I have a 2:1 in Film Studies and completed my degree last year at the University of Kent. I have excellent written, communication and research skills, as my degree was mainly essay-based. In my final year I achieved first class honours in three out of four modules [including my dissertation]. I have excellent time management skills, which is a result of working four shifts a week whilst attending my degree classes and planning, researching and completing my assignments. I specialise in writing about film and have written and learnt about topics such as special effects, New York cinema, television Studies, American, British and World cinema and literature adaptations. I currently work in retail and it is my aim to one day be a features writer for a magazine or website. During my spare time I write film reviews for a website and enjoy attending gigs and festivals.

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A Discussion the identities of black and minority groups in films

Focusing on young black characters in Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989), Spike Lee presents the complex identity of the ghetto dwelling black ‘New Yorker’. I will discuss the ways in which the characters ‘perform’ their ‘assigned’ roles in society in relation to their identities as young black males and how this identity is constructed and recognised by mainstream audiences. I will discuss how Brooklyn, as the setting, is instrumental in determining the ideological identities of the characters within the ghetto. I will discuss the stereotypical portrayal of young black characters identities in relation to the idea of territoriality and ownership of the streets, and discuss ethnic tensions in relation to this. I will also discuss the representations of the identities of ghetto dwelling black and minority groups in the films Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004) and La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) and how the stereotypical ‘performances’ of the characters identities makes them easily identifiable when in unfamiliar surroundings.

Do The Right Thing interrogates the problematic identity of the young black ‘New Yorker’ by presenting the idea that black youths perform their stereotypical ‘roles’ as products of their environments. Brooklyn as the setting contains ideologies about acceptable ‘black’ behaviour which affects the characters’ identities and shapes their ‘performances’ of their culture as stereotypical.

Do the Right Thing presents the notion thatthe space occupied by the black ‘New Yorker’ is instrumental to the construction of a recognisable identity. The setting of Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn has a reputation for being a poor crime ridden area made up of predominantly black inhabitants. The implied ideologies associated with expected and stereotypical ways for the black inhabitants to behave in relation to their disadvantaged social positions within society are reflected as they ‘perform’ their status as those whom ‘belong’. Spike Lee said ‘We had to shoot in Bed-Stuy because at that time it was the most well-known black neighbourhood in Brooklyn’ (Lee, 2005: 83) Brooklyn is still associated with being a ‘black’ neighbourhood; it is home to more than half of New York City’s African-American population. The overwhelming percentage of black inhabitants implies an idea of dominance and territory over the area which is reflected in the film in the way the black characters are united in sharing their cultural identity as a discriminated against social group. In relation to apartheid and the racial discrimination suffered by black people in the past it is understandable they should want to remain united and have a sense of ownership and control over their neighbourhood. Do the Right Thing shows how inhabiting a ‘black-by-association’ urban space affects the identities, and therefore the behaviour, of the black characters in the film.

In a scene reflecting the territoriality black people feel they have over the neighbourhood, Sweet Dick Willie (Robin Harris), Coconut Sid (Frankie Faison)  and M.L (Paul Benjamin), all of whom are black, complain about a Korean family who have moved into ‘their neighbourhood’. Coconut Sid says: ‘I bet you they haven’t even been off the boat a year before they bought their own place…they already got a business in our neighbourhood, a good business! Occupying a building that has been boarded up for longer than I care to remember.’ These characters have a shared identity in that they (as black people) own the block, and their territorial nature is highlighted in the fact that they are offended that another ethnic group is successful in what they deem to be ‘their’ neighbourhood.  The local radio station hosted by Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) reinforces the fact that Brooklyn is a ‘black’ neighbourhood. He addresses his listeners by saying ‘The colour for today is black!’ and that the hot weather calls for a ‘Jerry Curl alert!’ This tells an audience that Brooklyn is a ‘black’ neighbourhood, as a ‘Jerry Curl’ is a hairstyle that only black people can have. This shows their community is one acknowledged to having a ‘black’ identity, as he addresses his listeners with an acknowledgement that he is only addressing black people.

