DO THE RIGHT THING — Spike Lee and Ruth E. Carter find color in the dark

Spike Lee’s masterwork DO THE RIGHT THING is an incendiary look at racial tension, an empathetic portrait of a community...and one of the flyest-ever distillations of street style as the ’80s gave way to the ’90s.

Host Rico Gagliano learns how double Oscar-winner Ruth E. Carter (BLACK PANTHER) used bright color, afro-consciousness, and a whole lot of Nike sneakers to build a look as complex and political as the story. Guests include Carter, Spike Lee’s longtime cinematographer Ernest Dickerson...and a flashback with Spike himself.

Season 5, titled Tailor Made, dives deep into the worlds of film and fashion. Each episode tackles a landmark movie that captured a major fashion look of an era, and then decodes what that look meant—to the culture that spawned it, the people who wore it, and the audiences who watched it on screen.

Andrea Arnold's COW is now streaming exclusively on MUBI in many countries. To watch it and some of the other films we've covered on the podcast, check out the collection Featured on the MUBI Podcast. Availability of films varies depending on your country.

Links to the books mentioned in this episode: FREE STYLIN': HOW HIP HOP CHANGED THE FASHION INDUSTRY by Elena Romaro, SPIKE LEE'S DO THE RIGHT THING edited by Mark A. Reid, SPIKE LEE by Todd McGowan, and SPIKE LEE: DO THE RIGHT THING by Spike Lee and Jason Matloff.

MUBI is a global streaming service, production company and film distributor dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI makes, acquires, curates, and champions extraordinary films, connecting them to audiences all over the world. A place to discover ambitious new films and singular voices, from iconic directors to emerging auteurs. Each carefully chosen by MUBI’s curators.

Transcript

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Heads up, this episode includes adult themes and language, disturbing violence, racial slurs said only by fictional characters and spoilers. Why don't I have you first introduce yourself, your name and what you do? Hi, my name is Ruth Carter. I'm a costume designer. That's very humble of you. Where does your... Hi, I'm Ruth Carter. I'm a two time Oscar winning costume designer, four times nominated. I have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. How's that? How's that for humble? So that's Ruth Carter today. The only African American woman with multiple Oscars under a belt, if you're counting. But back in 1986 a life in movies was not on her radar. After graduating from college, I moved out to Los Angeles to pursue a career in theater. And uh it's kind of an oxymoron, right? But... Yeah, my dad's a playwright. So I know why you laughed just now. So, I was a costume designer in a little dance studio in south central Los Angeles. Very small, but it had a wonderful performance called <i>A Night for Dancing</i>. It was to the music of Stevie Wonder and people from all over Los Angeles were coming to see <i>A Night for Dancing</i> And my friend Robi Reed brought Spike Lee. At the time that wasn't such a big deal. Spike Lee was only a couple years out of film school. His biggest claim to fame was winning a student Oscar with his thesis flick. And that had been two years ago. His debut feature had just started blowing minds at film festivals... But to us in Los Angeles, he was little known and he saw the performance and, you know, as a designer, you have to do it all. I was the designer, I was the wardrobe person, I was doing the laundry. I was doing the fast changes in the back and the wings, you know. And I guess he saw that. And we all hung out after the show, we went to a dance club and Spike was sitting at a cafe table talking to me about getting experience in film. And even as we were dancing, he was, you know,"Go to UCLA to the senior film department and sign up to volunteer on a student film." I can so totally imagine that you're grooving and he's like, listen, I'm still giving you a pitch right now. I kept thinking, you know, is this his rap, is this his approach? You know, I wasn't sure. Turns out it was not a come on. In fact, it was the start of what was going to be a 10 film partnership, and just three years later, Ruth Carter was designing costumes for a Spike Lee joint that would embody the street style and the politics of the late eighties, and beyond. I'm Rico Galiano, welcome back to the MUBI Podcast. MUBI's the streaming service the champions great cinema. On this show, we tell you the stories behind great cinema. This is season five, we're calling it 'Tailor Made' because every week we're diving into a movie that captured the fashion look of an era. And then we're going to decode that look, figure out where it came from, what it meant to the filmmakers and what it meant to audiences once it hit theaters. And if there was ever a movie that meant a lot to