This was the message shown in this week's movie, Blackboard Jungle. First and Foremost the movie starred not one but two great actors, Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier. Glenn Ford played as an inspiring teacher(Richard Dadier) that fights to gain the respect from an African American boy named Miller(Sidney Poitier) whom he believes to be the source and leader of juvenile delinquency in an all boy high school class. Later in the movie Glenn Ford character realizes that he sought this respect all for the wrong reasons and realized flaws within himself that he changed, thus, allowing him and the student, Miller, to become friends.
The overall movie was entertaining to me. It had a lot of aspects that we look for in movies today. It was a mixture of drama and comedy. Besides that the main purpose of this 1950's "B" movie was to attack social and ethic clashes and anxieties going on in America such as:
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION: As early on in the movie the camera constantly focuses on the African American student whenever something bad happened. For example, while having his back turned Dadier gets a baseball thrown at him, immediately the camera focuses on Miller. After class, Dadier holds Miller back to talk to him and accuses him of throwing the baseball even though he had no real proof of him doing it. In this case, the movie uses Glenn Ford's character to symbolize the "color blindness" in white middle class Americans. Dadier's constant negative attention towards Miller proves to be racist and this is clarified in the scene where Dadier explodes and screams at Miller "Why, you black . .." but immediately realizes what he said and apologizes.
AND,
SEGREGATIONIST ANXIETY: At the time, Americans had the idea that African American males longed for white women. Thus, white females avoided African American males due to the fear that they would be raped. The reading discussed this anxiety as well as a social structure called, Triangulation. This triangle structure consisted of a white male, black male and white female. It stated that in order for a black and white male to become friends the white female has to be removed from the equation. This relates to, Blackboard Jungle, because for Dadier and Miller to become friends Wes, the white delinquent that takes the role of the female in the triangulation, had to be removed. This was evident and proven to be correct because when Dadier finally realized that it wasn't Miller that was causing him stress and that it was Wes, and when Miller realized that the real racist was Wes and not Dadier, the two were then able to oppose Wes, thus, making their bond stronger.
I agree that discrimination and segregation are two of the major points in this film, but i disagree with your idea that white women and black males had a fear of rape in the film (unless maybe i'm just reading your argument wrong). I am curious why they put the whole scene with the student attacking (raping?) the female teacher in the library, and what kind of social commentary that was making for the times. I think that was a pretty disturbing scene, especially for an era of film still in the Hayes Code. I suppose that since it wasn't glorifying the students action it was allowed, but it was still incredibly intense. I'm also curious if this is still a problem in today's world. I come from a small suburban town (my graduating class was only 150 students) and we never had anything like this ever happen, except for a few hallway brawls by some druggie kids. Is it primarily an urban vs. rural kinda thing? Its sad thats it's even a question at all really. Just curious on everyone else's thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI would also have to disagree, I don't think Glenn Ford's wife's fear was being raped, but yes, it was a fear in the 1950s. On the note of the Hayes Code, new ground and leniency was allowed following WWII. You can see it in films especially in the 1950s. A film like this would not have been made in the 40's but still, the 50s was a new era for film making. We can examine this by looking at Sidney Poitier's career. Most of his films during the 50s and 60s deal with racism. I, personally do not care for him as an actor, I feel there were so many prominent black actors at this time, and the only reason Sidney Poitier rose above them was because he chose films aimed at racism and thus became the actor to break ground. He also did A Raisin in the Sun, also dealing with racism, The Defiant Ones, Lilies of the Field, and his two most popular films: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night. In the former, the issue of interracial marriage is tastefully handled by director Stanley Kramer (director of The Wild Ones) and In the Heat of the Night, also about racism, finds Poitier as a cop. Anyway, this film, along with other films we watch and will watch in class, while considered "B" movies, are regarded as some of the more notable films of the era (at least according to the American Film Institute).
ReplyDeleteSorry if i confused anyone. I wasn't saying that Glenn Ford's wife feared being raped but rather describing the anxiety going on in the 1950s.
ReplyDeleteI think that the whole scene of the "white delinquent" trying to rape the female teacher was to show how stupid American anxieties were. That it wasn't a black male trying to rape her as expected but instead a white man.
I really enjoyed this film. I think it’s the first film that we’ve watched in this class that I found myself being absorbed into. It seems like, as we go along in the course, the movies we’re watching are getting incrementally better. If you look at The Atomic Café as a prologue and at Godzilla as the epitome of every 1950’s cliché (which is a bad thing), every movie after that is progressively superior to the last. Anyway, on to Blackboard Jungle.
ReplyDeleteLike Mike said, I wasn’t really sure what the point of showing the student attempting to rape the teacher was. I guess it did have some shock factor to it, and helped to display how unruly the students at North Manual High School really were. The scene probably could have been better implemented to reinforce the negative stereotypes that middle class white America had, only to then reveal that the troublemaker wasn’t the black kid, but the white one. The attempted rape wasn’t committed by a faceless student which, with some manipulation from the filmmakers, could have tricked the audience into thinking it was Miller, furthering the case that the creators of the movie were trying to make: we, as a nation, need to change how we think about African-Americans.
Another interesting scene in the movie was that of Dadier and his wife talking about their miscarried child. Dadier implies that the miscarry was caused by stress and overall weakness in his wife, and she agrees.
I didn’t buy in to the sudden acceptance of Dadier from the kids. The movie went from the kids physically threatening the teacher to getting along and enjoying an in class film. It didn’t sync with the rest of the movie, that is, until Lucky explained his interpretation in class, which I really liked. He said that there wasn’t a specific turning point for the kids and that we as viewers were only shown bits and pieces of the semester that Dadier was teaching at the inner city school.
Lucky, good concise summary of the issues the movie presented, and good distinction between social anxiety and social reality.
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind that there's a real difference between anxiety and reality. These movies don't depict what was really happening in society, they depict what people feared was happening. So no, violent incidents like the ones depicted in the movie probably really don't happen all that often--but this is the way that white middle-class people often pictured inner-city schools. Consider the stark difference between the all-white school Dadier tours where everybody is singing patriotic songs in unison and is perfectly scrubbed and perfectly compliant, and the 'jungle' of the multi-racial urban school. Neither of these depict reality, but ideas.
The whole rape thing in the movie was disturbing for reasons we didn't really touch, and I wish we'd had more time to in class--women were treated really weirdly in this movie, I think. There's the hysterical, insecure clinging housewife, and the sexy but clueless teacher with clinging dresses, who almost gets raped as a result of how she looks, but also hits on Dadier. Just....ugh.