Spike Lee’s acknowledgement of Brooklyn having an immediate association of being a ‘black’ neighbourhood contains certain stereotypical and dominant ideas about the types of inhabitants that one would expect to live there.  ‘The most superficial and empty contacts which we have with other human beings in the city are those with people whom we pass in the street. They remain “faces in the crowd”. At most we unconsciously classify them by the cultural badges they wear’ (Rex, 1973:17). The unconscious classification of identity by what cultural badge someone wears is apparent in Do the Right Thing; the black neighbourhood youths are judged by the police and strangers by the stereotypical prejudices that are universally held of them. An Italian American in an expensive car drives past black youths playing in the spray of a broken water hydrant.  He assesses them by their colour and therefore ‘cultural badge’, and immediately recognises their identity as young black youths as trouble, and warns them not to soak his car. They fulfil their trouble-making stereotype by soaking the car and jeering at him, and when the police arrive, the car owner says ‘two black kids shot me with a fire hydrant!’ The use of the word ‘shot’ emphasises Spike Lee’s awareness of the stereotypical mainstream representations where young black people in ghettos are violent and carry guns. It also reflects the car owners dislike and prejudice towards them based on his assessment of their assumed and performed identity as troublesome black youths. The police assess them on their ‘cultural badges’ and say to the driver ‘I suggest you get to your car quick before these people strip it clean’. They have been recognised as having an identity as bored black youths, and by association, up to no good. Similarly, in Crash, a white woman sees two black youths walking towards her; she feels threatened and pulls her husband towards her for safety. She judged the two men purely on their dress, which is immediately recognisable as being acknowledged as ‘black’ and the fact that they were clearly out of place in the predominantly white upper class neighbourhood. Like Do The Right Thing, Crash highlights the imbedded prejudices society holds of black people because of the media saturation of negative representations of black criminals and ‘African Americans were forced to see themselves as mere reflections of how they were perceived by the dominant white culture (Aftab, 2005:90). The mainstream ‘white culture’ has been informed through stereotypical filmic representations of black youths from ghetto’s that they are a dangerous ethnic group, and what Crash does in the same way as Do The Right Thing, is not shy away from these stereotypical representations. The film is portraying these familiar ‘dominant white culture’ stereotypes in the characters of these two young men. They are offended that the white woman assumed they are dangerous stereotypical black youths, but then proceed to pull a gun on her and steal her car, fulfilling the stereotypical roles that have been assigned to them according to their lower class status and ethnic background.  La Haine shows that being judged by what cultural badge you wear extends worldwide, as it is set in a poor ghetto in France. When the three youths (who are each discriminated against because of their ethnic backgrounds) Vinz, (Vincent Cassel) Hubert, (Hubert Koundé) and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) travel to Paris, they fulfil the ‘performance’ of their identities as bored, unemployed youths by causing trouble. On one occasion, they get kicked out of an art gallery and after they have been shown out the owner turns to the people in the gallery, and by way of explanation says ‘off the estates’. This simple line highlights how easy it is to identify a stereotypical representation of an ‘undesirable’ lower class cultural identity, particularly when this ‘performance’ of identity is out of place in an upper class community.

‘The “undesirable” groups usually inherit sections of the city that the older, more well-to-do inhabitants have abandoned and thus the undesirable racial factor is so merged with other unattractive features, such as proximity to factories, poor transportation, old and obsolete buildings, poor street improvements and the presence of criminal or vice elements, that the separate effect of race cannot be disentangled’ (Drake/Cayton, 1962:175). Negative social factors such as race and class mark the black people in the neighbourhood in Do the Right Thing as an ‘undesirable’ group in the white middle class’s and police’s eyes, who have ‘inherited’ this section of the city. Even though Sweet Dick Willie, Coconut Sid and M.L are doing no harm sitting by the road all day, just to be seen loitering on the street causes the police to eye them with suspicion. The police conform to the mainstream prejudice of perceiving these men as suspicious and threatening because of the fact they are black and inhabit this downtrodden, crime ridden area. The fact that they are black is an integral part of this clichéd but culturally-recycled idea surrounding their identity, which exacerbates mainstream stereotypes. The men glare back at the police in defiance and other black youths on the block cause confrontations and eventually a riot resulting in a murder and the destruction of property. They act upon their ‘poor black’ identities which are so intrinsic to the location of Brooklyn, which affects the ideological conventions of audience’s expectations relating to their behaviour.