people, it is <i>Do the Right Thing</i>. When it came out it was celebrated for tackling issues of racial tension and police brutality head on and also feared for exactly the same thing. They were saying we were gonna cause all kinds of riots and everything and you know, we thought it was just total bullshit. That is <i>Do the Right Thing</i> cinematographer Ernest Dickerson and I talked to him, Ruth Carter and many others about something that was kind of missed in the furore. The beauty and the politics, they and Spike Lee had the characters almost literally wear on their sleeves. So polish the scuffs off your Jordans and turn up the AC as we rip open the seams of <i>Do the Right Thing</i>. To figure out where this movie's fashions came from I'm going to start at the beginning. When Ernest Dickerson met Spike Lee on their very first day of graduate film school, NYU 1980. There weren't too many other African Americans in the group found out that Spike had gone to Morehouse College for his undergraduate work and I had gone to Howard University for my undergraduate work. And Morehouse and Howard are notorious homecoming football rivals, Howard University had a tendency to always kick Morehouse's butt. So we started teasing each other about our schools and ragging on our schools. They got over it. Dickerson went on to shoot all Spike's films for the next 10 years. But the point is, it seems like a lot of people's first impression of Spike Lee in the eighties had to do with sports. Like I asked Ruth Carter, what he was wearing when they met in '86. It was probably a Knicks cap and a Knicks jacket, a Knicks T-shirt, a pair of blue and orange shorts... Those would be the team colors of the Knicks....and some Air Jordans. So aside from movies, everyone knew these were Lee's obsessions, his teams and wearing their gear. But what no one could have known was that his first micro-budget film outta grad school would make him a sports gear icon. And set the stage for the look of <i>Do the Right Thing</i>.<i>I want you to know if the only reason I'm consenting</i><i>to this is because I wish to clear my name.</i><i>Not that I care what people think, but enough is enough.</i> The film was 1986's<i>She's Gotta Have It</i>. It's about the sex life of a young black woman named Nola.<i>Some people call me a freak.</i><i>I hate that word.</i> But the character everyone loved is one of her boyfriends. Mars Blackmon played by Spike Lee. Spike was not originally supposed to play Mars Blackmon. There was a quote/unquote real actor that was supposed to play that role. But the actor got a quote/unquote real movie, two weeks before we were supposed to start shooting <i>She's Gotta Have It</i>. So he figured, well, nobody knows the character better than I do, so I'll play it. Yeah, because Mars basically was an exaggerated version of Spike and he's introduced before he even speaks with shots of his outfit. Giant gold pendant that says Mars, chunky gold belt buckle that says Mars. And finally... a shot of his Air Jordans.<i>What about Nola Darling? What do you want to know?</i><i>I thought she was a freak. You know, freaky deaky?</i> Mars is never without his Jordans. During sex he's naked except for his Jordans. And one of the film's most iconic scenes there's Mars with a familiar image looming behind him. He had that great Michael Jordan poster on the wall. You know where, where Jordan is airborne when he's on the phone.<i>- Nola.- What?</i><i>- Nola.- What?</i><i>- Nola.- What?</i><i>- Just let me smell it.- You are ill!</i><i>Please, baby. Please, baby. Please, baby. Baby, baby, please.</i><i>Good night!</i> That's supposed to be in Mars Blackmon's apartment and this big Nike poster on the wall.<i>She's Gotta Have It</i> was a sleeper hit right off the bat. I had no idea until Spike called me. I think he had gone to San Francisco where it premiered at a festival. And he woke me up telling me that at several minutes into the movie, there was like a citywide blackout. The film just stopped. And he said, people just sat in the dark and after about 15-20 minutes, the lights came back up and he said, nobody had left. You know, that's when we first realized we had something special there. Shot in twelve days for $175'000 it ended up grossing a crazy $7'000'000. And among the folks who bought tickets were a couple of Honchos from the ad agency that repped yes, Air Jordans. Yeah, next thing I knew, you know, Nike just had us wanting to do these commercials.<i>Do you know who the best player in the game is? Me? Mars Blackmon.</i> The first one aired in February 88 featuring Spike as Mars literally standing on Michael Jordan's shoulders.<i>That's right. Air Jordan, Air Jordan, Air Jordan.