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Social Commentary Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

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In this essay, I will talk about the social commentary Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? demonstrates into the world of film and the influence it had on the community. In addition, I will discuss how the director included certain things in order to display the historical events that had occurred during that time period. The director of the film, Stanley Kramer, was a famous American film director and producer who wasn’t afraid to tackle controversial issues and display them in his films. Kramer was born in New York City, New York, and his love for film was first discovered after spending some spare time with his mother. Kramer’s mother had a job work inside an office for “Paramount Pictures.” After graduating from New York University and obtaining …show more content…

was a consequential film when it came to touching the topic of civil rights. 1967 was an important year when it came to demonstrating equality between Whites and African-Americans. Edward W. Brook was the first popularly elected African-American into office. In addition, the film was released in the year in which the Supreme Court had placed laws in more than a dozen states in order to ban mixed-race marriages. Also, there were plenty of civil right movements that have been occurring this time period which had led to the unfortunate assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The plot of the film starts with Joanna Drayton and John Prentice (a black doctor) arriving in San Francisco so that he can meet Joanna’s parents about their engagement. Joanna feels that her parents would accept the engagement since they are more liberal and support the idea of everyone being equal. Yet, when Joanna’s parent confront the situation, they start to think about the racial comments that the public might rise when they are seen in public. John’s parents attend the house and disapprove the marriage at first. After the parents have had discussions with their children, they accept the fact that Joanna and John are in love, and that love has no …show more content…

When Joanna mentions to her parents that she had been engaged to a successful doctor she doesn’t mention the fact that John is black. Later on, when John is introduced to the Draytons, the parents became skeptics and are aroused to the fact that Joanna had really been engaged to a black doctor. That specific scene had displayed the tension between blacks and whites at the time and how they were not to be seen together. Although coming from the lenses of Kramer, he wanted to demonstrate that there should be equality between everyone no matter the circumstance. Kramer had no shame in displaying his views and opinions onto the big screen so that the public can understand where he is coming from. Kramer enjoyed challenging his audiences and wanted to implement something into the script that would somewhat allow the audience view something they would not typically witness. For example, in the film we see the Kramer challenged the more legalistic Southern white folks with the scene of John and Joanna kissing on their way to Draytons. Kramer knew that the kissing scene would tick off the Southerners and as a result, Kramer had received a lot of negative comments and letters that had mentioned death threats after the film had been released. Katharine Houghton, who portrayed Joanna had also received death threats because she had done something

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