The Death of Radio Raheem

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Two independent incidents caused me to recently revisit Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing. The first was a paper I received from a student this year. The assignment was to write a movie review, and one of the movies this student selected was Lee’s. Her conclusion was that nothing in the film made you attached to Radio Raheem, and therefore his death towards the end of the film didn’t have a great effect. Needless to say, I was very disturbed by this student’s comments. Radio Raheem’s death is one of the few cinematic moments I can remember in photographic detail, certain facial expressions and movements imbedded in my mind. The idea that someone could watch the film and leave unaffected by the moment seems close to inhuman

The second incident we’ll get to later.

But for now I want to focus on Radio Raheem’s last moment in as much detail as possible in order to demonstrate how Spike Lee, over the course of 30 shots, created one of the great montages in modern American film.

Some background: Raheem’s friend Buggin’ Out questions Sal as to why there are no pictures of African Americans on his wall. Sal, for reasons that it’s best not to speculate on, smashes Raheem’s radio, which has been playing Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” for the length of the film. After a moment of silence, Raheem launches himself over the pizzeria counter and begins choking Sal. An important thing to remember about this moment, and a constant mis-reading of it, is that Radio Raheem is not “fighting the power;” in fact, this is the first moment in the film that race relations are superceded by the relations between individuals. Sure, Sal is white and Raheem is black, but Raheem cries out “my box,” and “my music,” emphasis on the “my.” Perhaps Sal would have permitted the radio if it were playing Sinatra, but in the moment it no longer matters, the horror of the violence has enveloped any structure that strict black and white binaries would imply. The image that begins the struggle is also telling:

Sal does have a picture of a black person on his wall: the man on the left is Jersey Joe Walcott, a heavyweight champion in the process of losing his belt to the man on the right, Rocky Marciano. Walcott was the first fighter to knock Marciano down, and was significantly leading in points when Marciano knocked him out with one punch. In other words: one moment, one punch, and everything is thrown into question. Suddenly points, history, precedent don’t matter—just two bodies in contact.

The mob tumbles out of Sal’s pizzeria and into the street, where the camera retreats wide enough to reveal yet another stunning detail: the ad on the side of Sal’s pizzeria reads “maximum performance for audio devices”:

The technology is not irrelevant, also in contact with the building the way Marciano’s fist was in contact with Walcott’s face. The way “Fight the Power” was in contact with everyone’s face throughout the day—faces that, by the way, already resemble prize fighters in the 13^th round due to the excessive heat. Points of contact are important because these contact points blur the distinctions that we try to use to give meaning to what is ultimately beyond meaning.

Case in point: some of the black members of the community are throwing punches at Sal as he lays on the ground, but some seem to be beating on Raheem as well. A shot from the ground demonstrates that the majority are trying to pull Raheem off of Sal. A voice says, “What are you doing, you’re going to kill him!” which echoes a voice that expresses the same words in the imperative: “Kill him!” The image track represents a confused reality, while the non-diegetic audio reveals the contradictory meanings of identical utterances.

Notice as well the disturbing ambivalence of Raheem’s expression: is it joy? pain? a grimace? This frenzy of conflated emotions is maintained for quite a while.

Now begins the 30-shot sequence I wish to highlight. In order to emphasize the power of the visual, I will limit my verbal content. Shots represented by multiple images demonstrate camera movement.

Shot 1:

The camera tracks down following the movement of the cop cars.

Shot 2:

Shot 3:

Shot 4:

The confusion of the expression on Raheem’s face is metonymic of the confusion of the scene. Who is attacking whom? How to tell the peacekeepers from the aggressors? This confusion carries into the next four shots as well.

Shot 5:

Shot 6:

Shot 7:

Shot 8:

The handcuffs click before you can see the handcuffs themselves. Lee is playing with the sensory data he allows you to receieve: first the sound, then the item. Also, because the cut from Shot 7 is so sudden, a first-time viewer might assume (not noticing the shirt) that this is Raheem. The next shot reveals the individual being restrained, drawing the viewer into an even less reliable relationship to the sensations that the film provides.

Shot 9:

Although we see who is in the handcuffs, the camera bobs, attempting to capture the entire face and body of the man but never succeeding.

Shot 10:

Bodies touching bodies, just like flags mixed into a collage in the upper left hand corner of the frame. What does Raheem’s face express now? Certainly pain, but what kind? What of the proximity of the cop’s face to Raheem’s, the way their expressions seem to mirror one another? Is this a conversation, or something more sinister?

