Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing has centered itself as a quintessential piece of cinema regarding the issue of American race relations. At its core, the film asks a rather obvious moral question: What is the right thing to do regarding racial struggle? Throughout the multi-layered picture, Lee consults several viewpoints on the matter—including the ideologies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X—in how to address racial injustice and marginalization, challenging what “the right thing to do” exactly is. To develop authenticity and his overall message, Lee relies heavily on Aristotelian rhetoric, of which rhetorical virtue and practical wisdom stand out.
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