Blog 8. Fruitvale Station. Due by 11PM tonight.

I think this film contrasts starkly to Do the Right Thing. This film portrays a much more modern form of racism: it is not as obvious and can even be labeled an accident.

—Jordyn

The moment that stayed with me the most was the scene following Grant getting shot. After the train leaves, Officer Caruso walks over to his fellow officer and exclaims, “What the fuck happened?”. Then he gets doing on his knees, grabs Grants hand, and tells him, “Keep your eyes open”. He also looks frightened, ashamed, and regretful when Grant repeatedly says, “I have a daughter”. This fascinates me because when I first saw officer Caruso I thought he was just a mean racist cop. However his subsequent reaction makes me think otherwise. He is in fact more complicated than one might think. 

—Philip 

I kept asking myself why I was more upset with the victims for not complying than I was with the officers for lacking decency. After hearing this type of story so many times I've started to view police officers (in these situations) as robots executing commands. I’ve seen it and told myself “just comply, just comply, just comply” so many times that I get upset when other don’t, but of course they don’t. They’re people in stressful situations and they’re not dealing with robots, they’re dealing with people too. It made me aware to how much I’ve changed my perception of the “boys in blue,” and just how many times I’ve seen innocent people killed in unnavigable situations.

—Jordan

The president laid the groundwork for understanding a crucial aspect of the reaction to the [Trayvon Martin] verdict. He was asking sympathetic and curious listeners to consider that the outcry is not about one race’s oppression of another. It’s about the system of demoralization and dehumanization that sometimes keeps black people from seeming human even to themselves: epidemiology and statistics and diagnoses, the pathologization of black existence. The statistics make blacks look sick and hopeless, weak and unlovable. I’ve seen black women clutch their purses, too.

But attitudes in politics change all the time. Coogler’s debut is like the debuts of John Singleton, Matty Rich, and Allen and Albert Hughes: It’s about the hassles of modern black male life in America. His debut is notable not for its anger or nihilism but for its calm. Coogler could have included the protests and riots that happened in the days after Oscar Grant’s death and weeks before Obama’s inauguration. He could have gone into the trial of Johannes Mehserle, the officer who killed Grant. But he captures the altered tenor of depictions of black life in popular culture: Jay Z is a sports agent, the Roots are Jimmy Fallon’s house band, Chris Rock is playing a droopy dad in an Adam Sandler movie.

In its way, Fruitvale Station speaks to that yawning discrepancy. What feels slight, shaggy, and ordinary about it is also rather remarkable. To present Grant this way — as a son who loves his mother, as a father who loves his daughter, as the sort of person who comforts a dying dog and pleads with a shop owner to permit a pregnant woman to use his restroom — is to remove the stigma. He’s a lower-middle-class kid who got mixed up with crime. But most of the narrative belongs to a charming, charismatic, devoted young man, someone striving to better himself. It’s not only that this Grant is a person. It’s that, to a fault, he’s made to be more than black male pathology.
     
It sounds corny. But urgency supersedes that corniness. Oscar Grant is what’s missing from movies about young black men. The movie strives to restore to Grant the individuality that the symbolism of tragedy took away. Coogler’s portrait affixes a human face on ones that hoodies willfully obscure. The film arrives in the moment after the predicted rage turned out to be something a lot stranger and more profound than flashes of fury. No one threw a trash can through a window, as Lee’s character notoriously does in his movie. Sal’s Pizzeria didn’t burn to the ground. Instead of acting up and acting out after the Zimmerman verdict, people began to turn inward, to wring their hands and search their souls. No one knows yet how to break new ground, not even the president. However, there’s a sense that the angry, old solutions will no longer cut it. We might be out of cheeks to turn, but we’re also out of trash cans.
—Wesley Morris

