ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the main characters of the film (the music, the heat and the neighbourhood) play not only upon how Spike Lee’s shoots the film, through a sensitive camera, but also inflect his general purpose. It shows the non-linear links between an ambient determinism (the heat that leads to the riot) and forms of individual expressiveness, which give the film a political colour quite distant from its legend. Heat and neighbourhood form the film’s “natural” backdrop, in other words, they enable us to grasp it as a life form, going by Stanley Cavell’s “vertical” reading of Wittgenstein’s concept, which gives it a bio-anthropological meaning, both natural and cultural. Mookie changes, in at least two respects: puzzled at first by the sudden uprising; yet clearly resolute in his conversations the next day. Although he triggers the outburst when he throws the trashcan at the pizzeria window, but instead of following that up with further destruction, he stops.
