word vomit

I agree that “Do the Right Thing” is not THE film about the black experience in America, and I would venture a guess that such a film does not and probably can not exist. But it is unfairly freighted with this mantle, in part, because it is one of the serious films about black issues that a lot of people have seen. In many ways, “Do the Right Thing” has become the modern ur-text for black consciousness in cinema. It is used as shorthand (the oft-repeated story of the Obamas watching it on their first date) for something larger than the film itself. Also, like I previously commented, the film goes to great lengths to include a multiplicity of voices which lend to the film’s verisimilitude and perhaps contribute to its experiential feel. (I would still argue that the film offers more racial, cultural, and socioeconomic experiences than most readings credit it with.) This baggage (or canonization) has both positive and negative connotations—and something I think that aesthetically, culturally, and politically important art can not escape but, hopefully, ultimately transcends—but it is also baggage of a different dimension than films by white male filmmakers in the US face. Just off the top of my head, the following films—“Bonfire of the Vanities”, “Fatal Attraction”, “Risky Business”, and “Wall Street”—touch on being a yuppie in the 80s. They have the luxury though of not being THE film about being a yuppie, being white, being an adulterer, being a trader, etc., and it is seems commonly accepted that this notion would be ludicrous to suggest.