Driving Miss Daisy vs. Do the Right Thing: Race in 1989 Cinema

America at a Racial Crossroads in 1989

The year 1989 was a time "when the American quest for colorblindness sought in the seventies and eighties became a search for multiculturalism. The decades' symbols turned from 1987's July 4th cover of Time bravely announcing 'We the People' to 1991's fife and drum corps made up of all ethnic types and asking, 'Who are We?'" (McGraw). On a timeline, this was also three years before Rodney King's beating and the Los Angeles riots. The country was undergoing a transformation that was still an undercurrent. Two films released that year dealt with the similar theme of racism but in very different ways: Driving Miss Daisy and Do the Right Thing.

Driving Miss Daisy: Mainstream Appeal and Critical Reception

After much difficulty securing funding for their film — largely because it featured a Black leading actor, Morgan Freeman — author Alfred Uhry and director Bruce Beresford were able to get Driving Miss Daisy produced for $7.5 million. It eventually went on to earn $93.6 million, as well as three Academy Awards: Best Actress (Jessica Tandy), Best Adapted Screenplay (Uhry), and Best Picture of 1990.

Driving Miss Daisy was based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Alfred Uhry. Set in the earlier American South, it follows an old Jewish woman, Daisy, played by Jessica Tandy, and her African American chauffeur, Hoke, played by Morgan Freeman, whose relationship grows and deepens over the years. The film addresses both racism toward Black Americans and anti-Semitism toward Jews, and both characters carry their own biases and stereotypes about the other. As Uhry himself states: "When I wrote this play I never dreamed I would be writing an introduction to it because I never thought it would get this far. When I wonder how all this happened, I can come up with only one answer. I wrote what I knew to be the truth, and people have recognized it as such."

Despite its early funding difficulties, the film was warmly received by audiences — especially mainstream white viewers — because, as Turner notes, "Driving Miss Daisy is a likable film. It is a simple movie without violence, with heart-warming characters, engaging situations, and comfortable resolutions." Critic Bob Greene wrote, "I think it is the perfect motion picture — it is funny, it is moving, it is thoughtful, and I know for certain it will be on my mind for years." Most white film critics echoed this sentiment. Roger Ebert observed: "After so many films in which violent and shallow people deny their humanity and ours, what a lesson to see a film that looks into the heart." Critics appreciated that the film made viewers feel good about the world. It celebrated the possibility that people can overcome their differences and surmount barriers of race, gender, religion, and class (Turner).

However, some Black critics were adamant in their objection to the film, arguing that it emphasized the servitude of Black Americans. Its stereotypical portrayal was seen as reinforcing the same limiting representations that existed both then and today. Many refused to see the film because Morgan Freeman — esteemed as an actor — was playing a role that Hollywood had used and reused endlessly. They highlighted the industry's persistent reliance on a narrow range of parts for Black actors (Turner). Furthermore, because the story was set in the past and was non-violent, it was more palatable to contemporary viewers, allowing them to feel less guilty and to avoid confronting the more disturbing dimensions of American racial history.

Race, Jewishness, and the Limits of White Liberalism

McGraw notes that Miss Daisy offered "a visual vocabulary for Southern Jewishness with its wide, bright shots of the Temple in Atlanta and southern-accented voices discussing synagogue carpooling and singing hymns in Hebrew." However, "because Daisy imperiously orders Hoke around while lauding Martin Luther King Jr., critics have cast Miss Daisy as a portrait of naive and reactionary white liberalism." McGraw adds that "Daisy's Jewishness, however, makes this depiction itself seem naive. In the film, southernness and Southern Jewishness become interdependent, with Daisy's Jewishness the lens through which broader questions about southern race relations are interpreted."

