Presently in America a war is being fought. Forget about guns, planes, and bombs, the weapons from now on will be the newspapers, magazines, TV shows,

radio, and FILM. The right has gotten BOLD, bolstered by their squashing of

Ice-T's COP KILLER, any piece of art that doesn't hold the party line is subject

to attack. It's war on the battle grounds of culture.

The presence, or lack thereof, of a realistic portrayal of African-Americans in American films is a pertinent issue. Hollywood has a tendency to stereotype, or, completely ignore, African-Americans in the feature films it produces. Historical films typically have their African-American presence in the form of an illiterate slave, or inferior character, who is usually brutalized, raped, mistrusted, stupid, violent, or violated in some way. In the blockbuster, Forrest Gump, Forrest's friend, Bubba is "as nearly as much of an idiot as Gump himself"(Pfeil, 258). The film version of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic, The Scarlet Letter, infuses an African American slave character into the "loosely adapted" script, and then proceeds to depict her with the negative stereotypical characteristics that we unf

-Malcolm X (Malcom X, Let X be Little, Not!)

Returning to the analysis of the film, Da Mayor symbolizes passive acceptance into a submissive position in the capitalist economy. He displays "Uncle Tom" servility and accepts change from the paternalistic, condescending Sal, in return for sweeping the sidewalk. He uses this money to support his alcoholism, which "numbs the pain" of his memories of not being able to provide for his hungry children. Mother Sister is his exact reciprocal; she has a resistance to labor. "Don't work too hard today", she warns Mookie, the central protagonist, played by Lee. The Da Mayor/Mother Sister dualism embodies the "self hatred, low self-esteem, or internalized white supremacist thinking."(hooks, 248) Whereby, for some reason or another, both of the characters accept the fact that they can't and/or refuse to compete in the system

During a talk at the University of Texas, Lee and his co-producer, Monty Ross, told the audience that their focus was to make films that had a message. Insisting that they would "tell the truth"; they also said that they wanted to make thought provoking work that was entertaining.(Smith, 101) Spike's epic, Malcolm X, is entertaining and extremely informative, carrying the message of a great leader to a mass audience who may have never bothered to read about the life of Malcolm X at all. The movie is a great summary of his life, however, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley, does provide a more complete understanding of Malcolm's life and his accomplishments. One would hope that on completion of the film the viewer would be compelled to read it.

The ambitiousness of Do the Right Thing lies not only in its complicated characters, but in its visual and audio style. There is a variety of different visual cuts and musical genres. "For example, the jump-cut sequence of characters trading racial insults works to illustrate the chilling, pandemic character of racism. The social content packed into the scene is furious and alarming." (Baker, 172) Also, the music ranges from orchestral arrangements, to jazz, reggae, Latino music, and of course, rap. He steers away from the typical Hollywood happy ending by showing the destruction and chaos in the ghetto. Hence, leaving the audience in an emotional knot that requires discussion, thought, and retrospection to even begin to undo.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Da Mayor, America Malcolm, Spike Lee, Spike Lee's, Black America, African American, Mayor/Mother Sister, Mosque Inc, Indeed Malcolm's, Security Income, african american, spike lee, nation islam, spike lee's, mother sister, racially segregated, inner city, black white, heard angry revolutionists, popular film, american culture, income inner city, martin luther king, spike lee's films, mass production system,
Approximate Word count = 3433
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)