escalate to a riot in which the police murder Radio Raheem and Sal's pizzeria is trashed. Spike Lee uses his character Mookie to show us around the neighborhood, taking the viewer into a small African-American world in which he lives. We(the viewer) accompany Mookie on his pizza deliveries to meet his sister, his son, and his girlfriend along with a host of other neighborhood people such as Mother Sister and Da Mayor. Much of this is presented at the beginning of the film to get the viewer aquatinted with these characters, their personalities, and their environment. An environment is established at the beginning of Summer of Sam when the camera follows Vinnie and Dionna (two main characters) into a 1970's disco. This scene not only introduce two of the main characters, but it also defines the 1970's time period through clothing, the disco, and popular music at the time. The bell-bottomed pants and the big collard shirts enable the viewer to associate the characters with this 1970's world. "Boogie Nights", a popular song at the time, helped initiate the scene escorting Vinnie and Dionna into the disco. It is at this point that we (the viewer) are taken into the characters' lives, identifying them with their surroundings. The disco in 1977, for example, was the place to be on a Saturday night especially if you were from the inner city. Addition to the disco, cocaine is the drug of choice, which is demonstrated by Vinnie and Dionna snorting it with people at a 'sex club'. Spike Lee draws the audience into this Italian-New York world and the stories that it has to offer concerning who's in it. His traditional New York pride is demonstrated with various logos such as New York Yankees pillows and Yankee signs that read "Yankee fans only". There are constant reminders throughout the film to let the viewer know that, "this is New York". In one scene, two of the neighborhood drug boys beat up some trash-talking drunk for sa...
