Great Character: Mookie (“Do the Right Thing”)

The Great Character theme for the month: Spike Lee. Today: Mookie from the movie Do the Right Thing (1989), written by Spike Lee. Here is Jason Cuthbert’s weekly Great Character post.

Like the precise predictions of a prophet, Spike Lee’s Academy Award-nominated screenplay for his 1989 riveting race analysis Do the Right Thing appears like a verbatim adaptation of our current turbulent news headlines — 26 years later. Spike tackled treacherous turmoil such as Caucasian police officers killing African American males (Eric Garner, Mike Brown…), race riots (Ferguson protests, New York City protests…) and urban gentrification (Brooklyn, Harlem, Manhattan…). Unfortunately, the revolving doors of tension divided along racial lines are still sending social shock waves throughout society. In Do the Right Thing, our Bed-Stuy “Do or Die” Brooklyn navigator Mookie, played by Mr. Lee himself, guides us through a multicultural melting pot stirring inside one block, for one day, cooking with one hell of a boiling temperature.

Do the Right Thing summary from IMDB:

On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone’s hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.

Within a dense one-block radius, Mookie is many things to many people. He is a brother to his sister Jade (Joie Lee), a boyfriend/co-parent to Tina (Rosie Perez), a daddy to Hector (Travell Lee Toulson), a friendly neighbor to elderly community overseers Mother Sister (Ruby Dee) and Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), a friend to the militant spirited Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) and Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), a shoulder to lean on for co-worker Vito (Richard Edson), an employee of Sal (Danny Aiello), and a young African American male survivor for himself.

Mookie is also a complex enigma, possessing a piece of each of the before-mentioned family members, friends and associates. Mookie has Jade’s desire to work and achieve independence, Mother Sister’s and Da Mayor’s deep connection to the neighborhood, some of Tina’s temper, Hector’s need for support, Buggin’ Out’s and Radio Raheem’s pride for his culture, Vito’s need for freedom from his sibling and Sal’s protective nature.

But like any young man seeking to ease both feet into the comfort of his own identity, Mookie wants to achieve a balance between getting paid and doing the right thing, with both of these paths to glory often colliding into each other. Mookie does his share of earning and learning through the course of this 24-hour window, stain glassed in humidity hues of red, orange and yellow.

Ironically, everyone seems to be attempting to teach Mookie the right thing to do in between his numerous pizza deliveries. Jade lectures him on his inconsistent work ethic.

MOOKIE: Slavery days are over. My name ain’t Kunta Kinte.

Tina nags intensely about his domestic disappearing acts.

MOOKIE: Tina, you don’t got a forehead, you got a eight-head.

Mother Sister warns him not to overwork in the heat. Buggin’ Out insists that Mookie better “Stay Black.” Radio Raheem eloquently uses his four-finger rings to express the mythological battle between “Love” and “Hate” and Da Mayor flat out proclaims that Mookie should “always do the right thing.”

But Mookie also has a few passionate jewels and gems of his own to drop on individuals looking to win the treasure hunt for their own journeys across the trails of “right and wrong.” Vito is sick of Pino’s bossy big brother acts of aggression. Mookie’s advice is to smack his way out of it. Pino’s racist reluctance to accept people of color causes Mookie to poke a pin through his inflated bubble of stereotypes.

MOOKIE: Pino, all you ever talk about is nigger this and nigger that and all your favorite people are so-called niggers.

Jade’s perpetually sweet demeanor causes Mookie to keep his suspicious guard up on her behalf.

MOOKIE: Look, all Sal wants to do is hide the salami.

Even when Buggin’ Out demands pictures of African Americans on Sal’s Italian American Wall of Fame inside Sal’s pizzeria, as a tribute to the predominantly African American patronage of his restaurant, Mookie defends his employer and his future paychecks by informing his friend to stop “bugging out” at his job site and eat elsewhere for a week.

But Mookie’s ultimate test of how to do the right thing, with the arsenal of love and hate both waiting on stand-by, becomes exponentially more difficult when Radio Raheem is killed in a racially motivated melee. Whether Mookie should have taken on the non-violent Martin Luther King approach or the “by all means necessary” stance of Malcolm X, Mookie’s pain and confusion become the unpredictable variable. Feeling angry and defenseless after witnessing a lethal law enforcement chokehold, Mookie’s emotions are converted into a lit match stick, fueled by the super Celsius summer day and the fatal Fahrenheit of everyone’s internal prejudices openly exploding.

MOOKIE: Motherfuck a window. Radio Raheem is dead.

For his duel with the duality of love/hate and right/wrong, for his humble communal connectivity that allows him to relate to youngsters, elders, poor, rich, black, white, brown, passive and aggressive and his survival instincts being confronted by the traumatic treatment of humanity — it is the right thing to recognize Mookie as a GREAT CHARACTER from Spike Lee’s portfolio and in the world of cinema.

Still one of Spike Lee’s best and most memorable movies with Mookie at the moral and emotional center of the story universe.

Thank you, Jason, for this post and the entire month-long series featuring characters from Spike Lee movies.

You may follow Jason on Twitter: @A2Jason.