Ideology in films shape the way films present familiar representations of social subjects, and in turn, these subjects shape the way ideology is presented in films. In Do the Right Thing the ideology of ‘black’ behaviour in the context of a poor ghetto is explored. ‘Ethic status underlines and delimits relations in the public network. In this network persons of different identities interact in conventional and narrowly defined role-dyads or role clusters, and there are “agreements” on exchange and pragmatic and proximate ends are fulfilled’ (Eidheim, 1998:54) Ideology affects the way the characters act in a certain way that audiences recognise to be ‘black’. The conventional and narrowly defined accepted ways of expressing their urbane identities are imbedded in the idea of unspoken ‘agreements’ between ethnic groups on how to express these identities. There is a recognisable agreement that the use of black slang, clothes and hip hop music signifies and represents the dominant ideology of black representations in mainstream entertainment. The ideology of being ‘black’ in the ghetto (and therefore poor and disadvantaged) is perpetuated, and the idea of a sense of territoriality remains embedded in the identities of the characters as they go about their daily lives. Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) says to Mookie (Spike Lee) (as he enters work at the Italian pizzeria) ‘Stay black’. Even though this is a joke, his comment contains the idea of how ideology expects certain groups in society to behave in relation to other groups in society. His comment expresses an understanding of keeping a sense of their ‘black’ identity alive when surrounded by another culture.

The ideology that is synonymous with being a young black male affects how the characters ‘act out’ their ethnic identities which in turn make these familiar representations stereotypical. The black TV producer Cameron [Terrence Howard] in Crash suffers an identity crisis after he and his wife Christine [Thandie Newton] are pulled over by a racist policeman. The policeman molests Christine, but as Cameron is aware of his stereotypical identity as a black man in relation to the prejudiced police, he cannot become aggressive as he knows the policeman will accept any reason to arrest him. Christine makes the point that he didn’t want the people he works with to realise he’s ‘actually black’. She shows her awareness of what it means to be stereotypically black, and therefore mistreated by the police. When Cameron is on set, a black actor changes his line from the casual slang ‘don’t be talkin’ ‘bout that’, to the more formal ‘don’t talk to me about that’. The director says this isn’t how this character should talk to which Cameron responds ‘you think because of that, the audience won’t recognise him as being a black man?’ This highlights the stereotypes associated with being a black youth and how audiences recognise this and can infer from a characters speech and dress his ethnic identity. This reflects Cameron’s own identity crisis as not acting ‘black’ enough, and when he gets pulled over again on the way home he plays the stereotypical discriminated against ‘role’ assigned to him, and shouts ‘you want me? Here I am you pig fuck!’ He feels he was not ‘acting black’ before and now wants to claim his identity back and does this by playing up to the stereotype of an aggressive black man.

The portrayal of Hubert in La Haine is different from the portrayals of his directionless peers on the estate; he wants to escape his lifestyle and the social position that has been assigned to him because of his ethnicity and lower class status in society. The film acknowledges his ambitions in relation to his disadvantaged social status but shows an awareness of how unrealistic his ambitions are because he will not be able to pull away from the ideological cultural ‘role’ that has been assigned to his ethnic group. Hubert carries the stereotypical identity of a black youth in a poor ghetto; he makes his money because he is a drug dealer, his younger brother is in jail, he antagonises police and it is strongly suggested after he points a gun at police that he is shot at the end of the film. This reflects the fact that despite his ambitions, Hubert is unable to break free from his identity as a struggling black youth in the ghetto, in turn making his downfall at the hands of the prejudiced police seem inevitable.

