Do the Right Thing
Director1
- Spike Lee
Summary
Spike Lee's third feature, set over the hottest day of summer on a single Brooklyn block, depicts the escalating racial tensions between an Italian-American pizzeria owner and his Black customers. The score is by Bill Lee and the centerpiece song is Public Enemy's 'Fight the Power,' commissioned for the film and looped through Radio Raheem's boombox.
Hip-hop relevance
Cemented Public Enemy's place in the American cultural canon by foregrounding 'Fight the Power' as the film's recurring anthem, and modeled how serious cinema could integrate contemporary hip-hop as text and score. Selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry in 1999.
Linked moments 1
External
Citations 2
- B
- A Library of Congress — National Film Registry — Do the Right Thing (1999 inductee) Retrieved 2026-05-24.