Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Film Analysis of ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’
The 1960s was an uproarious decade for the Civil Rights Movement. Outlawing discrimination against blacks and women. A generation gap between the elderly and youth served to outwardly divide age groups and cause friction and tension between different views. While the older generation had grown in times when little repercussion against segregation existed, the young of the 1960s were far more idealistic by a long shot. Strictly opposed to segregation and racism. So when Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967) Was featured in theaters there was a wide array of both positive and negative feedback from the audiences. Thus making it a “taboo shattering comedy.” It sought to assuage white, liberal fears of integration.
It publicized a positive response from the Tracy-Hepburn duo, as they lured audiences while Poitier’s charm and dashing looks comforted those who came.
As portrayed in the story, the comfortable middle class white parents of the bride to be are shocked when they discover that the groom is black. The Drayton's come to face with their own principles and realize their daughter is the way they raised her up to be non-prejudicial. The groom’s parents in turn, are just as alarmed to find out the bride is white.
Surprisingly the mothers are more accepting of the love shared by their children. While the fathers remain skeptical and hold on to their old traditions. The tension of the time was very major, and such a marriage would have been shunned upon and encouraged to forfeit.
The movie also touches base on othering, as seen when the maid confronted the groom and threatened him to leave the bride, Joanna, alone. And that she would not let “some negro” make a mess of the perfectly kind white family she looks after. Even though the maid and groom are both black, she still views and treats him differently from herself.
Lastly Xenophobia was also portrayed in the film. The gallery manager who
The 1960s was an uproarious decade for the Civil Rights Movement. Outlawing discrimination against blacks and women. A generation gap between the elderly and youth served to outwardly divide age groups and cause friction and tension between different views. While the older generation had grown in times when little repercussion against segregation existed, the young of the 1960s were far more idealistic by a long shot. Strictly opposed to segregation and racism. So when Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967) Was featured in theaters there was a wide array of both positive and negative feedback from the audiences. Thus making it a “taboo shattering comedy.” It sought to assuage white, liberal fears of integration.
It publicized a positive response from the Tracy-Hepburn duo, as they lured audiences while Poitier’s charm and dashing looks comforted those who came.
As portrayed in the story, the comfortable middle class white parents of the bride to be are shocked when they discover that the groom is black. The Drayton's come to face with their own principles and realize their daughter is the way they raised her up to be non-prejudicial. The groom’s parents in turn, are just as alarmed to find out the bride is white.
Surprisingly the mothers are more accepting of the love shared by their children. While the fathers remain skeptical and hold on to their old traditions. The tension of the time was very major, and such a marriage would have been shunned upon and encouraged to forfeit.
The movie also touches base on othering, as seen when the maid confronted the groom and threatened him to leave the bride, Joanna, alone. And that she would not let “some negro” make a mess of the perfectly kind white family she looks after. Even though the maid and groom are both black, she still views and treats him differently from herself.
Lastly Xenophobia was also portrayed in the film. The gallery manager who