The Hollywood movie “Guess Who” (2005) is a remake of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (1967). Both film’s premises are about the same situation of an interracial marriage. The original revolved around a daughter bringing her black fiancée to meet her white middle class family. This was a touchy and even controversial subject in 1967 but the film became an award winner. The 2005 update switches the roles around and with a stroke of genius we now have a white fiancée meeting a black family.
Personally, I don’t think that 2005 Ashton Kuthcher’s film is an appropriate update. It might be a fun movie but I don't think that it is fair to describe it as a remake of “Guess who's coming to dinner”. It lacks the depth and the timeliness of the
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Kevin Rodney Sullivan's 2005 movie is an overt comedy that, while not ignoring the race issues altogether, uses them more frequently for humor than to illustrate serious points. Both film’s premises are about the same situation of an interracial marriage.
The remake attempts to turn the concept of the original film on its head by having a black family face the entry of a white boyfriend into their world. The original film approached the subject of race with a deadly seriousness that might have felt appropriate at the time.
The new version simply reverses the positions of the principals, confronting the same subject from the other side of the racial chasm. By comparison, there is a role reversal .In the classic 1967 movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, a white woman brings a black man home to meet her affluent parents. This time around the family is black, and their daughter Theresa brings home her white boyfriend, a New York stockbroker named Simon Green for a weekend visit to New Jersey to celebrate her parent’s renewal of their wedding vows on their 25th anniversary. While her mother and sister express some surprise but ultimately welcome the stranger, her father, Percy Jones, reacts with disbelief, dismay, and ultimately, absolute hostility, from which all the purported comedy flows.
The remake rubs off what few sharp edges there were on the 1967 original film about liberals facing their
Interracial marriage has traditionally been viewed as a means of expressing a hatred of oneself, of escaping something in one’s culture or self that one no longer wants to identify with. Jacki Thompson Rand describes the outcome of this phenomenon in an essay on her experience as the child of an interracial marriage. She explains how her mother married a white man in an effort to make herself more white, and therefore more legitimate: “My mother 's marriage to my father was a racial love
“At the time of my last meeting with Paramount Pictures in January 1990, a well-known, highly respected white director wanted very much to direct the film. [...] I accept that he is a very fine film director. But he is not black. He is not a product of black American culture—a culture that was honed out of the black experience and fired in the kiln of slavery and survival—and he does not share the
The reason many people in America today, as well as in the movie are racist is because this is how they were brought up, by the labels they were taught to live by. Past generations were exposed to segregation between ethnic groups, which has greatly carried on to how people look at others today. Up until 1967 it was prohibited for blacks to marry white people in 38 states
The film Our Family Wedding illustrated the diversity among and between families. The film depicted the views of different generations within a family and how an interracial marriage affected them differently. The film explores new contemporary marriage trends and challenges traditional family roles and marriage trends. This paper will explore different demographic trends as it relates to the social constructs of class, race, and gender, survey the recent trends and changes towards contemporary marriage, and study the changes in the family relationships within the film. Conclusively, this film analysis will use textbook concepts and examples in the movie to establish a framework for the diverse family system and the changing marriage.
Joanna Drayton returns unexpectedly from Hawaii to announce her engagement to an intelligent, accomplished, world traveling doctor. The only problem with the intended union is that he is African American and she is white. The Drayton’s come face to face with their own principles and realize that their daughter is the way they brought her up to be – non-prejudicial. Turmoil and anxiety ensue as Joanna insists that her parents give their approval by the end of the night. A dinner with both sets of parents follows, where the parents must come to terms with the bi-racial marriage. This film gives an insightful look into the realities of interracial marriage and proves to be useful in examining the
The film “Guess who’s coming to dinner” surprised me. It was surprised me that a white girl and a black man would get married. It was surprising because in the 1960’s it wasn’t normal for a white and black person to get married. It surprised me that the mom was okay with their marriage so easily because I expected the mom to be like the dad and say no, but the mom was okay with her daughter marrying a black man because she knew it would make her happy. It stood out to me that Joanna didn’t care what her parents thought and told her parents that they were still going to get married even if they said no. It stood out to me that they were getting married so fast because I thought everything was happening really fast too just like their parents.
In the book, The Color of Water, there were many events that have occurred throughout the story as well as conflicts that were involved at the time. Some events that occurred in the era at that time were the Black Panthers, the KKK, Malcolm X, being a Jewish immigrant, being a kosher, and etc. These events had a huge impact on how Ruth’s and James’ family came about and how they lived during those times. These occasions also affected the American society. With this in mind, to better understand the era in which events from The Color of Water took place, interracial marriage was a very crucial influence that occurred.
This paper wasn't written to dissuade anyone from marrying someone of a different ethnicity or religion, only to inform them of what could (and does) happen. It was really hard to write a synthesis on the two movies without comparing and contrasting them. It
The film lookes at the prejudices between the families but did not touch on how interacial couples also have deal with societies biases against them. Being a interacial couple may come along with its shares of difficulties, diffrences between the indiviuals, famial prejudice, and societies prejudice.
Fifty years ago, many Americans strongly disapproved of interracial relationships, and especially in the south, they clearly voiced their opinions about them. Interracial couples dealt with many trying situations in the late 1800s and clearly 1900. Even though many interracial couples today do not experience such severe punishments from society as they did fifty years ago, they still know they are viewed negatively by some Americans. Although, American society’s attitudes about interracial relationships, the lives of most mixed couples are negatively affected even today. For many generations, parents have had an extremely difficult time accepting that their children were in interracial relationships.
Being an interracial couple could have the possibility of losing valued traditions, and their children could face prejudice from society due to the color of their skin (Root , 2006 ). When looked at this way, the information shows that families may not want to date outside of their race because it could create problems in their family’s traditions. Also, parents and grandparents may not have wanted to marry outside of their race because if they have a child, that child could face prejudice because of their different races and skin
The world is becoming smaller and cultures are almost merging. Before, transport and communication made it difficult for people to connect. Today, it is a common occurrence to come across people of different races. Because of these cross cultural encounters, many individuals find spouses of different racial heritages.
In this essay I will be looking at the representation of interracial relationships and how these relationships have been portrayed in cinema from 1903 up until present. I will be discussing the how miscegenation has been represented to audiences over the years as a problem, and something that is unnatural. This essay will be anasyling scenes from movies such as Birth of a Nation, and What
America’s first biracial child was born in 1620 before anti miscegenation laws were created to prevent African Americans from getting involved with Whites. Negative attitudes towards interracial relationships were fueled by racial discrimination and the devotion to keep each race authentic. In today's evolving society interracial relationships are still discouraged especially between Whites and Blacks (Childs, 2005) due to race preference, parental approval, racism, and an individual's background. Interracial unions are believed to be evidence of a culture development in America’s conventional practices of racial boundaries in social interaction (King & Bratter, 2007). In today’s diverse society it is influential to increase contact amongst
The values and views held by the majority of society are often reflected within the media. This can be seen by an audience through films such as ‘Guess Who’ which contains representations of various values and perspectives in regards to the intercultural concept of essentialism and non-essentialism. The film ‘Guess Who’ released in 2005, is a comedy based on an African American female who introduces her Caucasian boyfriend to her family. Within the film, the intercultural concepts are explored through the characters, to position the audience to view that essentialist views encourages prejudice of people from different cultures which in turn results in them