</i> Lots more followed. Nike co-founder Phil Knight later said Air Jordan sales had actually slumped the previous year. He said the Mars ads "revived the brand." I got it. Spike Lee and Nike were now a thing. And though nobody knew it yet that was going to be pivotal in defining the fashion style of a movie he was just finishing up writing. Well, I remember first hearing about it, Spike and I were on a plane and Spike was, you know, he was writing a script. He always wrote his scripts in a yellow legal pad. And at that point, it was called <i>Heat Wave</i>. And he just said to me, he said, "Hey man, you know,"I'm writing the next film, it's gonna take place on the"the hottest day of the summer." He said"That's when the murder rate goes up." Yeah, this was gonna be a different kind of Spike Lee joint.<i>She's Gotta Have It</i>, and his sophomore flick <i>School Daze</i> were about African Americans interacting with each other. But <i>Heat Wave</i> later retitled,<i>Do the Right Thing</i> was about people of different colors trying to get along.<i>The New York City version of a racial lynching,</i><i>a mob of whites attacking three Black men.</i> Because in New York in the late eighties, it wasn't going well.<i>In sorrow and anger</i><i>dozens of Blacks massed in the white middle class neighborhood</i><i>of Howard Beach to mourn the death of Michael Griffith,</i><i>a 23 year old construction worker.</i> In December 86 Michael Griffiths car broke down in Howard Beach. He and his two pals decided to grab some food at a local pizza joint and got accosted by white kids wielding bats. And make a long story short, they chased him out of the pizza parlor. He wound up running into a street, wound up getting hit by a car and killed. This was going on in New York and Brooklyn. To have it happen in New York City. Unbelievable. So, in <i>Do the Right Thing</i>, Spike Lee just moved the white owned pizza parlor to a block in the mainly Black neighborhood of Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, turned up the heat and set a bunch of characters in fateful motion.<i>I have today's forecast for you.</i><i>Hot!</i> To me, the first two thirds of this movie doesn't really tell a story so much as introduce you to some neighbors who are cool, hilarious, weird, loving, annoying, sometimes awful, sometimes all that at once. Sal the pizza man and his racist son Pino, Buggin Out, a self styled activist who's outraged by Sal's Italian American wall of fame.<i>Hey, Sal, how come you got no brothers up on the wall here?</i><i>You want brothers on the wall? Get your own place.</i><i>You can do what you wanna do.</i> There's Radio Raheem, a mythically huge dude with a mythically huge boombox and attitude.<i>If I love you, I love you.</i><i>But if I hate you...</i><i>There it is, love and hate.</i> And that was Spike Lee as Mookie, Sal's delivery man who has the world's most foul mouthed baby mama.<i>Mookie, I already told you it's too fuckin' hot to make love.</i><i>- It's too fuckin' hot.- Yeah.</i><i>- Why are you always cursing?- I don't fuckin' curse that much.</i><i>"I don't fuckin' curse that much."</i> your mileage may vary, but I sort of love all these people. As the heat rises and tension simmer it's admirable how they manage to give each other just enough slack to avoid a meltdown. Which only makes it more heartbreaking when night falls...<i>Fight the power!</i><i>Fight the power!</i> And everything comes apart over Sal's white photos and Raheem's big boombox. What'd I tell you you about that noise?- What about them pictures?- What the fuck? Are you deaf? No! Are you? Fuck you! We want some Black people on that motherfucking wall of fame now! Fight breaks out, the cops arrive, a Black kid is murdered. Sal's shop is burned to the studs. And in the end, the question is, did any of these people do the right thing? What even is the right thing? It's a movie that goes to dark places. But if you picture it in your head, the images that come to mind are full of color. Which for Ernest Dickerson had been the plan from the second Spike showed him the script on that plane. He said I want, you know, so we got to figure out a way to really get the audience to feel the heat of the hottest day of the summer. He basically asked me to figure out ways of portraying heat on camera. How-- how did you decide to do that? I felt that the best way to do it was to use color. I've always been interested in the psychological effects of color. And you know, one of the things that I had learned is the colors in the interior of the submarines are usually kept very, you know, cool colors, kind of like blues, calming colors because they don't want you to get agitated when you're, you know, in this tin can, you know, hundreds of feet under the water. But reds and yellows, especially red, red has a tendency to actually increase the heart rate when you look at it. The yellows and the reds and oranges and earth tones, that part of the spectrum to me portrays heat better. And then to invoke an endless bright summer day, he blasted his sets red hot colors with light. So when Ruth Carter came on the scene in mid 1988 she knew her costumes were going to have to play well with that, and with another source of blinding light courtesy of Spike's Air Jordan buddies. Putting together the costumes for <i>Do the Right Thing</i>, you know, was a challenge because we had a lot of product placement from Nike, and most of the colors were very saturated. Team colors very bright. See I told you, Nike was gonna show up again. The good news? The way Spike told his story was pretty colorful too.