SOURCE: "Spike Lee and the American Tradition," in Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1996, pp. 26-31.

In the following review, Lindroth discusses Lee's Do the Right Thing as an American narrative in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn.

From the moment it opened, Spike Lee's movie Do the Right Thing has raised questions and aroused controversy among critics and ordinary moviegoers alike. From its initial success at the Cannes Film Festival to its almost complete exclusion from the Academy Award nominations, the film has provoked heated response from both defenders and attackers, and publications as disparate as Vogue, The New Yorker, American Film, and Mother Jones reviewed, interviewed, and often second-guessed Lee. The film was praised for its "unclichéd, antiheroic vision of … contemporary racial tension," and for "asking questions about the country's racial chasm that few artists, or even political leaders, are willing to broach." So much of the...