In the late Middle Ages, a common type of popular theater was the "morality play," a simple, relatively short drama intended to teach the audience good morals. It was presumably meant to be entertaining, too, since people have rarely gone to the theater to be sermonized, but the emphasis was on plain, black-and-white morality. Usually, the protagonist was an Everyman -- one play was actually called Everyman -- who encountered characters representing various virtues and vices. You might have a character named Good Deeds, for example, or Strength, or Gluttony.

Morality plays eventually gave way to more complex types of theater, and today when a storyteller wants to make a point he usually does it more subtly than actually naming the villain Mr. Jealousy. But the concept is found in the roots of every book, play, or movie that deals with someone making important choices, and the "right" answer is usually just as clear-cut as it was when it was spelled out for the audience.

Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, released 20 years ago this week, on June 30, 1989, is a morality play with a twist. Its very title suggests didacticism, yet the whole point of the film is that it's not clear what "the right thing" is. Should downtrodden groups follow the advice of Martin Luther King Jr., who advocated peace and shunned all types of violence? Or should they listen to Malcolm X, who said violence was sometimes the only solution? The film venerates both men and ends with quotations from each of them, but -- and this is Lee's design -- the movie doesn't choose a side. It's a morality play where the answer is "I don't know."

The term "morality play" is often applied to movies without being converted to "morality film," but Do the Right Thing actually feels like a play. The characters shuffle in and out of scenes even when they don't have any dialogue, the way the actors credited as "Townsperson" do in theatrical productions. Lee shot the film on location in Brooklyn, constructing Sal's Famous Pizzeria and the Korean-owned market in vacant lots, but repainted a lot of the walls with reds and oranges to suggest hot weather. (The film is set on a scorching summer day.) The fresh paint also gives the neighborhood the look of a stage set, more an impression of reality than actual reality. One memorable sequence has several characters facing the audience one at a time and delivering brief racist diatribes as soliloquies; the three men who sit against the bright red wall and comment on the action serve as a Greek chorus; and Da Mayor functions as the wise old oracle who foretells doom.

The scene where Radio Raheem and Buggin' Out each learn of the other's grievances with Sal begins with the men already standing next to each other against a wall. Yet they seem to have waited for us to arrive: They don't exchange hellos and start talking until the scene begins. That device isn't merely theatrical; it's medieval theatrical. (The scene in question begins at 7:15 in this clip.)

I've seen reviewers criticize the lack of depth in some of the characters, and I think that misses the point. Most of the black characters go by nicknames that emphasize what type they are over who they are. People like Radio Raheem, Buggin' Out, Mother Sister, and Da Mayor aren't meant to be three-dimensional figures. They're simply personifications of the various roles that people play in a close-knit neighborhood. (That being said, I don't know what "Mookie" is supposed to mean.) Even Jade, which appears to be Mookie's sister's real name, suggests the role she plays: A prized gem that Mookie is possessive of and Sal covets.

Significant in a different way is the fact that only the black characters get nicknames. Sal and his sons are known by their given names -- further evidence that they are fundamentally outsiders in this community.

Lee has mocked critics who suggested, when the film was first released, that it might inspire real-life riots. His mockery was justified. While Lee's supplementary statements about the film might be incendiary, the film itself -- what's actually on the screen -- does not present the burning of Sal's pizzeria as an action to be emulated. I see mournfulness in the way the camera lingers over the charred remains of the restaurant, all the dialogue about how much the neighborhood loves Sal and his pizza still ringing in our ears. The next day, the weather is just as hot, the situation is just as bad -- only now, there's no pizza place to hang out at. It's hard not to think of the Rodney King riots three years later, when anger and frustration led people to shoot themselves in the foot by destroying their own neighborhoods.

Lee's comments in interviews and DVD extras are sometimes at odds with the film he made. Where the movie is ambiguous and suggests a profound moral dilemma in addressing racial tension, Lee's own opinions seem to be quite a bit closer to Malcolm X's than Dr. King's. His original screenplay doesn't end with the opposing quotations, but instead begins with one from Malcolm X of which this is a representative excerpt: "It is a miracle that 22 million black people have not risen up against their oppressors -- in which they would have been justified by all moral criteria, and even by the democratic tradition!"

In his DVD commentary, Lee says, "The white audience, they are more concerned about the destruction of property, the destruction of Sal's Famous Pizzeria, than they were about the death of Radio Raheem." But watching the film, you'd have to conclude that's the way Lee wanted it. He devotes much more screen time to the destruction and its aftermath than to Raheem's death. Furthermore, if he really wants to say wrecking Sal's is a reasonable response to the murder of Raheem (which was perpetrated by the cops, not Sal), then what about Raheem, who physically attacks Sal after Sal destroys his radio? It would appear that Raheem values property over human life, too, if that's the tack you want to take.

Even if Lee disagrees with his own movie, he did the right thing in making it so it poses more questions than answers. Public Enemy's militant sounding "Fight the Power" is heard throughout the film, but the lyrics advocate awareness, not violence. In most cases, a film that sparks dialogue is better than one that simply preaches (something Lee has often forgotten), and Do the Right Thing has caused no shortage of conversation. That something most morality plays, where everything's laid out in black and white, seldom do.

FROM THE TIME CAPSULE: When Do the Right Thing was released, 20 years ago this week, on June 30, 1989...

• Fellow new releases were The Karate Kid Part III and the Jerry Lee Lewis biopic Great Balls of Fire! Batman and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, both released the previous weekend, remained in the top two spots at the box office, with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Dead Poets Society, and Ghostbusters II still in the top 10 as well. Do the Right Thing opened in eighth place but did it on only 353 screens. Its per-screen average was second only to Batman's.

• On TV, Seinfeld would debut five days later as a limited-run summer series that NBC didn't expect to go anywhere. Meanwhile, Kate and Allie and Miami Vice had recently aired their final episodes.

• The top song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was Richard Marx's "Satisfied" (yeah, I don't remember it either), soon to be followed by Milli Vanilli's "Baby Don't Forget My Number."

• The Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's supreme leader, had died a few weeks earlier, resulting in a riotous funeral during which his body fell out of the casket. Iran has been a stable force in the world ever since.

• The massacre on Tiananmen Square in Beijing had taken place the day after Khomeini's death, and things have been just peachy in China ever since, too.

• Christopher Mintz-Plasse -- better known as McLovin -- was 10 days old. Rory Culkin and Daniel Radcliffe were a few weeks away from being born. Gilda Radner had just died, and Jim Backus, Mel Blanc, and Laurence Olivier were all within a few weeks of dying.

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"Eric's Time Capsule" appears every Monday at Film.com. You can visit Eric at his website, where fighting the power is forbidden, sorry.

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