<i>You dago, wop, guinea, garlic-breath, pizza-slinging,</i><i>spaghetti-bending, Vic Damone, Perry Como,</i><i>Luciano Pavarotti, solo mio, non-singing motherfucker.</i> Like for instance, the montage where half the characters take turn ranting slurs about each other's race directly into the camera. The script was heightened realism where you see the Korean grocer standing in the middle of the street spewing off you know, things about, you know, Koch, Mayor Koch...<i>I got good price for you, Mayor Koch, "How I'm doing?"</i><i>Chocolate-egg-cream drinking...</i> There was already a poetry to the film that I was able to use as far as giving myself permission to enheighten the realism. We were able to paint our story like a fantasy, like a story book. The end result for the movie's young characters, a clean, brightly colored sports look mashed up with elements of a hip street style that was just bubbling in 1988. One that exactly aligned with the movie's politics. So at that time, from a hip hop music perspective, there's a lot of things going on. That is Elena Romero. She teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology

and she's the author of <i>Freestyling: 14:56

how hip hop changed the fashion industry</i>. But one of the main themes within hip hop music culture, we're talking about late eighties is this narrative around black pride, Afro-Centricity, knowledge of self. And with that comes Afrocentric style. It's a look that's kind of always been around, but Elena says in the late eighties, it caught on as a reaction against the gold chain wearing materialism of mainstream rap. And against the mainstream African American look of the day, a kind of neo preppy style. And all it represented. So the preppy movement is symbolic of caucasian success and wealth and education, right? And then on the their side is being kings and queens and the history of Africa and the motherland and the pride behind that. And so you had leather medallions, you had a lot of kente cloth, a lot of the colors that you see, let's say in the Pan African flag, Egyptian medallions. Yeah, look close at the young characters and <i>Do the Right Thing</i> and you'll see it constantly. Athletic wear with nods to African identity sometimes literally sewn into the fabric. An afrocentric refraction of actual Brooklyn style. Brooklyn was somewhat of a melting pot where you would see an African woman walking in a colorful gele, an African head wrap. You would see Ankara fabric. So we had leather necklaces with Africa on it. We balanced those sporty colors with the African fabrics. We made a lot of African print shorts you see Buggin Out with Kente cloth shorts and a shirt with a Kente stripe on it. And Brooklyn was also the source for what was going to become the movie's most iconic item. A shirt bearing the slogan,"Bed Stuy, Do or Die." You see Radio Raheem wearing a hand painted T-shirt from an artist named NaSha who actually had a shop in Brooklyn. I really love what she was doing in there. It was actually hard to pick a shirt. Even harder though was explaining they'd need a bunch of them for continuity's sake. She was told she had to make, you know, at least 10 of them all exactly the same. And that was really hard for me to get her to see that they can't change at all. They cannot be different in any way. They all have to be exactly the same. She was, I mean, as an artist, her nature was to make them all just like a little bit... A little bit different. Yeah. And the first shirt she made, we spelled Bed Stuy wrong. And we actually shot it and then I looked and realized it was spelled wrong and had to go to the editing bay to see how much of it we saw that day. And luckily we didn't see much. So I was able to get her to paint another set of shirts all exactly the same with Bed Stuy spelled properly. Was Stuy misspelled S-T-Y?- Yes.- Oh no... That's not good. That's the opposite of what you want to convey. I mean, she was from Brooklyn. She had no excuse. I wasn't from Brooklyn anyway, of course, there's also plenty of unadorned athletic wear in <i>Do the Right Thing</i>. The kind of stuff Spike himself would wear on a summer day in Brooklyn. But that was also chosen with care, particularly when it came to the shoes. I knew that there were things that were very, how should I say it, important to Spike. And that would be that you are wearing the appropriate sneakers, you know, he had a sneaker game always which I had no idea which ones would be the most appropriate. So he always picked the sneakers for characters in his movies. And in this movie, those kicks work as social statements, as much as fashion statements.