In Do the Right Thing Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) embodies the identity of a young Brooklyn born black man, and the ideology that this implies affects his behaviour towards other ethnic groups.  In an overly blatant way of representing the territoriality of the black people in the neighbourhood, Radio Raheem plays his leit motif  ‘Public Enemy’s Fight the Power’ over a Hispanic group’s ethnic music. The song is rap/hip-hop (and by association ‘black’) and is about black people being oppressed and fighting against this oppression.  The use of popular culture to signify Radio Raheem's fixed identity as belonging to a fiercely territorial and historically wronged social group is expressed with the use of his music, and therefore cultural identity, dominating the Hispanic group’s ethnic music. He is mostly silent in the film, letting his political hip hop music, his clothes and jewellery speak for him to represent his identity. ‘Identity is thus mediated by mass-produced images, and image and cultural style are becoming ever more central to the construction of individual identities’ (Kellner, 1997:81) His very t-shirt is emblazed with ‘Bed-Stuy’; and by wearing a t-shirt with the name of his territory marked across it, he symbolises what it means to have an identity as a black youth in Brooklyn. The Hispanic group turn their music up to play over Raheem’s, and he turns his up louder still. It represents his determination to win this ethnic battle of ownership of the block. The Hispanic group’s stereo won’t go any louder so they resort to turning it down saying resignedly ‘you got it bro’. Through the symbolism of the ‘stereo war’, Do the Right Thing shows that the other ethnic groups acknowledge that the black people have unofficial ownership of the block as their identity is bound up in being from there, and that they, marked by their ethnic differences to black people, can never belong in the same way.

‘Do the Right Thing bolsters the more or less imaginary class and racial boundaries between certain blacks and whites who view the cities in fantastic terms, with marauding youth gangs in control of their increasingly monitored “public” spaces.’(Pouzoulet, 1997: 45)  In the scene where Clifton (John Savage) scuffs Buggin’ Out’s new trainers, there are examples of black characters ‘performing’ their territorial identity as those who ‘belong’ in Brooklyn, making it clear to Clifton that he shouldn’t be there. As soon as Buggin’ Out confronts Clifton (who is white), there is an immediate gang of local black youths backing him up. They are not aware of what has caused the confrontation, but there is a sense of unquestionable loyalty that lies between these black youths. They have an unspoken bond of sharing an identity as young, disadvantaged black people and seem to stick with their own ethnic group whatever the cause. Buggin’ Out displays a desire to make it plain to Clifton that black people are in control of this public space, in the same way Radio Raheem did with the Hispanic group.  Buggin’ Out angrily shouts ‘Who told you to walk on my side of the block? Who told you to be in my neighbourhood?’ The repetition of ‘my block’ and ‘my neighbourhood’ highlights the territoriality these characters feel in relation to ‘their’ block. As disadvantaged and discriminated against youths in a poor community, they form a united identity as ‘belonging’ in Bed-Stuy. This want to control and have some say over what they perceive is ‘their’ turf gives the disadvantaged youths a sense of control over their lives which they don’t have in the sense of a decent education or job prospects.  ‘Inter ethnic conflict never arises solely and simply because of perceived ethnic or physical difference. Such perceived differences may, it is true, be the basis on which individuals within any society are assigned to social positions, but the positions themselves already exist and, by virtue of having to fill them, members of differing ethnic groups find that conflicts between their groups become exacerbated’ (Rex, 1973:3).

