Gender in U.S. Films: “In the Heat of the Night” and “Do the Right Thing”

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Table of Contents

In the Heat of the Night
Do the Right Thing
Works Cited

In the Heat of the Night

The idea behind Supertom can be described as a trope used to make a black character heroic. The result is a peculiar image of a magical black, who is a minor or even almost background character, whose mission is to help the protagonist guide him. To show the audience that ethnic minority characters are not bad people, Supertom takes a step forward to help others. They usually enter into the life of a much more privileged and, in particular, almost always white, the central character, and in some way enrich the life of this main character. Some examples of Supertom include Lucius Fox from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile, Bagger Vance in The Legend of Bagger Vance, and Uncle Remus from Song of the South.

Thus, a black character is endowed with high achievements and extraordinary positive characteristics, and Supertom is obtained. Mr. Tibbs is Supertom as he “is smarter than all the white people, the best homicide detective in Philadelphia, brave enough to face down a lynch mob,” and exhibits “a somewhat unexpected knowledge of varieties of plant life.” (Vera, 156) He is a kind of racial Sherlock Holmes.

In other words, the relationship in the movie suggests the kind of friendship between blacks and whites that Americans like to think of as accurate, but that is not true in the context of the time frame in which In the Heat of the Night takes place. In the film, at no point or scene does Gillespie seem to reach the point of accepting Mr. Tibbs. At best, at the end of the film, there is a sense of indifference. Nothing in the film feels like a buddy moment, more like constant violence and almost kidnapping. The scene in Gillespie’s living room was the closest thing to friendliness. Thus, discussing this film in relation to buddy films proves to be a difficult task.

Do the Right Thing

In February 2020, two white men killed Ahmaud Arbery for allegedly robbing someone. In March, two police officers broke into the apartment of Breonna Taylor, who died from their gunshots, during an anti-drug raid. Then comes the culmination – Floyd’s death in May. Therefore, despite the age of creation, Do the Right Thing does not lose its relevance.

The theme of US racism is somehow displayed in most of Spike Lee’s films, and the director’s attitude towards it is invariably critical. While the film ultimately shows how dangerous it is to react to others based on race, ironically, Lee portrays the characters in the film stereotypically through their language and aesthetics. Spike Lee panders to stereotypes by using iconography to represent the various racial groups in the film (Etherington-Wright 236). He does this in various ways, such as having Italian-American characters wear crosses and t-shirts. He also does this in his portrayal of Radio Raheem with an African locket necklace and a big boom box playing loud rap music. Even tertiary characters, for example, a group of Puerto Rican friends, are shown listening to salsa, speaking Spanish, and drinking beer on the porch of their apartment building. During the film’s culmination and the verbal screaming fight between Sal and Buggin’ Out, the former uses racial epithets, telling Radio Raheem to turn off the jungle music and using profanity.

Despite the explosive denouement, one of the film’s strengths is the complexity of its characters and the portrayal of blackness on screen. Lee went beyond the stereotypes of African Americans in movies and created characters that are reflected in everyday life. In Do the Right Thing, blacks are not represented in the traditional binary of inferior and smiling, aggressive and dangerous, but rather can exist as fuller expressions of themselves.

Works Cited

Etherington-Wright, Christine, and Ruth Doughty. Understanding Film Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Vera, Hernan. “Black & White Buddies”. Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness, edited by Hernan Vera and Andrew Gordon, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, pp. 154-184.

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Gender in U.S. Films: “In the Heat of the Night” and “Do the Right Thing”

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