<i>Yo!</i> Here's exhibit a one of <i>Do the Right Thing</i>, most famous and funny scenes when an oblivious white gentrifier accidentally makes the egregious mistake of scuffing Buggin out's pristine Air Jordan Fours.<i>...you stepped on my brand-new white Air Jordans I just bought.</i><i>And that's all you can say is,"Excuse me?"</i><i>- What, you're serious?- Yeah, I'm serious.</i>- I'll fuck you up quick two times!- Two times! Buggin Out, he would be dressed like a stereotype of a nationalist, a black nationalist. That is Mark A Reid he's a film professor at the University of Florida and editor of a book of essays on the movie called <i>Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing</i>. He has dreads. He has Kente cloth but Buggin Out although he's political, he's also a materialist. He puts more of his energy into getting into an argument based on something material that he has on. It's nothing to do with his Africanism. It's to do with a commercial product. But Spike Lee was doing ads for Nike. He got tons of product placement from Nike for this movie. He still wears Nike. So he loves it. There's a part of him that is in Buggin Out. So what is, is this really the critique, you know, being, caring about your Air Jordans is a bad thing? Spike Lee is not an anti-capitalist. I mean, he's part of it. But the thing is, I don't think that he would react like Buggin Out. I think in fact, he's offhandedly criticizing those people who would dress as he is and put so much faith in their Jordan. So it's like this is a guy who should have his eye on bigger issues. But he's investing all his energy and his identity in this object. Yeah, it's a marker. It's a marker like the Kente cloth, but the Kente cloth means much more. And Reid says that message might have carried extra weight at the time'cause of a phenomenon that had just started making headlines in the media. Black kids jumping each other for their sneakers. It was something that people would be robbed for. They would be robbed for their tennis shoes. Of course, later in the movie, you could argue, Spike Lee uses sneakers to allude to that exact issue again this time aiming ire in the opposite direction. It's during the climactic melee at Sal's pizza shop. When the cops arrive and lift Radio Raheem off his feet with a choke hold.<i>Gary, that's enough!</i><i>Gary, that's enough, man!</i> As he dies the last image is of his shoes kicking in mid air.<i>Radio Raheem!</i> It feels to me like a statement. You're worried about kids getting attacked over sneakers. Where's your outrage over this?<i>Let's get him out of here.</i><i>I'm a Black man, goddamn it! I'm a Black man!</i> It might not be an accident that Raheem wears Nike Air Revolutions. Shooting on <i>Do the Right Thing</i> wrapped in September 1988. And what they had in the can was a movie full of life, humor, rage and this kind of intense complexity. Ernest Dickerson still wasn't sure what to expect. You make a movie, you just try to make the best movie you can. It's best not to like, hope that it's going to be a massive hit. You know, you just hope that you do connect with your audience. And this one definitely seemed to fill a void. You know, it was uh... there was no other film out there like it. And viewers definitely agreed on that. Though, not on much else about it.<i>Do the Right Thing</i> hits the screen coming up in just a minute, stay with us. All right, everybody MUBI is the curated streaming service that champions great cinema, wherever we find it from any country by legendary auteurs or brilliant first timers we have always got something new for you to discover. And my dearest hope is this podcast might actually turn you on to something new, either the movies we're diving into or the ones we mention along the way. And to help you out with that, we have helpfully put together a collection for you called,'Featured on the MUBI Podcast.' It includes all the movies we have available on the platform that we've ever even noted on the show. And let me direct you to one that I think is just criminally underseen. That would be <i>Cow</i>, a documentary by Oscar winner Andrea Arnold. You might have seen her movie<i>American Honey</i> with Shia LaBeouf. But this is a very different kind of film. She spent years shooting the life of a single cow on a UK dairy farm. And I know it sounds unlikely, but for me, it was the most heartbreaking and emotional experience I had at a movie the year it came out, 2021. So much so that last year when I was polled for Sight and Sounds critics poll of the best films ever made this made my top 10. For me there's never been a movie like