Saturday, March 25, 2017

Culture analysis on race

In the 2005 comedy Next Friday it follows a young black male named Craig as he leads a hard life. In this comedy stereotypes are overused and project black people as lazy workers and as people that are destructive to their own property and to society as a whole. In this movie the producers try to use racial stereotypes such as the brute and mammy in light hearted funny tones, but all they are doing is enforcing the bad views through the characters and themes in this movie.

In this movie the writers are delivering stereotypes through the characters. Next Friday is about a young man named Craig who moves into a predominantly white neighborhood with his black cousins to get a better life. This sends the message that you cannot have a good life without moving to someplace that is predominantly white. In the first part of the movie it showed that the only reason uncle elroy could afford his house was by winning the lottery. Showing that the only way that a black person could afford to live in a good house in a good neighborhood is not by hard work but by pure luck. In many cases when black people moved into a predominantly white neighborhood the white people began to move out. This is because of a common belief that a black person cannot maintain the things they have and that they mess up their surroundings. This is portrayed when Craig's cousin day day buys a new car and within the first ten minutes of the movie ruins it.
They also show stereotypes from the past when Craig flirts with Carla, the Mexican neighbor. After witnessing this her brother says “she has jungle fever” this is referring to when they believed that blacks were monkeys and inferior. The stereotype of the mammy and the brute also occurs with uncle elroy's wife sugar and deebo, a African man who escaped from prison. Every Time you see sugar she is in the house, she makes the food and is always looking to satisfy her husband. They also introduce a character named deebo who is a prison escapee who closely symbolizes the brute. They portray deebo as a strong illegal criminal who would do anything to hurt someone. Deebo is portrayed as savage like, dumb and violent. This is a stereotype that whites used against black men to prove that they were inferior.
In this movie it shows that even today society uses many stereotypes to falsely depict black people as someone that people should be afraid of, not trust and teaches people to be cautious when letting blacks into our society.

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