What is Smiley's purpose in Do the Right Thing? (2024)

What is Smiley's purpose in Do the Right Thing?

Smiley is a character in the film Do the Right Thing, portrayed by Roger Guenveur Smith. He is a young, mentally impaired man who tries to sell pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. He is first shown saying: "Good Morning" and introducing himself, and drawing on the picture of Malcolm X and Dr.

The message is right there, flat out, in Public Enemy's title song: "You got to fight the power, fight the power, fight the powers that be." And it reverberates through the movie -- at times quite literally -- rocking the Brooklyn streets.

Still, the vehement condemnation by the film's initial critics made it clear enough: Mookie had not done the right thing. The riot, in their opinion, resulted from the protagonist succumbing to "hate" in the ongoing battle with "love" that is poetically described by Radio Raheem earlier in the film.

“Do the Right Thing” takes place during a heat wave, and this heat stands for the racial tension within the neighborhood. With so many ethnic groups intermingling, inner-city life feels like an everyday struggle to maintain order; a clash of cultures is inevitable.

1. Because it feels good to do the right thing. You will not feel good if you retaliate, bad mouth someone, or do anything otherwise negative. You WILL feel good if you do the right thing: stay positive, focus on something else, continue to be who you are, and treat people with kindness and compassion.

In a lesser film, Sal might have served as an easy villain, the racist white businessman who gets his just deserts. Lee is too nuanced for that. Sal is a working-class Italian-American, proud of having eked out a livelihood with a business he can call his own, even in a neighborhood that he cannot.

It is Spike Lee himself—in the role of Sal's deliveryman—who starts the riot by throwing a garbage can through the store's window, one of the stupider, more self-destructive acts of violence I've ever witnessed (if black kids act on what they see, Lee may have destroyed his career in that moment).

And even this isn't the final moment or message. Spike Lee concludes Do the Right Thing with two scrolling quotations accompanied by soft jazz, one from Martin Luther King, Jr. advocating peaceful protest and the other from Malcolm X advocating violence as self-defense.

That said, I would say that Vito did the right thing. The only time he did get involved in the fight at the end was to come to the defense of his family, and that's just being loyal. Tyler: He provided the neighborhood with some much-needed jams. But he also had a bad attitude and yelled at those Koreans for no reason.

Introducing the Spike Lee Heat Index!

And Lee's greatest movie is also his most blistering: Do the Right Thing, which is set during the hottest day of the summer. As DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy tells it, warning of temperatures over 100 degrees, “There's a Jheri curl alert! …

What it means to Do the Right Thing?

To act or behave correctly, appropriately, or with the best intentions.

How do I know if I'm doing the right thing? - YouTube

Jade is also a young person in the community who's still in touch with her elders. In one memorable scene, she combs Mother Sister's hair while acting as both her witness and confidante. In another, when Jade stops by Sal's pizzeria, it becomes clear that Sal is infatuated with her, and surprisingly, she allows for it.

Sal's racist eldest son Pino is antagonistic towards Mookie, clashing with both his father, who refuses to move his business out of the majority African-American neighborhood, and his younger brother Vito, who is friendly with Mookie.

Mookie is a main protagonist/on and off villain in the 1989 hit movie Do the Right Thing. He is portrayed by none other than the movie's director himself, Spike Lee.

"Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.

Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) choked to death by the police in 'Do The Right Thing'. Do The Right Thing unfolds over a sweltering day in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York.

I believe this movie is called do the right thing to refer to the right way to fight for set equality. As shown in the final scene of the movie, a picture of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr was hung up on the remains of Sal's wall of fame.

Doing the right thing means doing what is best for the greater or common good. It means making decisions that are not based on your own personal needs, that don't expand your popularity, or enforce your personal beliefs.

Do the right things summary?

Salvatore "Sal" Fragione (Danny Aiello) is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito), becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria's Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin' Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin' Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.

Do the Right Thing / Film synopsis

You tend to get what you give.

By doing the right thing you tend to get the same things back. Give value to people, help them and they will often want to help you and give you value in some form. Not everyone will do it but many will.

Explanation: Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.

It's about being curious, listening, learning and finding the best solution, not your solution. It requires time and effort and often sometimes a lot of both. On the contrary, being right is making a situation about yourself, showing or proving to others that what you think and know is right.

Integrity means doing the right thing when no one is looking. Otherwise, if others are watching you it's not really about being moral anymore. And if you want to be an observant human being who cares about others, then you need to have your own standards for integrity through which to operate.

The choice between what is right and what we want is particularly tough because it requires us to put down our stubbornness and hurt our own egos. It requires us to admit that we are wrong, that we are being selfish, and that we are in over our heads.