Clifton informs them indignantly that he owns the brownstone building. This comment seems to exacerbate the conflict, as this is another example of non-blacks prospering in a predominantly black neighbourhood which they are so fiercely territorial over. Buggin’ Out responds angrily with jeers from his gang ‘who told you to buy a brownstone on my block? In my neighbourhood? On my side of the street? Yo! What you wanna live in a black neighbourhood for anyway man?’ Buggin’ Out has targeted Clifton because of his ethnic physical difference to him, and Clifton is ‘filling’ his social position as a prospering white man in comparison to the poor black youths. He is articulate, is financially successful as he owns a building which he rents out to the community, and this fulfilment of his social position in their neighbourhood seems to enrage Buggin’ Out even more. He and his gang are fulfilling their stereotypical social positions by conforming to their identity of a gang of troublemaking youths with no prospects, leading them to assume a sense of ownership over the community because this is one aspect of their lives they feel they can control. The comment ‘what you wanna live in a black neighbourhood for anyway?’ reinforces their territorial identities and the fact that it is commonly acknowledged that Brooklyn is a ‘black’ area where others don’t fit in. Clifton naively responds ‘as I understand it, this is a free country man; we can live wherever we want’. Buggin becomes more enraged and says ‘free country?! Man, I should fuck you up for saying that stupid shit alone!’ Clifton is technically right in his comment, but there is no escaping the black dominance of Brooklyn and that non-blacks don’t share the same identity as these youths. Buggin’ Out’s comment highlights the fact that while Clifton (an educated and financially successful middle class white man) may chose to live wherever he wants and could leave Brooklyn, they could never make this choice to leave because of their lower social class and the lack of finance which is synonymous with this. Buggin’ Out jeers ‘why don’t you move back to Massachusetts?’ (acknowledged to be a white area) to which Clifton replies ‘I was born in Brooklyn’. Here the gang throw up their arms and mock him, wanting him to realise that he will never ‘belong’ even if his ancestors were born and raised there. He doesn’t have the integral ethnic foundation as being black to have a credible identity as ‘belonging’ in Bed-Stuy.

Do the Right Thing, Crash and La Haine portray easily recognisable and stereotypical images of black youths which confirm familiar mainstream representations of black people from poor backgrounds. ‘They are…highly realistic representations of the public images of blacks: the caricatures imposed on them and [sometimes] acted out by them.’ (Mitchell, 1997:112) The ideology which is tied to the idea of being a product of an urban space is fundamental to the construction of the black youth’s identities. It is easy to recognise what identifies the black characters mentioned as such because of the stereotypical representations audiences are used to seeing of black youths from poor backgrounds in mainstream cinema and negative news coverage. In all three films the urban spaces the characters are from affect the ‘performance’ of their ethnic identities; as ideological ideas relating to acceptable ‘black’ behaviour shape the characters identities which affect how they interact with other ethnic groups.

Bibliography
Aftab, Kaleem [2005] ‘Do the Right Thing’ in Spike Lee: That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Faber and Faber Limited. UK

Drake, St Clair, Cayton Horace R. [1962] ‘The black ghetto’ in Black Metropolis volume 1: A study of Negro life in a northern city. Introductions by Richard Wright and E.C Hughes. A Harbringer book, Harcourt, Brace and World Inc. New York

Eidheim, Harald [1998] ‘When ethnic identity is a social stigma’ in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. By Fredrik Barth. Waveland Press, Inc. U.S.A

Guerrero, Ed [2001] ‘Do the Right Thing’ in Do The Right Thing. British Film Institute. U.K

Kellner, Douglas [1997] ‘Aesthetics, ethics, and politics in the films of Spike Lee’ in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Edited by Mark A. Reid. Cambridge University Press. U.K

Lee, Spike [2005] ‘Do the Right Thing’ in Spike Lee: That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. By Kaleem Aftab. Faber and Faber Limited. UK

Martin, Joel W and Ostwalt, Conrad E. [1995] ‘Ideological Criticism’ in Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film. Westview Press. U.S.A

Massood, Paula J. [2003] ‘Welcome to Crooklyn: Spike Lee and the Rearticulation of the Black Urbanscape’ in Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film. Temple University Press. Philadelphia

Mitchell, W.J.T [1997] ‘The Violence of Public Art’ in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Edited by Mark A. Reid. Cambridge University Press.U.K

Pouzoulet, Catherine [1997] ‘Images of a Mosaic City’ in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Edited by Mark A. Reid. Cambridge University Press. U.K

Rex, John [1973] ‘Inter-ethnic relations in an urban context’ and ‘Community and association amongst urban migrants’ in Race, colonialism and the city. Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. London and Boston

Filmography
Crash. [2004] Written and directed by Paul Haggis. U.S.A

Do The Right Thing. [1989] Written and directed by Spike Lee. U.S.A

La Haine [1995] Written and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. France