We keep expecting Mookie to hold it all together for us, and it is a shock when he decides not to do so. The garbage can he finally throws through the window of the pizzeria seems to symbolize his containing capacity, which he decides to jettison. His capitulation makes us realize that none of the selfobjects has managed really to contain any of the characters, and that Mookie, who has been our selfobject, our link to the film, has failed us too by not continuing to contain our anxiety. The disruption of our expectations allows us to look beyond the concreteness of the race problem that is undeniably dumped back into our lap, and the Bedford-Stuyvesant metaphor. For this vision extends past Brooklyn.
Postindustrial society is itself a ghetto of failed external efforts at achieving self-esteem.
Yet I can feel a difference between the feelings of the character Lee plays and the emotion the film finally engenders. At one level, Do the Riqht Thing , like one of its characters, kisses you and then tells you it's too hot to make love. But at the same time Spike Lee's movie really believes in your consciousness. After alerting you to pay attention, it creates a space that enables you to contain the feelings of its characters. Then it turns this space into a garbage can, throws it at you, and asks you to hold onto it for dear life.