Spike Lee comments on death of George Floyd with 3 Brothers, powerful short film that revisits Do the Right Thing
- Lee intercuts footage of his 1989 film Do the Right Thing with that of the arrests of Floyd and Eric Garner – both of which resulted in their deaths
- A title card ahead of the combination of clips reads: ‘Will history stop repeating itself?’
Spike Lee has made a powerful statement about the killing of George Floyd by revisiting his seminal 1989 film Do the Right Thing.
3 Brothers, a new short film from the director, connects the killing of Radio Raheem in Do the Right Thing to videos of police killing George Floyd and Eric Garner. “Will history stop repeating itself?” a title card reads ahead of the clips of Floyd in 2020, Garner in 2014 and Radio Raheem, a fictional character whom police choke to death in Do the Right Thing.
As authorities force Garner into a chokehold and tackle him to the ground, a match cut shows Radio Raheem getting tackled outside Sal’s pizzeria – the epicentre of conflict in Do the Right Thing. The minute-and-a-half edit rotates between strikingly similar footage of police suffocating and strangling Radio Raheem, Garner and Floyd as both real-life victims plead, “I can’t breathe.”
“How can people not understand why people are reacting the way they are?” Lee said while introducing the short film to Don Lemon on CNN. “This is history again and again and again. This is not new. We saw it with the riots in the ’60s, with the assassination of Dr. King. People are reacting the way they feel they have to, to be heard. What we’re seeing today is not new.”
Garner was killed in 2014 after white NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo held him in a chokehold and ignored him as he repeatedly told officers he could not breathe. Pantaleo was not charged with murder.