What made me want to tell this story? It started with the incident, and being right there in the Bay Area when it happened. Being the same age as Oscar. Oscar was born in 1986. And I couldn’t help seeing myself right there. Seeing that situation. Seeing his friends—they look like my friends. We wear the same clothes, the same complexion. So in seeing that I thought, what if that was me? And that is where the idea initially came from. Being so hurt and being so angry, and so frustrated, and confused about what happened. The same feeling everybody had when they were out protesting and rioting. And people on the other side on the Internet. And seeing the trial, I feel like it kind of got muddled over that Oscar is a human being. He became this saint or this idol that people held up. He became a rallying cry and a symbol for whatever kind of impressions you wanted to make him a symbol for. And the other side has demonized him. He’s a criminal. He’s a thug. He got what he deserved. Personally, he’s not either one of those things. I feel like what was getting glossed over was the fact that this 22-year-old guy didn’t make it home to the people that he mattered to most. And for unnecessary reasons—his life was cut short unnecessarily. And so many young black men’s lives get cut short unnecessarily. [They’re not seen as] human beings by people who don’t know them or are on the other side of [this particular] conflict who don’t seem to care.

—Ryan Coogler

OSCAR. How long yall been married? PETE. Eight years.

Oscar nods at this. Pete looks at Oscar's hand for a ring, doesn't see one.
PETE. You thinking about it?

Oscar nods.

PETER.  What's stopping you?

OSCAR. Money.

PETER. Shitty reason. When we got married, we had nothing. Lived in the back of her parents' house for the first two years.

OSCAR. For real?

PETER. Shit you not ma. I wasn't working at all and she's a teacher, which might as well be the same thing as far as money goes.

OSCAR. How'd you get the ring?

Peter looks around for a beat.

PETER. I stole it.

Oscar looks at him like he is crazy.

PETER. Yeah man, I told you, I had nothing. I used to be good with credit cards if you know what I mean. I wouldn't go that route of I were you man.

OSCAR. Yeah, I'm straight off that.

PETER. Yeah. I ended up getting locked up for a bit. My wife had to sell the ring to bail me out. Got my business going about a year after I got out, and I got her the one she wears now.

OSCAR. What do you do?

PETER. I owe a web design company. We do a lot of business with companies in the valley. 

Peter pulls out his wallet and Oscar hands Oscar a card. Oscar looks at it.

OSCAR. Peter? (beat) Oscar.

They shake hands.

1. This is one of the few relatively lengthy scenes between Oscar and a white person in the film (earlier, of course, was his interaction with Katie at the Farmer Joe's where he used to work, where he helps her out with her fish fry—and maybe hits on her just a little). Oscar and Peter have a genuine conversation, the way strangers can, about marriage and commitment. It's a nice exchange between the men—and it is slightly, but significantly—at least I think, different in the film. Look at the clip and look at the screenplay above. First: why this scene in the film—to what effect? Second: to you, what's the significance of the difference between the screenplay and the filmed version?

2. This is hard, I know, but it's quick. This is where Officer Ingram shoots Oscar.

In Coogler's screenplay, it reads this way:

INGRAM. ROLL OVER! ON YOUR STOMACH!!

OSCAR. Fuck, I can't move!

Caruso stands up, pushing off Oscar's head with his hands. Ingram flips [Oscar] off of Carlos' legs and onto his stomach. Oscar squirms again, while Caruso grabs his hand trying to put it behind his back. Caruso puts his knee back down on Oscar, driving down hard at the base of his head, pressing Oscar's face against the ground. 

OSCAR. AGHHH, AGHHH!

INGRAM. Fuck. I can't get his hands! Back up.

Caruso lifts up off of Oscar. Ingram stands a but, keeping one knee in Oscar's back, reaches on the right side of his belt and pulls a black gun from the holster. He stands up and aims it at Oscar's back. BLAM!!

[...]

[Oscar's friend] Cato is frozen by shock. Caruso takes a step back, and looks at Ingram with confusion.

