April 29, 1999

Announcements: There will be two review sessions:  Thursday, April 29 from 7 - 8:30 and Friday, April 30 from 1- 2:30.     They are both held in 113 Carnegie.  The final is Friday, May 7 from 4:40 - 6:30.

Lecture Notes:

Notes from Do the Right Thing

I.  Group-Driven Rather than Character Driven Goals

• The character's goals are very vaguely defined
• Sal operates a pizza joint and Mookie wants to make money, but we don't really know why they do what they do
• Spike Lee challenges and complicates stereotypes
• He questions the neat definition of black identity
• At the same time, he also avoids stereotypes

II.  Single Day/Single Setting

• Lee controlled his budget by filming one day and one setting
• Search for community
• Everyone in the community is from an oppressed class, so they need to bind together

III.  Violations of Visual Invisibility/Narrative Closure

• The film is a conscious construction of reality
• A reverse-shot strategy is juxtaposed with a tracking shot
• There is no closure to the narrative
• No resolution of the fundamental questions that arise from the movie
• Evades a happy ending