Chi-Raq & She's Gotta Have It VS Do The Right Thing

Do The Right Thing is a 1989 comedy-drama film which tells the story of a Brooklyn neighbourhood's simmering racial tension. Do The Right Thing is a perfect depiction of how strongly Spike Lee feels about race relations. Two other films that effectively depict Lee's feelings and opinions about this topic are Chi-Raq and She's Gotta Have It.

Chi-Raq is a 2015 satirical musical-drama film that tells the story of conflict between two gangs - the Spartans and the Trojans - in Chicago. The film is a take on the Greek comedy  play by Aristophanes, Lysistrata, which tells the story of Greek women who withhold sex from their partners as punishment for fighting in the Peloponnesian war. Chi-Raq stars Nick Cannon, Teyonah Parris, Angela Bassett and John Cusack, as well as Wesley Snipes, who also starred in one of Lee's other films Jungle Fever, and Samuel L. Jackson, who also appeared in both Jungle Fever and Do The Right Thing. It is also interesting to note that Jackson played a narration role in Chi-Raq extremely similar to his narration role in Do The Right Thing.
The beginning of Chi-Raq is very similar to the beginning of Do The Right Thing - both feature a very long intro including songs relevant to the themes in the film. In Chi-Raq, the intro features the song 'Pray 4 My City' by cast member Nick Cannon, which talks about the death and violence that happens daily within Chicago. In Do The Right Thing, the intro features the song 'Fight The Power' by Public Enemy, a recurring song in the film, which talks about exactly what the title suggests: fighting the power.
Another main similarity between Chi-Raq and Do The Right Thing is the themes found throughout the films. For example, even thought Do The Right Thing focuses mostly on conflict between races and police brutality and Chi-Raq focuses mostly on gang violence, some feminist issues and some mentions of police brutality, specifically the Black Lives Matter movement, the main underlying themes of race relations link the two films together and highlight the most important issues. 
One difference linked to the themes in the films is how the themes are portrayed. For instance, in Do The Right Thing the themes of violence are portrayed literally; what I mean by 'literally' is the issues that Lee was trying to highlight are played out by the cast on camera instead of say, just talking about the issues. In Chi-Raq, the issues that Lee wanted to shed light on are not only 'literally' portrayed, but they are spoken about through statistics provided (like statistics of death rates in Iraq to compare to Chicago) and through monologues.
Another difference between the two films is that Chi-Raq is obviously a lot more modern than Do The Right Thing. As a result of this, technology and social media and it's influences on people's lives is a low-key theme throughout the film. For example, one gang member shoots a member of their rival gang over a certain text message; this event acts as a catalyst for a lot of the action to happen, including the main event that kick starts Lysistrata's urge to make a change to life in Chicago.
Cinematography in both films also count as a difference; in Chi-Raq, colour in the film is used as a form of story telling, as orange signifies the Trojan gang and purple signifies the Spartan gang. Colour and cinematography in 'Do The Right Thing' is still an important element of the film as cinematographer Ernest Dickerson stuck to a range of warmer colours to connote a heat wave, but it doesn't play as big a part in the narrative as colour does in Chi-Raq.
Interestingly, Chi-Raq's budget was a lot larger ($15 million) than Do The Right Thing's budget ($6 million), but Chi-Raq only earned around $2.7 million in the box office whereas Do The Right Thing managed to pull in profits of over 6 times their original budget in the box office. This could be due to the auterism in Do The Right Thing, which Spike Lee was most definitely the auteur for because it projects most of Lee's recognisable style. whereas Chi-Raq shows barely any of Lee's recognisable style of film.

She's Gotta Have It is a 1986 American comedy-drama written, edited and directed by Spike Lee that tells the story of Nola Darling, a sexually liberated young woman living in Brooklyn and juggling three different suitors. She's Gotta Have It is the film that launched Lee's career; as his first feature length film it received rave reviews from critics who called it

one of the best films of the year.

She's Gotta Have It and Do The Right Thing both share the same cinematographer, Ernest Dickerson. Although She's Gotta Have It is mostly shot in black-and-white (perhaps to represent how simplistically Nola views her 'relationships' with Greer, Jamie and Mars), apart from one scene shot in colour which makes obvious reference to The Wizard Of Oz, and Do The Right Thing is all shot in colour, Dickerson successfully projects Lee's auteristic style in both films despite having the restriction of black-and-white in one of the films.

Another similarity between She's Gotta Have It and Do The Right Thing is that they were both filmed entirely in single locations in Brooklyn, New York: She's Gotta Have It was shot in the Fort Greene neighbourhood of Brooklyn and Do The Right Thing was shot in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn. It is also intriguing to note that She's Gotta Have It was shot over twelve days in the summer of 1985 whereas Do The Right Thing was shot over eight weeks.

Themes in both films are pretty different. Do The Right Thing has dominant themes of racial tension and police brutality whereas She's Gotta Have It primarily feature strong themes of sexual liberation of women; the main point of the film that demonstrates Lee's opinion on sexual liberation is Nola's monologue at the end of the film, in which she states that monogamy is a form of slavery and that her sexual lifestyle is 'freedom in its purest form'. However, despite the different themes, She's Gotta Have It still has themes of race relations as Nola acts as a voice for the struggles that American women of colour faced in society at the time.

Controversies of the two films are also different. Audiences criticised Do The Right Thing by stating that it could incite black audiences to riot (Spike Lee responded to this by criticising white audiences for implying that black people can't control themselves not to riot). In She's Gotta Have It, the main controversy was the rape scene; Lee stated that he thoroughly regretted deciding to write this scene into the film: "If I was able to have any do-overs, that would be it. It was just totally... stupid. I was immature. It made light of rape, and that's the one thing I would take back". 

Overall, Do The Right Thing, Chi-Raq and She's Gotta Have It all have at least some sense of Spike Lee's auteristic style within them and are in my opinion, some of his best films to watch when/if you are new to his films.

Here are the trailers for each movie:

Do The Right Thing

Chi-Raq

She's Gotta Have It