Obviously the blame can be spread around equally and Spike Lee masterfully pits the audience in place where it has to choose who was in the wrong - he business owner, the police, Mookie or Radio Raheem. Lee loves to stoke the flames of racism and there's no better example than that particular scene.


All he had to do was turn down his radio, that's it. He failed to do so and violence erupted. The police elicit excessive force and kill a guy for doing nothing more than playing a radio too loud.


Mookie overreacts and throws a trash can through the front window, sparking the riot. Bad deeds all around.


This movie came out when I was 19 and at the time, I viewed the movie a bit differently than I do now.


The only problem I have with the scene now is the reality of a riot such as that starting up at all. Sal was a local businessman who had been there for decades. He had no beef with those people and they had none with him except for Buggin out wanting pics of black people on the wall as opposed to Italians. Outside of that, it was a symbiotic relationship and they got along well. There was no reason for that fight to start up. That was a true community that looked out for one another and I think it's unrealistic that they would turn on each other the way they did just because of a lack of African Americans on the walls.

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