it, it really feels like you're seeing the world through nonhuman eyes. And it is not a pretty picture, not at all an easy watch, but I think it's essential. So go back and listen to my MUBI Podcast interview with Arnold about <i>Cow</i> to judge if it's for you, then head over to mubi.com and find the collection called,'Featured on the MUBI Podcast' to start watching. We have all the info you need about how to subscribe in the show notes of this episode. Speaking of which, let's get back to it. So picture this, it's summer 1989. Racial tension is still at a boil. In Brooklyn a teen named Yusef Hawkins becomes the third Black New Yorker killed by a white mob in the 1980s. And around that time, a white college kid goes to see a new movie called <i>Do the Right Thing</i>. Having no idea what he's in for. This was the time when you did this, I didn't know going to the cinema, what film I was gonna see. And I saw, this one looked good. And I just saw it. That is Todd McGowan today. He's a film professor at the University of Vermont and author of a book, analyzing Spike Lee's movies called<i>Spike Lee.</i> I was stunned by it like how great it was actually when I stumbled into it with my girlfriend at the time. What stunned you about it? What first grabbed you? Well, I thought that it was so formally interesting and inventive and I hadn't seen that and also, of course, with this, the content of it I thought was that... I couldn't believe I was seeing it at a multiplex. I guess that was one of the things that really, really shocked me. Why was that? Well I mean, there weren't films that were really about racism, there weren't films that were, I mean, they were, but they were usually white savior films and there weren't films that really dove into that kind of situation and, and that racist violence. And I thought that was really amazing. Do you remember the general reaction? Like the people at large? I do, I remember it pretty well actually. So it was, there was a widespread among a lot of people, appreciation for the film. But then there was this incredible, not just conservative but, but mainstream backlash against the film as well.- How you doing?- Very well. That's me interviewing Spike Lee on my old radio show back in 2011, he just put out a coffee table book about the making of the movie. But it's this backlash from 20 years earlier, he really wanted to talk about right off the bat. If you could uh give us a synopsis for the few people who don't know this movie. Well, I don't want to really give a synopsis, but I think more important is that people forget when this film came out many top critics predicted that this film will cause race riots. I think it was David Denby was one of the big critics. Joe... I forgot the other guy's name.- Joe Klein.- Joe Klein Newsweek, I believe. Yeah, them guys have never owned up to it ever. I remember, I remember the David Denby quote"Pray to God this film does not play in your neighborhood." So consequently, there was a significant part of the white audience who was scared to see the film. Ernest Dickerson remembers too. You know, we thought it was just total bullshit. Just hearing people's reaction to the movie saying that the film was gonna be destructive. And it's amazing how people wound up changing their tune as the year went on. Especially when <i>Do the Right Thing</i> hit home video in January 1990. Even if the tune might have changed for seriously problematic reasons.<i>Do the Right Thing</i> is one of those films where people identify the threat in it with the theater experience itself because there was this, what I think is racist fear that it would provoke like riots in the cinema. So it was a real fear, I think of Black collectivity. And that's why when it's on VHS, it's not a collective experience, right? It no longer seemed threatening. So it was immediately-- There was a more respect given to the film immediately after it was released on VHS. Yeah, <i>Do the Right Thing</i> did pretty well in theaters and actually ended up on a lot of critics best of the year lists. Roger Ebert put it at number one. But it does feel like home video helped make it a defining film of the new decade and its fairy tale fashion fit the zeitgeist like a glove. Like storybook, bright colors were all the rage in 1990 as seen and <i>Do the Right Thing</i>. And then a few months later on this new sitcom called the <i>Fresh Prince of Bel Air</i>, when Will Smith started wearing outfits from the aptly named brand Cross Colors, and then there was athletic wear or as it would later be called athleisure wear. So I've always kind of dressed like Spike Lee in the sports way and in the eighties, it was in the late eighties and early nineties when that trajectory kind of turned. And that, like the garb that he wears, the garb that a lot of the characters wear became much more fashionable. And I think the film you wouldn't say