One scene illustrates this dynamic particularly well. As Daisy and Hoke make their way to Mobile for Daisy's brother's birthday, they share memories from their pasts. The camera lingers on Daisy's face while Hoke's laughter resonates — until two white Alabama policemen approach the car. Calling the elderly Hoke "boy," one officer demands to know where he got the vehicle. Daisy speaks up to say the car is hers, and the policeman asks for her registration, then mispronounces her name as he reads the document. "Wertheran?" he asks. She corrects him, and the officer replies, "Never heard of that one before. What kind of name is that?" Daisy announces that Werthan is "of German derivation." The policeman's questioning reveals that he regards her as somehow illegitimate — she may appear white, but asking "what kind of name" she has signals that, by his reckoning, she is merely passing. As Daisy and Hoke drive away, the officer mutters, "An old nigger and an old Jew woman taking off down the road together. Now that is one sorry sight." The moment reminds audiences of the precarious position both characters occupy in racial terms along a southern road at mid-century.

Although the film does not present a wholly happy ending — both characters retain some of their biases even as their friendship deepens — the conclusion offers resolution enough. Viewers can leave the theater with some satisfaction, knowing that positive change has occurred and that something has been meaningfully settled.

Do the Right Thing: Confronting Urban Racial Reality

Also released in 1989, and far more provocative, was Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Critics were far more divided over this film, which spoke boldly to the realities of inner-city subculture. Many were concerned that it shook things up too much. Because the plot was set in the present and engaged with violent, unresolved issues in America, there was genuine fear that it might ignite sparks in an already volatile environment. Critics focused most intensely on the morally ambiguous and violent ending, which was widely deemed inciting and irresponsible. Indeed, Do the Right Thing was largely shunned at the Academy Awards, receiving only a single nomination — Danny Aiello for Best Supporting Actor.

Similar to the production difficulties faced by Miss Daisy, Universal Pictures agreed to make Lee's film — which cost a modest $6.5 million — only after it was rejected by Paramount, whose executives wanted the violent ending rewritten. Lee refused. "I could not be true to myself if everybody had joined hands and sung 'We Shall Overcome,'" he explained. "That is not the state of race relations in America today."

The film is set in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a Black neighborhood of New York City, during the hottest 24 hours of the summer. It is filled with colorful character parts — Mother Sister, Da Mayor, the drunk, Smiley, Buggin Out, Mookie, and Sweet Dick Willie. The only white people in the neighborhood are Sal and his two sons, the Italian American owners of a local pizzeria.

Lee believed that "Black audiences are starving for Black films that are made by Blacks for Blacks." His premise was well-founded: African Americans had rarely had the opportunity to see films in which the larger-than-life hero and heroine were Black — in a medium that, for almost a century, had done more than any other to shape the images of modern consciousness (Gordon).

Do the Right Thing made viewers uncomfortable because Lee refused to offer the same calming assurance that everything was right with the world. The truth the film conveyed was that individual and institutional discrimination, along with entrenched prejudice, had become so embedded in American life that no easy answers existed. The film presented the realities of life in the United States, not a fantasy about how things should be in an ideal world. Crucially, however, the ending stressed that violence is not the answer to this struggle, as so many are ultimately hurt by it.

Gordon observes:

Do the Right Thing was certainly a better and more original film about race relations in America than the Oscar-winning Driving Miss Daisy. That film showed an elderly white Jewish woman and her aged Black chauffeur reconciled in their status as victims of social injustice. This is the traditional liberal vision of Jews and Black Americans who find common cause and mutual concern in shared suffering. As we move toward the end of the 20th century, Driving Miss Daisy is sentimental escapism. It reproduces the subordinating stereotypes that Black artists like Spike Lee will no longer accept for themselves or present to their audiences. The Black chauffeur, even if "uppity" and standing on his dignity, is not their role model.

According to an article in The Economist, the physical violence of the film is Lee's most striking depiction of the explosive nature of racial tensions. "Do the Right Thing presents violence without any condemnation, moralistic objectors, or heroic saviors. America is violent in its treatment of African Americans, whose growing rage will explode if temperatures rise too high."

Yet the film is not all violence, and that is precisely what makes it so authentic. It captures what life is actually like over the course of that one day in New York — anger, yes, but also humor, personal interaction at every level, and the constant pulse of music and time. Lee provides, in Gordon's phrase, "the saving laughter." At one point, the Korean shop owner, trying to calm the angry mob threatening to destroy his store, declares, "Me Black, me Black, me no White, me Black too."