Neither the cutesy, trivial sex carrousel of She’s Gotta Have It (1986) nor the contrived, overstylized black-college musical School Daze (1988) prepared us for Spike Lee’s third feature film, Do the Right Thing —which he spells with a capital T in “the,” but we must not indulge him in everything. The earlier films showed skill, wit (though indifferent dialogue), and an eclectic, magpie-like ability to pick up bits from all over and make a personalized collage out of them; they did not suggest that the young black writer-director would make his next film into something genuinely disturbing, strongly controversial, and nervily powerful. Not good, mind you, but slick, savvy, explosive.
Why not also good, then? Because though a work of art need not have the answers—indeed, it usually doesn’t —it must ask its questions honestly. It must, even if it knows that there are no answers—and not just no easy answers—try to shed as much light as it sensitively and searchingly can. And it must be fair to all sides or be candid about which side it is taking. Above all, it must know itself. None of this is true of Do the Right Thing, a clever film that, every step of the way, outsmarts itself.
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