It's the hottest day of the summer. You can do nothing, you can do something, or you can...

'Our freedom of speech is freedom or death. We got to fight the power that be. Lemme hear you say. Fight the power' - 'Do The Right Thing' Public Enemy.

This lesson we watched a movie! Yussss, I was in my element, I love movies. I suppose doing media studies last year helped me a bit in breaking down the movie and picking out elements that I thought were important. The movie that we watched was 'Do The Right Thing' produced, written and directed by Spike Lee.
Im not going to dive in and tell you all about the whole movie, but heres a quick summary from http://www.imdb.com/. 'It's the hottest day of the year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and tensions are growing there, with the only local businesses being a Korean grocery and Sal's Pizzeria. Mookie, Sal's delivery boy, manages to always be at the center of the action.' - IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097216/plotsummary

Now, in the movie I belive that there is indeed an important element or idea. And that is water and fire, or I should probably say water vs fire. Because you see in this movie they go head to head in a battle, element versus element. Water and Fire are both metaphores for the heat and fights between the different cultures of the neighbourhood. Black American, Korean and Italian.

Indeed there is definate heat between these races, in the movie I kept on liking or siding for a race or character, but then they would do something that would change my mind. Spike Lee didnt want to show one race better than the other, be bought a sense of reality and truth to these race's that we dont see or actually dont want to believe. This is because we stereotype or have this idea in our heads of what races should be like. We sometimes think that all African American people listen to rap, have guns and hate all white people, we sometimes believe that Koreans cant speak English, own Convienience stores and drive badly, we sometimes believe that Italians always eat pasta and pizza, talk in a particular accent and belong to the mafia. Here's an idea...Not EVERYONE is like this. And then theres this thing where people from those races act like this to fit the actual stereotype, they act like that because they believe they have to.

The fire and water elements of this movie also represent racial disharmony, fire doesnt want to mix with water, water doesnt want to mix with fire. Both these elements are strong and evident from the very beginning of the movie, firstly there is a heat wave. The heat wave represents heat between the culture. Water is used to cool everyone down. But there is a scene where water and heat go head to head in a battle. This is the scene where Sal's pizza is set ablaze. The fire is overpowering and strong, it scares everyone away, burns Sals Pizza to the ground and still carrys on the idea of the heat wave [this scene happens toward night time, when it should be cooler] the fire is angry which also represents the idea of the anger expressed by the African Americans because one of thier own was killed by the cops a few minutes before Sal's was set ablaze. Fire Engines come and water is used to battle the fire, the firemen are white. The water that they use represents them, because they also turn on the African Americans with the hoses, because the African American are fighting against the firemen because they want to see Sal's burn to the ground. These elements dont want to mix, which is what caused the heat in the first place.

These elements represent racial tension, but both are equal. Water can put out fire, but fire can also over power water.