The way Coogler films this, from a distance, it all happens quickly and in the middle of chaos. Still: look at the minute plus clip. Why did this happen? And does any part of what Jordyn, Philip, and/or Jordan say at the top of the page apply to why you saw this happen?

3. Finally, something from Thrower's class playbook.  I would like you to acknowledge one of your classmates for something they did this semester or year that you appreciated or learned from or enjoyed or helped make the class better.  Something you would feel comfortable acknowledging and thanking a classmate for.

And that's it everyone. Thank you all for the time, effort, thought, and feeling you put into this blog this year.  Reading them was always a highlight of my day and/or night. Really.

Blog 7. Fruitvale Station. Due Sunday by 10 PM.

SOPHINA. What are you going to do?
OSCAR. I don't know. Something legal.  Gonna see if my sister can hire me again while I look.  Maybe if I can just not fuck up for 30 days...Oprah said that's all it takes to form a habit, right?
(Look at this clip)
 
Fruitvale Station. (2013)
Director and Writer: Ryan Coogler
Cinematography: Rachel Morrison
Editing: Claudia Castello, Michael P. Shawver
Music: Ludwpg Goransson

Oscar Grant III: Michael B. Jordan
Sophina Mesa: Melonie Diaz
Wanda Johnson: Octavia Spencer
Tatiana Grant: Ariana Neal
Officer Caruso: Kevin Durand
Officer Ingram: Chad Michael Murray
(for the rest of the cast, look here)

Budget: $900,000
Box Office: $17.4 million

An early publicity poster when the film was simply titled "Fruitvale."

Isaac and I were talking this morning about how watching a movie with others is different than watching a movie by yourself.  When I watched this by myself I was, of course, impressed and moved. But sitting on my couch with my phone next to me, answering texts, dulled the effect of this film. Today in class, in the dark with you in 6th period, I felt devastated by this film. I knew what was going to happen, of course; I managed to put it out of my head until Oscar picks Tatiana up at the pre-school and races her to the car when Sophina—perhaps finally trusting Oscar completely after he reveals he dumped the weed and didn't make the drug deal—waits.  Here is the scene.  This may be the most joyous moment in the film.  It's followed by more joyous moments: Wanda's birthday, the party on the train to SF for the fireworks, Oscar persuading the store owner to let the women into his shop to use the bathroom.  The decency, kindness, and respect shown by everyone to each other in this 15 minute stretch of the film may be the high point of the semester in this respect, with echoes of what we didn't see in Do The Right Thing, though Spike filmed it and a number of you wrote about it: Mookie, Vito, and Mister Senor Love Daddy communing in the radio station over a great chicken parmesan sandwich.  But, as in DTRT—a film that seems so much to have influenced then 27-year old Ryan Coogler (watching Oscar, Sophina, and Tatiana spooning in their bed reminded me of Mookie, Tina, and Hector in bed at the end of DTRT)—the happiness cannot last.  There is no Atticus Finch to try to make us believe that there are plenty of good people out there (though there are, in everything we've studied this semester); there's no Mookie and Sal to finally see each other eye-to-eye over the rubble of a building; there is no Paul and Grant shaking hands and offering to help each other. There's just a mother and a daughter and a father never coming home.

(On a slightly more upbeat note: the year after his film opened, Coogler managed to contact Spike and suggested a cold reading of Do The Right Thing the day after Thanksgiving "in the wake of [Eric] Garner’s death as a way to[...] 'put an end to human-rights violations being committed by public servants, men and women being paid by tax dollars.'” Spike agreed. Michael B. Jordan read Mookie; Melonie Diaz (Sophina) read Tina. Here's the story.)

Here are three questions I want you to address.  There will be one more blog after this, and you will be done with the blog—and perhaps all blogs—forever.  Unless you're in my class next year.