that it was the driving force, but I think it certainly had an aesthetic to it. And that aesthetic, I think it helped along that notion of I can wear this thing, even I can go to work with my jersey on and that's a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Of course, Radio Raheem's Bed Stuy shirt went the 1990s equivalent of viral. I mean, that put Bed Stuy right on the map. I mean, before that did though the world know what Bed Stuy was and I can't think of too many neighborhoods that have that same power and impact. Listen, I'm from Sunset Park, Brooklyn and there was a movie called <i>Sunset Park</i>. And there were great jerseys that were attached to it because it was around a basketball theme, I remember if you said Sunset Park around the world, nobody knows it. But when you say "Do or die Bed Stuy", I mean, that is respect right there and then, And that's thanks to <i>Do the Right Thing</i>. And finally, in the year and a half between the movie getting shot and then showing up on video store shelves came a flood of debut music from Afrocentric hip hop acts. The Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest. I was in college radio at the time and you would see Dashikis, Pan African colors and leather medallions on the covers of half the rap records coming into the station. And also on some of my fellow DJs. Ruth Carter's Afro conscious style and its message was right on trend. I think she had a great eye for what was happening and what was to come. You know, she nailed it. Today, of course, the movie many thought would cause riots in the streets is pretty much universally accepted as a classic. And in the world of street style, it's so fondly remembered that 27 years after its release, Nike courted influencers by sending them replica Buggin Out Air Jordan Fours, complete with a scuff. Todd McGowan isn't surprised. Everything that's politically or formally or aesthetically radical always creates a immediate blowback I think. But then it's a very fascinating process because there's a certain point at which we find ways to domesticate the radicality of the work. And then we, we say, oh, it's a classic and I think calling so-- I don't mind calling something a classic, but I think calling something a classic is a way to take away the threat that that would exist in it. I wonder if another way that that's done in a way is by incorporating it into fashion afterwards. Absolutely. Making something fashionable is also a way of bringing it into the, bringing it into the mainstream. So yeah, I think that's definitely going on. But the thing is every time it feels like you can enjoy <i>Do The Right Thing</i> as just part of the cinema canon or as a touch point for style, the world makes it feel radical again.<i>I'm minding my business officer.</i><i>I'm minding my business.</i> This is <i>Three Brothers</i>, a 92 second short Spike Lee put together in 2020. In the wake of the protests over the killing of George Floyd. It cuts between actual footage of police choking Floyd and police choking another Black man, Eric Garner and then Spikes footage of police choking Radio Raheem.<i>I can't breath!</i> There's no narration. Only a title card. Will history stop repeating itself?<i>Get up...</i><i>Get off him now!</i><i>What the f[***].</i> Just like <i>Do the Right Thing</i> it asks a question, hopes we come up with a good answer and meanwhile leaves you seeing red. And that's the MUBI Podcast for this week. Follow us this season for more stories about the power of film and fashion. Next time, a look at the work of another director who's been using clothes to send a message since day one, Sofia Coppola. You can't control a lot of things. You can't control men, you can't control patriarchal society, you can't control capitalism. But maybe the one specific thing you can control is how you look. Guests include Coppola's costume designers, her cinematographer and herself. Follow us so you don't miss it. Meanwhile, this episode of the MUBI Podcast was written hosted and edited by me, Rico Galiano. Ciara McEniff is our producer. Beth Schiff is our booking producer. Stephen Colon mastered it. Our original music was composed by Martin Austwick. Extra thanks this week to Matthew Abramson, Michael Gino, David Púchovský and as always, Karina Lesser. This show is executive produced by me along with Jon Barrenechea, Efe Çakarel, Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca. If you love the show, tell the world by leaving a five star review wherever you listen, let them know we're something special. Also, if you've got questions, comments or photos of you in your best nineties gear, email us at podcast@mubi.com And of course to stream the best in cinema, including some of the films we talk about on this very podcast Just head over to mubi.com to start watching. Thanks for listening, be safe and may all your movies be worth dressing up for.