Challenging Hegemonic Racial Norms in Media Essay

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Bringing Down the House and the Half-Hearted Challenge to Hegemonic Norms

The film 2003 Bringing Down the House starring Steve Martin and Queen Latifah both reinforces and challenges hegemonic norms by playing up stereotypes in the first half for comic effect and then dismantling them in second, more melodramatic half. Although comedy is the main motif throughout the whole film, the dismantling of hegemonic norms comes with a serious tone that almost seems apologetic for the antics showcased in the film's first half. In this sense, Bringing Down the House appears to want to use norms for laughs because on the one hand it senses that they are true and on the other hand feels bad about it and wants to show that race is a serious issue that should be dealt with more respect. However, the film suffers when the comedy is displaced for a more politically correct approach to the theme of race. Thus, the film (ironically) makes an attempt to "subvert" norms but only after it has already successfully done so through satire -- and in the end only serves to reinforce them. It happens to such an extent that the viewer cringes at the sudden shift in tone as the filmmakers try to assert a "balance" in their representation of race relations. This paper will show how the uneven treatment of hegemonic norms and stereotypes in Bringing Down the House causes the film to ultimately fall flat, to be lukewarm, or to suffer from what Aristotle would call akrasia -- that is, softness of the will.

The film is set in an affluent suburb of Anywhere, America. The main character is a divorcee played by Steve Martin, who is a high-paid lawyer, estranged from his wife and three children (though he still loves them -- work just gets in the way). His routine life is interrupted when an ex-con played by Queen Latifah shows up at his door, having conned her way into his life by posing as a female lawyer on a chat room. Queen Latifah wants Martin to help her expunge her record (she has been convicted of a crime she did not commit).

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Martin wants nothing to do with her, being put off by her "ghetto" blackness. But every time he tries to get rid of her, she one ups him until he finally caves. To cover for her presence in his life, she poses as his nanny as he has the children for the week while his ex-wife has a holiday with a younger, handsome man (of whom Martin is jealous). Lo and behold, Latifah turns out to have more to her than the "ghetto" blackness that she poured on the audience in the beginning for laughs: she is amazingly astute to the growing pains of children and sensitive to the pain in Martin's life (sensing, stereotypically, that he needs to "lighten up" she teaches him to dance and "make" romance). Latifah turns out to be indispensible in the lives of the uptight white suburban family -- even beating up the self-identifying WASP sister-in-law of Martin in a rather unpleasant and violent (and meant to be funny) fight scene in the ladies room of a country club. In return for her help, Martin vindicates Latifah and there is a happy ending for all, as Martin is reunited with his ex-wife and Latifah's record is cleared and her social problems resolved.

The hegemonic norms that the film perpetuates are that black people are loud, crass, gambling, scheming felons. When Latifah appears for the first time, she is dressed in "booty-huggin" denim, as though she were still wearing her prison outfit with sleeves and pants legs cut off. The first words out of her mouth are "How you doing, baby?" to Martin. She speaks of "shanking" and uses "jive" speech to make it known that she is a person who has lived on the "streets." Martin is made visibly uncomfortable by her presence as she appears everywhere he goes -- his home, his job, his country club. All of this comes with a satirical edge because the stereotypes are exaggerated for humor's sake: the audience knows that what the film is reflecting is marginally true (a disproportionate percentage of blacks are imprisoned compared to whites)….....

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