1. What is your reaction to the film?

2. What scene or moment or image stayed with you?  And why?

3. As I said in class today—and I will say tomorrow for 5th period—I debated showing this film up until a half-hour before class. I knew when I decided to do this class, that this would really be the culminating piece for this semester; everything we've read and watched since February points toward this. But I've been wondering: is this too much?  Is this simply a reiteration of what we've been discussing since Do The Right Thing? Does this add something different to our study? Does this help us understand the questions of racism and violence that have been really at the core of these works this semester?  I think it does, hard as it is to watch. So could you address a couple of the questions I've just posed?

4. Finally: after writing your responses, would you please read this essay on the film by Wesley Morris. It's perceptive, challenging, and extremely well written. I'll try to bring this up in our discussion of the film. 

As Jordan said this morning on his way to his first period class: "Every day is race day." Indeed.  Write 250-300 words.

Michael B. Jordan, Octavia Spencer, Ryan Coogler

Director of Photography Rachel Morrison and Ryan Coogler

Melonie Diaz, Michael B. Jordan, Octavia Spencer, Ryan Coogler, producer Forrest Whitaker

Blog Six. To Kill A Mockingbird. "Tom Robinson's Dead." Due Thursday by 10PM.

(Read everything below, please)
...They were taking him to Abbotsville for safekeeping.  Tom broke loose and ran.  The deputy called out to him to stop.  Tom didn't stop.  He shot at him to wound him and missed his aim. Killed him.  The deputy says Tom just ran like a crazy man.  The last thing I told him was not to lose heart, that we'd ask for an appeal.  We had such a good chance. We had more than a good chance.  I have to go out and tell his family.  Would you look after the children, Maudie? (Three Screenplays.  Horton Foote.  Grove Weidenfeld, New York 1989. 71)

   "They shot him, said Atticus.  "He was running.  It was during their exercise period.  They said he just broke into a blind raving charge at the fence and started climbing over.  Right in front of them—"
   "Didn't they try to stop him?  Didn't they gave him any warning?"  Aunt Alexandra's voice shook.
   "Oh yes, the guards called to him to stop.  They fired a few shots in the air, then to kill.  They got him just as he went over the fence.  They said if he'd had two good arms he'd have made it, he was moving that fast.  Seventeen bullet holes in him.  They didn't have to shoot him that much.  Cal, I want you to come with and help me tell Helen."
   "Yes sir," she murmured, fumbling at her apron.  Miss Maudie went to Calpurnia and untied it.  
   "This is the last straw, Atticus," Aunt Alexandra said.
   "Depends on how you look at it," he said.  "What was one Negro, more or less, among two hundred of 'em?  He wasn't Tom to them, he was an escaping prisoner."
   Atticus leaned against the refrigerator, pushed up his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.  "We had such a good chance," he said.  "I told him what I thought, but I couldn't in truth say that we'd had more than a good chance.  I guess Tom was tired of white men's chances and preferred to take his own.  Ready, Cal?" (315)

How could this be so, I wondered as I read Mr. Underwood's editorial.  Senseless killing—Tom had been given due process of law to the day of his death; he had been tried openly and convicted by twelve good men and true; my father had fought for him all the way.  Then Mr. Underwood's meaning became clear: Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case.  Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell had opened her mouth and screamed. (323)

It is the failure of all Harper Lee's characters to imagine a larger, reformative social vision that haunts the Maycomb otherwise so lovingly evoked in its quaintness, gentility, and rural quietude.  Believing in the transcendent power of law, Atticus is nevertheless forced to conclude that the law is no better than the individuals responsible for its functioning as an institution.  The law, he sadly recognises, is thus no better than and no different from the community that accepts its guidance.  Acknowledging the essential problem of 'community standards' and what we would term today 'jury nullification', he can imagine no solution [....] Does Atticus himself ever confront the the daily injustices he says are perpetrated against Maycomb's black citizens?  On [this] important [question], the novel offers only silence. (Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockinbird: The Relationship Between Text and Film.  R. Barton Palmer.  Methuen Drama, London, 2008.  31-34)

