Awareness Through Film – Do the Right Thing

Time for another one of my favorite films and this one hits home. I’ll start by asking if any of you have ever seen a movie as a child, or maybe not a child, just at some age before you really reached maturity and had a good understanding of life? And with this movie, you watched it, picked up a few points or memorable moments (funny, scary, or sad), but then that’s kind of where you left it – just a movie that you remembered from a young age. But here’s the rub, it was actually a classic and you weren’t quite yet of age to notice the nuances and subtle themes embedded and addressed within it. Well, here is one of mine: Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.

Quick Synopsis:

Do the Right Thing took place in Brooklyn in one of the extremely hot summers. If you’ve ever been to Brooklyn in the summer you know exactly what I’m talking about. It follows Mookie, played by Spike Lee, who was a black man who worked delivering pizzas for Sal’s Famous Pizzeria. The family who owned it, led by Sal himself, was an Italian American family who had established a well-known and respected presence in the neighborhood. The main catalyst for the flare up, eventually reaching violent heights, was over an argument who from history deserved to be on Sal’s Wall of Fame. As you can imagine, tempers began to flare and something small ultimately morphed into something much larger. The damage left behind was much deeper than just the damage to Sal’s property; it was the kind of damage that opened up unseen and rarely discussed racism that existed in society.

Race (or racism) wasn’t the only thing at play. The theme of police brutality surfaced and so too did the ideas of morality and equality. I think it is safe to say that Spike Lee produced a very appropriate name. And over the course of the last 30 years, I can say I’ve probably seen the movie maybe 100 times and after the first 50 times, I began to ask what does it actually mean to do the right thing?

Later in the film, things really reached a boiling point. When one of the many confrontations became violent and the police arrived, one of the movie’s primary characters, Radio Raheem, is choked to death by one of the police officers. Raheem was a street-respected citizen and when everyone watched his death right before their eyes, shock turned to anger and a whole community’s rage turned toward Sal and his pizzeria.

Mookie, standing squarely in the middle of being torn between his friend’s demise and his place of employment, picks up a trash can and launches it through Sal’s window. In that moment, did Mookie actually do the right thing? This is where the line between doing the right thing and reacting off of instinct becomes blurred if not invisible.

Rewind

Aren’t we exceptionally good at identifying what’s right after the situation has been resolved or after we have completely removed ourselves from the circumstances that surround it? Awareness shows us that when we are standing on the outside looking into a situation, decisions can look glaringly obvious. It’s easy to say, “You shouldn’t have done this” or “If I were you, I wouldn’t have done that .” Coaching from the sidelines, backseat drivers, or Monday morning quarterbacks I think are common terms, right?

Mindful awareness has a few parts that make up a complete definition. One being that when we are aware, we are often asked to notice everything that surrounds us in a decision-making process. We do this to understand it more completely. Instead of judging the moment in the moment, we should consider other factors like what happened five minutes earlier; what happened one day earlier; or what happened one year earlier? What things supported this flare up that you may not be privy too or what frame of mind are both parties exhibiting? Ask yourself, with this additional information, does the “right thing” still look the same? Does it still look as obvious?

Let’s Reflect

I agree that most would associate mindfulness with calmness, but when things aren’t calm, awareness is especially important. When we are placed in compromising positions, such as when we are angry, embarrassed, scared, or feel disrespected, how we interpret the moment becomes convoluted and confusing. We can’t see complexity and our fields of view become narrow. Then we can only see two things: what they’ve done to us and how we should immediately react. Naturally, how we should react takes priority. And his natural reaction was presented well in Mookie’s decision.

In Do the Right Thing, Spike did a wonderful job demonstrating the idea of perspective. Despite the violent actions and consequences that took place, each of the characters (and I did not come close to naming them all) held their own opinion based on who they were and their own past experiences. Each held their version of the story. Perspective and awareness go hand-in-hand, but awareness doesn't require us to pretend every perspective is equally justified. It asks something much harder of us: Is it possible to understand how someone arrived at their own personal perspectives without us making that perspective our own nor judge them for having one that may not agree with our own? In that space is where I find connection.

In the Kind Rebirths space, we don’t make any promises that awareness will reveal only “right” answers. It won’t. Sometimes awareness reveals just how much more complicated an issue is. Furthermore, it may also point out just how important interpretation is, especially when it’s left out and not accurately accounted for. So with that, it’s easy to understand the conflict held by Mookie when “right” has different connotations to different people based on the direction they were facing.

Mindfulness gives us the pause we need in situations, but awareness allows us to look beyond what our first interpretation tells us. When we find clarity, we have a better opportunity to respond rather than react. This is especially important when we do not have all the facts and when everyone believes their version is right. Awareness builds clarity. That’s possibly why those like me are still asking, did Mookie Do the Right Thing?

Stay Mindful…

Rebirth