Mise-en-scène in Do the Right Thing
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	Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing is a racially tense drama about living in a complex urban environment and about making difficult decisions. In this film, Lee reconstructs the Bed-Stuy neighborhood in Brooklyn inhabited by the film's many different characters. As Mookie, the main character played by Lee himself, delivers pizzas, he crosses between the often clearly delineated public and private spaces of the neighborhood. Mookie stands out as the central
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	focus within the energy and wear-and-tear of this urban mise-en-scène. Surrounding him is a community of distinctive characters, like Buggin Out and Radio Raheem, all sharing the same tight spaces, creating a cohesive but troubled community. The sidewalk acts as the border between the public street and the private homes behind hedges and front doors. The Bed-Stuy of Do the Right Thing is under constant construction. Quite literally these streets are being written over by protests, personal comments, and individual
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	personalities. In one scene, Mookie talks with his flamboyant sister Jade against a wall graffitied with "Tawana told the truth," a reference to a controversial racial incident in the 1980s.
	Costumes and Props
	As in most films, costumes or dress in Do the Right Thing identify and distinguish characters. For example, Da Mayor sports a crumpled suit that suggests the kind of beaten-down dignity of an elderly alcoholic, while Pino's white sleeveless T-shirt identifies him with a white working-class background. But costume in Do the Right Thing expresses more than an individual's sense
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	of self. It can speak to larger themes. Mookie's Brooklyn Dodgers shirt features Jackie Robinson's name, a significant reference to an African American baseball player who broke through the color barrier. In a similar way, props can be extremely meaningful. Look, for instance, at Radio Raheem's boom box and at the photograph that Smiley always carries and displays. The boom box is not only a way for Radio Raheem to assert his identity. It represents the power
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	of sound to cross borders and barriers, a power that Mister Senor Love Daddy's radio voice also demonstrates. And Smiley's photo of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X not only encapsulates the central dialog in the film between racial love and hate, but it also acts as a counterpoint to Sal's photos of Italian celebrities on the wall of fame in his pizzeria. This is key. Both Smiley's photo of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Sal's wall of fame represent their
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	respective claims to a particular racial identity.
	Blocking
	Blocking is the physical arrangement of characters in a mise-en-scène, either in relation to other characters or in relation to other objects in the mise-en-scène. In Do the Right Thing blocking is especially important to the film's themes as it becomes about the politics of the block and how groups and individuals situate themselves in the neighborhood. One example is the way Mother Sister is
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	positioned or blocked in relation to the neighborhood and the other characters. She's typically shown sitting at her window high up, looking down at the goings-on in the neighborhood. Her blocking suggests her elevated and respected status in the community. Another dramatic example of blocking takes place during a conversation between Pino, Vito, and Mookie. As usual, the conversation pits one brother against the other regarding their relationship with Mookie. The blocking itself contributes to the tenseness of the conversation. As the characters move closer, that tension and discord becomes even more physically
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	palpable.
	Actors and Performance
	A film's mise-en-scène is often held together by the performances of the actors. In Do the Right Thing the central character is unmistakably Mookie. All actors are, of course, performers, but in Do the Right Thing Mookie is a more self-conscious performer than most. His power and attraction comes in some ways from his ability to identify with other characters across generation and neighborhood borders and perform like a mirror, showing the other characters their true selves. In some ways he acts as
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	the truth teller of the film. For example, in this scene Pino and Mookie face off about the celebrities they identify with. Despite his overt racism, as Mookie points out, Pino's favorite celebrities are in fact African American. While Mookie is able to work the streets with style and sympathy, adapting himself to everyone and every situation, in his home life Mookie is a less successful performer. His partner, Tina, constantly berates him for never taking
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	responsibility. How would you define Mookie as the central performer? As simply self-serving and therefore hypocritical? As a peacemaker? Or as someone who eventually learns that to perform means to be responsible? Performance is at the heart of the mise-en-scène of Do the Right Thing, the performance of sympathy, the performance of difference, and in one of the most dramatic sequences in the film, the performance of racial rage and hatred. In this montage, various members of the neighborhood unleash a series of disturbing and stinging racial slurs about
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	blacks, Latinos, whites, and Asians. Running through the film's various performances is a common concern, one that is echoed in the title. What exactly is the right thing to do?
	The Climactic Sequence
	The climactic sequence at the end of Do the Right Thing dynamically draws together many of the key elements and strategies of the film's mise-en-scène: the dynamics and differences between public and private spaces, the blocking of different
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	groups in communities, and the performances within those spaces. The sequence begins with Buggin Out, Radio Raheem, and Smiley bursting into Sal's pizzeria and demanding that photos of African Americans be added to the wall of fame. As the crowd goads them on, the space of the mise-en-scène seems to contract in, adding to the rising emotional intensity. In the heat of the moment, Sal takes his baseball bat to Radio Raheem's boombox and destroys it. After a silent,
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	tense moment where the onlookers and Radio Raheem process what has just happened, a brawl erupts in the pizzeria and wrestling bodies chaotically spill into the street in a fight that destroys the tense blocking of the previous scene. Sal and his sons are on one side, and a line of angry neighbors are on the other. Here the blocking and spatial organization of the mise-en-scène crystallizes the central tension in the film as not only between two groups but also between the private space of the pizzeria and the public space
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	of the streets. It's at this point that the film's most ambiguous, important, and controversial action takes place. Mookie calmly picks up a garbage can and throws it through the window of the pizzeria, breaking apart the thin line between Sal's private world and the streets. Is this an act of anger and hatred, or might there be another motivation for Mookie's decision? Against the backdrop of littered streets and the burned-out pizzeria window, Sal and Mookie meet
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	the morning after the brawl and argue about Mookie's pay, money being one of the key props and themes of the film. Sal throws Mookie's pay on the ground, and after Mookie picks it up, he turns and walks down the street. In the light of morning the mise-en-scène has not changed much, but perhaps Mookie has. He's going home to take responsibility for his son.