Shot 11:

“That’s enough!” A non-diegetic voice shouts, “you’re killing him,” inverting the plea that was directed at Radio Raheem before the scene began. 

Shot 12:

Raheem’s expression is more elusive than ever, and it bobs back and forth from the camera, putting you in the same proximity to it that we saw from the cop in Shot 10. Lee places the viewer in an uncomfortable position, both in relation to the sheer mania of Raheem’s countenance, and in relation of the question to where we, the audience, fit into the relationality of the frame. The sweat on the face makes it tangible, visceral, and utterly abject.

Shot 13:

Smiley’s wailing carries through the rest of the montage from this shot. Meaningfully, the expression and sound he makes here transition without any discernible change into the mob scene that immediately follows. The same way expressions are muddled in Raheem’s face, the distinction between terror and the violence that causes it is blurred in the figure of smiley.

Shot 14:

Again we hear “that’s enough,” this time shouted by a cop in the out-of-frame, echoing what we hear in-frame in Shot 11. Raheem’s face moves suddenly from a glut of potential expressive modalities to a complete lack of any.

Shot 15:

The desperate kicking of the feet, settling into stillness, is a terrifying image that the Coens will use to great effect in No Country for Old Men.

Shot 16:

“Radio Raheem!”

Shot 17:

Shot 18:

Shot 19:

Shot 20:

This shot repeats Shot 18 with a crucial difference: the bright light in the background is extinguished. This brilliant detail answers the questions definitively posed by Shot 19. Radio Raheem has died.

Shot 21:

Shot 22:

Shot 23:

Shot 24:

The imagery here is sometimes referred to as Christlike, but on a much more literal level, the image serves as a counterpoint to the community of force used to murder Radio Raheem. The weight of his body sags in the arms of those who killed him.

Shot 25:

Shot 26:

Shot 27:

The violence perpetrated here against Buggin’ Out is like in kind to the violence of Shot 20, where the cop kicks Raheem and orders him to stop faking it. Because violence is in its essence maniacal and the beyond of reason, the problems it produces are irresolvable. In other words, the problems produced by violence create the conditions necessary to produce more violence. The cops impotently try to punch their way out of a hole the senselessness of their violence has dug. 

Shot 28: 

Shot 29:

Shot 30:

Smiley’s wail continues from Shot 13, punctuating the montage and demonstrating how intricately woven the details of this scene are. In linking the indeterminateness of voice, expression, words, acts, and image, Spike Lee demonstrates a horror that is not within the issue of race alone, but exceeds it—coming into contact with it like the fist with Walcott’s face, the arm around Raheem’s neck. The film is horrifying because it demonstrates that the mania of violence can never be maintained in any convenient distinctions; these distinctions, such as race, are rather the tipping points into a madness that is all-consuming, that doesn’t see color, that shames everyone involved.

The second incident that made me go back and focus on this particular scene was a claim my father made that the Academy never made a bigger mistake than when it failed to recognize The Color Purple as the best film of 1985.  My argument is that the Oscars’ greatest shame is four years later, when the award for Best Film was given to Bruce Beresford’s Driving Miss Daisy and Do the Right Thing was not even nominated.

While Driving Miss Daisy is at best an enjoyable film, it is deeply troubling on the issue of race. Because Miss Daisy has to teach Hoke to read and how to exist in white society, the film perpetrates the notion that African Americans can only be redeemed through the formal intervention of white culture. The scene in which cops play a role in Beresedford’s film is telling: they indicate to one another that a black man and a Jewish woman are equally suspicious. In other words, hatred only supercedes race in Miss Daisy where new signifiers of hate are introduced. Rather than bring into question the structures that support prejudice, the film tends to reaffirm them—ultimately asking nothing more of the audience than for pity to be bestowed equally on all minorities.

Every white/black cliché argument in Lee’s film is forgotten in the horror of the 30-shot montage you see above. Bird/Magic, Ali/Marciano, Chuck D/Sinatra—all of it seems remarkably petty when a boy is dead. The fact that Lee’s film was not recognized in its time is a disgraceful reflection of the narrow view that Hollywood held towards race just thirty years ago. The fact that someone could watch Radio Raheem die and leave unaffected is a disgrace to our shared humanity. 

• 1 year ago

• film,
• cutemeat frame analysis,
• oscars,
• driving miss daisy,
• spike lee
• long reads

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