A Viewing Experience: "Do the Right Thing"

            I’m sitting here in my life weeding the garden and a task walks across the grass. It says, Get up. I want you to do some theology.

            Nothing if not compliant, I stand up, brush the dirt off my hands and say, Where do you want me to start?

            With that movie you watched on TV a couple of weeks ago, says The Task. “Do the Right Thing” (1989). I want you to reflect on it from a theological perspective.

            I remembered the movie well, a powerful and beautiful movie. I had said to my husband, who had come home from a golf trip while I was halfway through, It’s like watching a play. I think this was because of the setting, the framing of scenes, and the time span of the story. It was about a hot day on one block of a multicultural neighborhood in New York City. Most of the action alternated between the street and the interior of Sal’s pizzeria. There was racial tension, which built to a riot and ended in the strangling of a young black man by a white policeman. I didn’t think about these things, though, as I talked to The Task. I had come away impressed most deeply by the movie’s visual quality—it was vibrant with color—and that feeling of having attended a play. I said, I don’t know how to reflect theologically on “Do the Right Thing.”

            Did someone say theology? A man walking down the street came into the yard and stuck out his hand. Hi, he said. I’m Alister McGrath. I’m a theologian. I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. You know, there are four sources of theology and your dilemma is with the fourth. Sources of theology? I said. Yes; four starting points for doing theology. He counted them off on his fingers. Scripture, reason, tradition and experience. Your task is to cast theology like a net over your experience of viewing “Do the Right Thing,” in order to capture its meaning (Christian Theology: An Introduction, 227). I looked meaningfully at The Task, as if to say, Why didn’t you tell me this? The Professor went on: Theology aims to interpret experience.

            I stood there. The Task and the Professor waited for me to say something, but I was at a loss. Another man walked across the yard. Your irises are stunning, he said. I stopped to look at them and heard you talking. Thank you. They’re divisions from a single plant I purchased twenty years ago. Say, I said, have you seen “Do the Right Thing”? As a matter of fact, he replied, I wrote about it in a book about theology and the movies. I’m Clive Marsh.

            Clive Marsh picked up the thread. “Do the Right Thing” is a marvelous film for Christian theology to work with. You have a list of theological themes in your head and you start asking questions. What does this movie, “Do the Right Thing,” show a viewer about human beings, who are made in God’s image and who live in God’s creation? With all its attention to the interaction of various ethnic groups, what does it say about how human beings form a sense of identity? How does it illustrate the barriers that people throw up—this activity is called sin—to living as creatures made in God’s image?

            Huh, I said. Would you all like a glass of lemonade or a beer or something?

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