not just a film, its reality. Like Summer of Sam, Spike Lee illustrates this same documentary style in Do The Right Thing when he has characters saying racial slurs into the camera. Opposed to Summer of Sam, however, there is no television newscaster asking characters about their views concerning an issue. Characters talk to us (the viewer), verbally releasing their anger directly into the camera. Once again, this reflect Spike Lee's views of the "real life" anger and hate that people have in them, but is never blatantly demonstrated in a film. Filmed in 1999, Summer of Sam is partly about the maintenance and the breaking of borders, and it is here that Spike Lee continues exploring a theme that has been consistent in his work since his first feature, She's Gotta Have It(filmed in 1986). The positive part of the focal point in Summer of Sam is that Spike Lee also self-consciously violates his own formerly self-imposed borders in focusing on an Italian American neighborhood rather than an African American neighborhood like that in Do The Right Thing. In choosing these subject matters, one could think that Spike Lee makes himself vulnerable to criticism that could possibly accuse him of stereotyping. This notion is petty if we (the viewer) take into account that with this subject, Spike Lee continues with his familiar style and approach to character. In choosing Italian American characters in Summer of Sam, he also puts himself in the same category as people like Martin Scorsese, an independent filmmaker who shares similar thematic concerns. Spike Lee has shown that New York represents a collection of separate ethnic and racial enclaves set in close and uneasy relationship with one another. The history of the city shows that this system works as long as there is no significant trespassing. Summer of Sam and Do The Right Thing both demonstrate what happens once the system is disrupted criminally, sexually, cultura...
