Spike Lee's BIG DEBUT

Do the Right Thing really had a controversial ending. My class was able to talk almost two class periods about the morality of the ending and whether or not the right thing was done in the end. Everyone’s thoughts had me battling my own interpretation of the ending. I still however, feel strongly that Mookie made a terrible move when he decided to feed into the destructive intentions of the mob. I felt that Mookie made this decision after the cops took away Radio Raheem’s body and the crowds focus shifted towards Sal, his sons and Mookie himself. I interpreted it as Mookie throwing the trashcan through Sal’s window in order to tell the crowd that he was on their side. Mookie saved his own behind in order to preserve his place in the community and his actions tell the audience that life is more important than material possessions. Everyone knew that what happened to Radio Raheem was wrong and I feel that the crowd needed to take their anger out on someone. This point brings us back to the original conflict of whose fault was it that Radio Raheem got killed. One can argue that it was Raheem’s own fault because of his obnoxious behavior which caused Sal to break his radio which in turn started the fight. On the other side of the argument though when can say that Sal knew what he was getting himself into when he broke Raheem’s radio and that he shouldn’t have acted on impulse. I don’t feel that there is a right answer to whether Mookie did the right thing or not and that it all depends on how a person characterizes Mookie’s actions.

THE BATTLE OF algiers

I listened to the NPR news broadcast (2004) in which the man talked about how the Battle of Algiers is making a comeback. The man also talked about how the US and other countries were using this movie as a tool to aid them with their war tactics. He did think however that the US government did not fully understand the film and what they were supposed to get out of it.
I feel that this news reel should have talked about what kinds of things these government figures were looking for while watching the movie. I also think he missed a fundamental aspect of the film which is the portrayal of torture. It is obvious today that the US government still doesn’t make a connection between terrorism and the torture we are putting those in captive in Iraq through. We still torture people overseas to get answers and as one can see from the movie it usually doesn’t work and that it is inhumane. I did find the NPR talk show to be very fascinating in the fact that it brought in Pontecorvo and got his insight on the film. It was also cool that NPR brought in one of the actors who were actually there during the battle of Algiers. This added some facts and emotions to the news program.