Derick K. Ariyam

Professor Gitahi Gititi

ENG 625

28 November 2012

Abstract: Peace, Violence, or Something Else in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing

Martin Luther King Jr. promoted peaceful resistance to inequality while Malcolm X favored violence. At least, these are the two polarized positions these two men are often made to inhabit. In Spike Lee's film, Do the Right Thing, a famous photo of these two men embracing one another is repeatedly shown throughout the film. Do the Right Thing complicates this idea of a clear distinction between peaceful and violent approaches to fight injustice. The film suggests that the philosophical positions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X cannot be definitively characterized or articulated. Instead, we are presented with a sense that conflict is unresolved at the end of the film. The title, “Do the Right Thing,” becomes an ambiguous command: what is the right thing? This paper looks at a few additional films to help understand the tensions between peaceful and violent approaches to resist injustice. Some of the films I will look at— films that emphasize either peaceful or violent resistance—are Sankofa, Quilombo, The Last Supper, and the Spook Who Sat by the Door. This paper tries to determine if peaceful resistance and violent resistance are mutually exclusive and whether choice must be limited to one or the other. I contend that the very binaristic labeling of “peace” versus “violence,” and the need to inhabit just one term in that two-term universe, inhibits the range of possible methods of resistance, and is a cause of the uncertainty in the close of Do the Right Thing. Secondly, I argue that an emergent form of resistance resides at the interstices of peace and violence — an emergent form that I will show is alluded to in Spike Lee’s film. To help frame theoretical notions of speechless resistance, I will be borrowing from the work of Gayatri Spivak, specifically her work Can the Subaltern Speak.