 Mockingbird [Peck] suggests,
...restates in a heart-warming way, some basic truths.  It doesn't hurt any of us, for instance, to be reminded that a clear conscience and self-respect are our most valuable possessions.  And on the question of racial prejudice, it reminds us that we already gave the answer to all our racial problems in this country.  The Golden Rule has been there all along. (Palmer 135)

Gbenga Akinnagbe as Tom

Brock Peters as Tom

 

To Kill A Mockingbird, Stratford Festival, Ontario, 2018

Today's discussion opened several questions we probably won't have time to answer.  But we can address a few of them here.

1. (For The Seniors Only)  Where does the Mulligan film fail most as an adaptation of Harper Lee's novel?  Write several sentences.

1. (For Juniors Only)  Where does Mulligan's film succeed most as simply a Hollywood movie?  Write several sentences.

2.  Look at the first two quotes at the top of the page—the first from Horton Foote's screenplay and the second from Lee's novel.  Several of you commented on how fast the movie moved (or, paradoxically, how slow it was).  A screenplay is generally 100 pages long—one minute of screen time for each page.  In adapting a novel, the scriptwriter generally tries to streamline the script to fit that magical 100-120 minute length (unless it's the new Avengers movie).  So that what is on the page of the novel, an almost half page discussion between two characters, getting reduced to one speech can be seen as effective screenwriting.  After all, we got to move the plot along.  But sometimes—as several of you said in class—the details count.  So what gets lost in Foote's adaptation of page 315 in the novel—and to what effect?  Would the film be stronger, deeper—different in a good way—if more of Lee made it into what Atticus says?  Quote from both the script and novel (what's at the top of the page) in your response.

3.  The movie was a huge success—$108 million in today's currency (it would have been the 29th highest grossing film of 2018).  Yet many of you found it okay—or just meh.  So what do you think made it so popular in its time, given its serious themes of racism and injustice?  In your answer, quote from one the quotes at the top of the page. 

Celia Keenan-Bolger and LaTanya Richardson Jackson

Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jeff Daniels

Gregory Peck and Mary Badham

And here's the stunning opening of the film, with music by Elmer Bernstein, best known for this theme:

Blog Five. To Kill a Mockingbird. "There's A Lot Of Ugly Things In This World, Son."

"...I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible."

Mayella on the witness stand:

Tom on the witness stand:

Mayella's testimony:

Jacobi and I were talking after class about what struck us about the trial in the film (which is almost word for word taken from the novel—Horton Foote knew when not to mess with something pretty close to perfect).  As he said in class about Mayella, Jacobi talked about how little he felt for her in the film.  I said I felt even more for her from the film. I think Brock Peters and Colin Wilcox give the best performances in the film; certainly they give the most gut-wrenching.  They're small roles but they make them memorable—and complicated.   

Enough of me.  So...

1. Your thoughts on the trial scene?  Was it what you saw in your head when you read it in the novel? If so, how?  If not–or if parts of it were and parts of it weren't—what did correspond to what you saw in your mind and what didn't?  What did watching the trial make you think and/or feel?

2. Look at the pictures above the clip: what do they tell you about Mayella and Tom, both separately and as two connected by the trial? Try to not repeat what others have said—add to what others write.

3.  Calpurnia as played by Estelle Evans:

One of the critiques of the film is the lack of almost any depth or story for Calpurnia.  There was a little in the novel, enough for us to see that Calpurnia had, indeed, a life away from the Finches; and enough to see a little of the black community in Maycomb.  There are a couple of striking moments in the film so far that speaks to a story that could have added depth to it in terms of allowing the black characters some life. One is Jem and David Robinson's meeting at the Robinsons, the way the two boys regard each other with curiosity and friendliness—I would have loved to have heard what their conversation would have been if Bob Ewell hadn't shown up.  The second concerns Calpurnia herself. She seems to have no life beyond working for the Finches.  When Atticus asks if she could stay the night, she says yes without hesitation.  But there are moments when Estelle Evans infuses the cipher that is Calpurnia with life; one is when she chastises Scout for embarrassing Walter Cunningham, and even smacks her on the butt—is that what a cook does to the white daughter of her boss?  Well...yes. The second is when Atticus is about to drive her home, and there is this 10 seconds of silence as she watches Jem in a chair on the porch.  She looks so intently at the boy without saying a word; and she walks by him to go to the car, she ruffles his hair and says goodnight to him.

