Challenging hegemonic racial best practice rules

King Lear, Nicomachean Values, Satire, Stereotype

Excerpt coming from Essay:

Bringing Down your house and the Half-Hearted Challenge to Hegemonic Rules

The film 2003 Decreasing the House acting Steve Martin and Queen Latifah both reinforces and challenges hegemonic norms simply by playing up stereotypes inside the first 1 / 2 for amusing effect after which dismantling them in second, more melodramatic half. Though comedy is the central motif over the whole film, the dismantling of hegemonic norms comes with a serious tone that almost seems apologetic for the antics exhibited in the film’s first 1 / 2. In this sense, Bringing Down your house appears to want to use norms for fun because on the other hand it senses that they are authentic and on the other hand seems bad about this and desires to show that race is actually a serious concern that should be addressed more admiration. However , the film endures when the humor is displaced for a more politically appropriate approach to the theme of competition. Thus, the film (ironically) makes an attempt to “subvert” norms but only after it includes already efficiently done so through satire – and in the final only will serve to reinforce them. It happens to such an extent that the viewer cringes on the sudden switch in develop as the filmmakers try to assert a “balance” in their representation of race relationships. This daily news will show the way the uneven treatment of hegemonic rules and stereotypes in Slashing the House triggers the film to ultimately fall smooth, to be warm, or to experience what Aristotle would contact akrasia – that is, softness of the will certainly.

The film is set within an affluent region of Anywhere, America. The primary character is a divorcee performed by Steve Martin, who is a high-paid lawyer, estranged from his wife and three children (though this individual still really loves them – work just gets inside the way). His routine life is interrupted for the ex-con enjoyed by Princess or queen Latifah shows up at his door, having conned her way in to his existence by disguising as a feminine lawyer over a chat room. Queen Latifah wishes Martin to help her expunge her record (she has been convicted of your crime the girl did not commit). Martin wishes nothing to do with her, being postpone by her “ghetto” blackness. But each and every time he attempts to get rid of her, she one particular ups him until he finally caves. To cover for her presence in the life, the girl poses while his childcare professional as he has the children for the week while his ex-wife has a holiday having a younger, handsome man (of whom Matn is jealous). Lo and behold, Latifah turns out to obtain more to her than the “ghetto” blackness that she put on the viewers in the beginning intended for laughs: the girl with amazingly astute to the developing pains of kids and hypersensitive to the soreness in Martin’s life (sensing, stereotypically, that he has to “lighten up” she shows him to dance and “make” romance). Latifah turns out to be indispensible in the lives with the uptight white colored suburban family – possibly beating up the self-identifying WASP sister-in-law of Martin within a rather distressing and violent (and intended to be funny) deal with scene inside the ladies space of a country club. In return for her help, Matn vindicates Latifah and there is a cheerful ending for all, as Martin is reunited with his ex-wife and Latifah’s record is usually cleared and her interpersonal problems resolved.

The hegemonic norms the fact that film perpetuates are that black individuals are loud, crass, gambling, scheming felons. The moment Latifah appears for the first time, she actually is dressed in “booty-huggin” denim, like she had been still wearing her jail outfit with sleeves and pants legs cut off. The first terms out of her mouth area are “How you performing, baby? inch to Martin. She talks of “shanking” and uses “jive” conversation to make this known that she is an individual who has were living on the “streets. ” Martin is made noticeably uncomfortable by her existence as the girl appears everywhere he moves – his home, his job, his country club. This all comes with a satirical edge because the stereotypes are exaggerated for humor’s sake: the audience knows that what the film is showing is slightly true (a disproportionate percentage of blacks are imprisoned compared to whites)

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