FIGHT THE POWER

In the film Do the Right Thing, the director Spike Lee ties in many important and meaningful scenes. One that I am going to talk about is the one where Radio Raheem is strangled to death by the police officers. I think that Spike tries to make a point of the extreme racism that was present during this time not only by the the public, but by authority. It was shocking to see police officers whose duty is to not only enforce but obey the law treat someone the way they did Radio Raheem. There is not justification for killing someone who is not guiltly of murder or any other crime just to get them to calm down. I think that Spike was trying to show that the police officers were racist, because had Radio Raheem been a white man, they never would have done what they did. It upsets me to know that people were treated that way. This film also reminds me of the movie Crash. It is similar to the scence where a police officer and a man are sitting in a car after the police officer just picked this guy up off of the side of the road. The man reaches into his pocket wanting to show the officer his lucky charm, and the officer, assuming that this man was about to pull out a gun, takes his own gun and kills the man. It is the most frusterating scene ever, and the officer feels guilt after he realizes that it was only a charm that the man was going to take out of his pocket. I think Spike did a good job of getting his point across about the extreme racism, but I wish he would have chose an alternative ending.