The television writers Joshua Brand and John Falsey wondered themselves what Calpurnia's life was like. They created a series in 1991—I'll Fly Away—that gave us a Southern lawyer with three children and a black housekeeper in the late 1950s as a vehicle to explore the unexplored life of a Calpurnia-like character.

So: a slightly different question.  Think of a moment in the film which features Calpurnia. In her mind and/or in her voice, what do you think she's thinking—and feeling?

Again: 200-300 words.  Yani: write more than you did last night.

Harper Lee and Mary Badham:

See you tomorrow or Thursday.

Blog Four. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962). "Well, It's Customary For The Boy To Have His Father's Watch."

SCOUT. What are you going to give me?
ATTICUS.  Well, I don't know that I have much else of value that belongs to me. But there's a pearl necklace...and there's a ring that belonged to your mother...and I've put them away...and they're to be yours.

To Kill a Mockingbird
Director: Robert Mulligan
Screenplay: Horton Foote (Academy Award Best Adaptation), based on the novel by Harper Lee
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Cinematography: Russell Harlan

Atticus Finch: Gregory Peck (Academy Award Best Actor) Scout: Mary Badham
Jem: Phillip Alford
Dill: John Megna
Heck Tate: Frank Overton
Miss Maudie: Rosemary Murphy
Mrs. Dubose: Ruth White
Tom Robinson: Brock Peters
Calpurnia: Estelle Evans
Judge Taylor: Paul Fix
Mayella Ewell: Colin Wilcox
Bob Ewell: James Anderson
Miss Stephanie Crawford: Alice Ghostly
Arthur "Boo" Radley: Robert Duvall
Mr. Gilmer: Willian Windom
Walter Cunningham: Crahan Denton
Adult Scout (narrator): Kim Stanley

Released 25 December 1962 Budget $2 million ($16.5 million in 2019)
Box Office $13.1 million ($108.2 million in 2019)

The Broadway production poster:

A poster from a 2017 Ottawa, Ontario stage production written by Christopher Sergel:

And two pages from a 2018 graphic novel adaptation by Fred Fordham:

This is the original trailer. It's clear the novel had already attained almost classic status.

A staged shot of Atticus (Gregory Peck), Scout (Mary Badham), and Jem (Phillip Alford):

Atticus and Tom (Brock Peters):

Atticus (Jeff Daniels) and Tom (Gbenga Akinnagbe) in the Broadway production:

Mayella (Colin Wilcox) and Bob Ewell (James Anderson):

Calpurnia (Estelle Evans) and Jem and Scout:

Atticus and Calpurnia (LaTanya Richardson Jackson) on Broadway, written by Aaron Sorkin:

The film To Kill a Mockingbird is, indeed, a  classic American film, but not necessarily for its cinematic virtues.  The film itself is straightforward and cleanly filmed; director Robert Mulligan is no Kubrick nor Kurosawa, nor would he ever claim a kinship to such stylistically original and unique filmmakers.  As he said in an interview, "I don't know anything about 'the Mulligan style.' If you can find it, well, that's your job."  Probably more crucial to the success of the film is the screenplay by Texas-born playwright Horton Foote, who won an Oscar for this film and Tender Mercies in 1983.
What has made the film so beloved is its story—which follows so closely to Lee's novel. Along with its massive popular success and Oscars,  the American Film Institute (AFI) named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the 20th century, the film itself the 25th greatest movie of all time as well as the best courtroom film, and the music by Elmer Bernstein the 17th greatest film score.

