. The conversations Furious has with Tre on all the issues that confront a black teenage boy living in a violent neighborhood like theirs sheds light on the path that Tre takes. Other themes covered include teenage sexuality, promiscuity, gentrification of poor neighborhoods, police apathy to the violence, drug abuse among teenagers, gang rivalry, racial prejudices and cultural bias in standardized tests. In contrast to Tre, Ricky and Doughboy have the same mother but different fathers who do not exist in their lives. Their mother dotes on Ricky is studying well and always neglects Doughboy. The viewer feel real sympathy for Doughboy who despite his bad ways is essentially good at heart. One wonders how even a mother behaves in a biased way towards her offspring. Racial prejudice is shown when the white schoolteacher of Tre reacts with surprise when she comes to know that Tre’s mother is completing her masters and that Tre had a father. There seems to be a notion that most blacks are school dropouts engaging in promiscuity. Teenage sexuality is also dealt with Furious advising Tre never to indulge in unprotected physical relations. At a later stage, we find Tre’s girlfriend Brandi who is a strict Catholic advising Tre against sex before marriage and the problems involved in having a baby before they were financially stable and had completed their education. Police apathy is shown when Furious fires one night at a burglar who tries to break into his home but the police arrive more than a hour later and decide that the crime is inconsequential since nothing was taken and the burglar had already escaped. The police negligience could also be the reason for the climax when Doughboy hesitates a moment before killing the rival gangleader but proceeds because he knows the authorities aren’t going to do much. The arrogant and negligient African-American cop portrayed in the movie shows the prejudice shown not only by whites but blacks themselves against poorer blacks. Furious in the movie explains to a crowd of blacks about gentrification, how violence and drug abuse was pushing down the blacks by decreasing property values and enabling real estate companies to reap huge profits. Furious tell them that they should not wait for the rest of America to help them as they are not personally affected by the violence, only the blacks could themselves end the cycle of violence affecting them. In contrast, I felt the movie ‘Do the Right Thing’ dealt more with rash actions, how little suppressed feeling led to violent eruption of emotions at a later stage. It seems to deal more with prejudice as a whole. Buggin’ Out is himself a racist and this is shown when he harasses a white who accidentally knocks him despite the man apologizing, racially criticizing him. Sal is not portrayed as an all out racist, it is a nuanced character who likes his black delivery boy Mookie. Pino, his bigot son hates blacks but is shown as loving Eddie Murphy, Prince and Michael Jordan. Spike Lee has really made a social commentary, showing people in shades of grey rather than just black or white (evil or good). There are no heroes or villains, Lee leaves it to the viewers to think, he provokes the audience to debate. The use of interesting images is common to both the movies. For example, just before the opening scene in Boys N the Hood, two messages flash across the screen. “One in twenty-one African American males will die of murder”, followed by “Most will be killed by other African American males.” Then a close shot of a “Stop” sign. In Doing the Right Thing, there is a character, a mentally handicapped man named Smiley who wanders around the street holding up hand-colored pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. After the riot, Smiley wanders into the smouldering restaurant and hangs on the remnants of Sal’s Wall of Fame a picture of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr shaking hands. The movie ends with two quotations. The first from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr which says that violence is never justified under any circumstance while the second quotation from Malcolm X says that violence is intelligent when it is in self-defense. Thus Lee leaves it to the audience to reflect on the quotes and decide what was right and what was wrong. In the end, both movies are excellent examples of movies of blacks by blacks. Both effectively show that violence erupts because of inner turmoil and prejudice in people’s minds. John Singleton and Spike Lee have done a commendable job in portraying the lives in black ghettos. Works Cited Reid, Mark. A. Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Cambridge Film Handbooks. University of Florida. Spike, Lee. Do the Right Thing. Wikipedia. 1989. 28 May 2007 . Singleton, John. Boyz n the Hood. 1991. 28 May 2007 . Rhines, Jesse A. Black Film/White Money. Diawara, Manthia (ed). Black American Cinema. Cripps, Thomas. Making Movies Black. Read More