1989 Was a Time When Term Paper

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However, it is not all violence, and that is what makes Lee's film so real, as well. It is a mixture of what life is like in that one day in New York: In addition to anger, is humor, personal interaction at all levels and the beat of music and time. Lee provides "the saving laughter." At one point, the Korean seeking to save his store from the angry mob declares, "me Black, me Black, me no White, me Black too."

Lee's style of catching life at its fullest and most real also confused the white audiences, who had trouble understanding the language as well as the culture. As Gordon notes: "Lee stops the narrative and allows characters to speak to the camera. They cast both angry and comical aspersions on race at the audience. These slurs suggest the real hatred that underlies racial and ethnic humor and underscore the tension building within the story.

Pino: You gold-teeth, gold-chain-wearing, fried-chicken-and-biscuit-eatin' monkey, ape, baboon, big thigh, fast-running, three-hundred-sixty-degree-basketball-dunking spade, Moulan Yan, take ya slice a pizza and go the ***** back to Africa.

Korean Clerk: It's cheap, I got good price for you, Mayor Koch, "How

I'm doing," chocolate-egg-cream-drinking, bagel and lox, B'nai Brith *****.

Mookie: You Dago, Wop, garlic-breath, guinea, pizza-slinging, spaghetti-bending, Vic Damone, Perry Como, Luciano Pavorotti, Sole Mio, nonsinging motherf.., er.

In an interview, Lee notes that the movie shows that Lee says he was torn between the philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., and that of Malcolm X the ambivalence is depicted as the film ends with quotes from both men. King rejects violence; Malcolm X asserts that "I don't even call it violence when it's self-defense.
I call it intelligence." Lee says he understands the anger that drives black violence in a nation where "black lives are just not considered as important as those of whites.

Both Driving Miss Daisy and Do the Right Thing have the same goal: To make those in society more aware of the ways that the country needs to change in order to become a better nation. For some viewers, it is easier to not hit them on the head with strong unsettling messages, but let them form their own opinions from a more subtle approach -- as is the case with the former movie, Miss Daisy. Other viewers, however, are looking to movies for a true depiction of the way things stand today. They do not want to be spoon fed, but to tell it like it is. The latter movie, Do the Right Thing, takes this approach.

References

Gates, Henry Louis. "Spike Lee: the do-the-right-thing revolution." Interview with Spike Lee. 24.10 (1994), 156-159.

Gordon, Dexter B. "Humor in African-American discourse: speaking of oppression."

Journal of Black Studies. 29.2 (1998), 254-267.

Greene, B. "Audience Will Find the Right Movie." Chicago Tribune. p. V-1.

McGraw, Eliza Russi Lowen. "Driving Miss Daisy." Southern Cultures. 7.2 (2001), 41.

Right or Wrong." The Economist (U.S.), 1989 312.7611 (1989), 88-90.….....

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