So...

1. Your reaction to the what you've seen? And how successfully is this—for you—an adaptation of the novel?  What works?  What doesn't?

2. What scene or image or moment stayed with you—and why?

3. The filmmakers made a deliberate decision to film this in black and white.  What's the effect of that for you?  Do you like it?  Dislike it?  Does it make sense?

250-300 words. 

Here's a scene not in the book.

 And here's a scene in the book.

 See you all tomorrow.

200 words.  See you tomorrow. 

Blog Three. Do The Right Thing. "We're Still Standing."

"My people, my people. What can I say? Say what I can. I saw it but I didn't believe it. I didn't believe what I saw. Are we gonna live together? Together are we gonna live?"—Mister Senor Love Daddy.

DA MAYOR. Where'd you sleep?
MOTHER SISTER.  I didn't.
DA MAYOR.  I hope the block is still standing.
MOTHER SISTER.  We're still standing.

SAL.  You keep [the money].
MOOKIE.  No, you keep it.
SAL.  You keep it.
MOOKIE.  No, you keep it.
SAL.  I don't believe this shit.
MOOKIE.  Believe it.
SAL.  Are you sick?
MOOKIE.  Hot as a motherfucker, but I'm all right though.
SAL.  Well, they say it's even going to get hotter today...What are you going to do with yourself?
MOOKIE.  Make the money.  Get paid.  Sal, I gotta go see my son.  If it's all right with you.
Sal nods yes.

"I'm gonna kill somebody today."—Sal.

Here's the scene of the destruction of Sal's Famous.  Listen to what Mookie says when he throws the garbage can through the window.  Look too at the reaction of the crowd when Coconut Sid persuades ML not to go after Sonny and Kim (and their little girl). 

I've seen this film at least ten or twelve times.  I know what is coming.  And every time I see the film I always wish that Sal doesn't open the door to Ella and Cee and Punchy and Ahmed. And I always wish Radio Raheem and Buggin' Out don't get in Sal's face and Buggin' Out doesn't call him a "guinea bastard"—and that Sal doesn't call Buggin' Out a "n----r" and destroy Radio Raheem's boom box.  It all seems so avoidable.

Radio Raheem's death this time was more painful for me than it's been the first twelve times I've seen the movie. Yet the very end of the film seems hopeful: three guys, two black and one Latino, are tossing a basketball around (are they Punchy or Ahmad and Stevie?).  The street is beginning to get cleared.  Old folks are going to church (it is Sunday after all).  Life goes on.  Carl Rosenbaum said years ago, when I told him we were watching this movie, that it was too hopeful.

So....

•Your reaction to the riot: from what Buggin' Out, Radio Raheem and Smiley demanding Sal put up pictures of black people to the police's assault on the neighborhood to that terrible keening shriek that Mother Sister makes in the midst of all the horror.  And along with your reaction: why did it happen? Is there someone(s) to blame? Could it have been avoided? Was it inevitable? And what do you make of Mookie throwing the trashcan, shouting "Hate" as he does so? A lot of questions, I realize: but important ones.


A couple more points. The film is dedicated to the families of Eleanor Bumpers, Michael Griffiths, Arthur Miller, Edmund Perry, Yvonne Smallwood, and Michael Stewart, all killed by the NYC police.  Second, the film ends with a song by smooth jazz singer Al Jarreau that plays over the credits.  It's really quite a beautiful song—perhaps not what one would expect at the end of such an intense movie.  But Spike Lee loves contradiction and conflict.  And he has a great taste in music.

One more thing.  Mookie is still delivering pizzas for Sal's Famous.

Blog Two. Do The Right Thing. "As Much As You Say N------- This And N------- That, All Your Favorite People Are 'N-------s.'" Due Sunday by 4.

Radio Raheem tells the story of love and hate

Sal and Pino have a heart to heart

Here is one of the most famous and controversial scenes in the film—the "racist rant," preceded by the fascinating conversation between Mookie and Pino. Pino's favorite basketball, movie, and—secretly—music stars are all black.  But..."They're Black, but not really Black.  They're more than Black.  It's different."  Which slides into Mookie, Pino, Stevie, Sonny, and Officer Long revealing their deep seated racial and ethnic prejudices to the audience.  It's not realism: but it's real.  Lee would do something similar in 25th Hour, his post 9/11 film (go ahead and take a look at it).  The Do The Right Thing rant, though never fails to make me sit up and gape.

"Mookie, if I love you, I love you.  But if I hate you..." Radio Raheem.

PINO. I'm sick of n----s. It's like I come to work, it's "Planet of the Apes." I don't like being around them. They're animals.
SAL. Why do you have so much hate in you?
PINO. Why? You want to know why? My friends laugh at me all the time, laugh right in my face, tell me, "Go to Bed-Sty. Go feed the Moulies."
SAL. Do your friends put money in your pocket? Pay your rent? Food on your plate? They're not your friends. If they were, they wouldn't laugh at you.
PINO. Pop, what can I say? I don't wanna be here. they don't want us here. We should stay in our own neighborhood, stay in Bensonhurst. And the n-----s should stay in theirs...
SAL. I've never had trouble with these people...Yeah, sure, some of them don't like us, but most of them do. I mean, for Chrissake, Pino, they grew up on my food. I'm very proud of that...What I'm trying to say is Sal's Famous Pizzeria is here to stay."

The middle part of the film lightens up a little, doesn't it? Buggin Out's quixotic attempt to spur a boycott of Sal's; the tender scene between Da Mayor and Mother Sister on her stoop; the look on both Mookie and Pino's face as Jade is chatted up by Sal. And there's Mookie and Pino and the rants.  Hate what Pino says; but at least we begin to understand what makes him so angry. Then there are the three scenes with Radio Raheem: the famous love-hate moment, an homage to the classic 1955 film Night of the Hunter; and the scenes with the Koreans and Sal. Radio looms large in the film: a young man of few words but with loud music. He evokes different reponses from different people: a little boy runs alongside him at one point, clearly emulating him; he is well-liked by the other young black people on the street, Mookie in particular; the Korean couple are intimidated by him; and Sal...well, Sal doesn't like his music in his pizzeria, to say the least. (Did you notice how Sal angrily tosses the pizza slices Radio ordered in the oven? Very different than the way he lovingly put together Jade's sandwich.)

So:

1. What moment or scene particularly jumped out at you, or stayed with you, from Friday's viewing? And why?

2. Radio Raheem and Sal: the two physically largest figures in the movie. You've already written about Sal (whose last name is Frangione by the way).  So what is your reaction to Radio Raheem?
How would you characterize him—if you had to describe him to someone who hasn't seen the film, how would you do it?  AND: aside from their similar sizes, do you see any similarities between him and Sal?

3. The scene I quote above between Sal and Pino. I think it is one of the saddest, tenderest, and most infuriating scenes in the film. You can disagree with me. But I do ask: what is your reaction to it? Sal asks an important question of his son—"Why do you have so much hate in you?" Pino answers: but there's more to the reason than what he says. So assuming that's a legitimate statement, why might he be so full of hate, along with what he tells his father?

I'm not expecting you to spend an hour on this: but 20-30 minutes is not asking too much, particularly since this is your only homework in the class at this moment. On the last blog there were a few distinctly short comments—I downgraded them (feel free to talk with me if you think you're one of those folks).  It takes me an hour usually to write a post question. Feel free to comment on what others in the class write; agree, disagree, use it as a starting or ending point to what you're writing.

Finally: here's Mookie and Radio Raheem and the story of love and hate.  See you all on Monday.