Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Essay

While the characters are doing battle with parents over old core cultural values that have gone by the wayside -- and yet the characters have a burning desire to be left to their own devices, e.g., marriage and a long life together -- Levine writes that "Drayton's revised narrative" shows that "the film does not really want to be about any kind of racial conflict, but instead, about the irrelevance of racial differences" (Levine, 2001, 374). It is "essential," Levine continues on page 375, to the "integrationist premise" of the film that "whiteness itself not be rendered explicitly desirable." In fact Levine points out on page 375 that the black assistant to Tillie, Dorothy, has "short hair, short skirt, and long legs," which Levine insists is far more typical of a female in the 1960s than Joanna, who dresses more like a woman in the 1950s.

This is Levine's way of critiquing this movie is to apply judgments on the director's choice of language, on what the characters say in terms of what was the politically correct thing to do in the 1960s, and exact harsh judgments on Hollywood. In fact the last words Spencer Tracy utters in the film are said by Levine to represent his last words as a superstar actor. I'm not sure how that adds to an understanding of the film's principal theme -- interracial relationships and marriage -- but Levine is spot on when she says that "…the film preserves the primacy of the white male subject position… [and that] only black men are real political threats" (376). Levine appears obsessed with white women and how they allegedly help drive a wedge between white men and black men. Moreover, Levine suggests that when Tracey refutes Mrs. Prentice's accusations that he is "too old to remember love or sex," the audience relates more to Tracy and Hepburn as a real-life couple than to the movie's characters themselves.This is a serious stretch, but Levine is all over the map in any event when it comes to sexuality, white women, and this in some cases, she over dramatizes and creates esoteric, confusing references to the film's meaning.

The dreams of the couple were of a world where people could fall in love and be together no matter their ethnicity or racial background. In fact there has been a great deal of progress in America (the Lecture Notes assert that "…things have changed for the better" since the film came out). Also, the Lecture Notes hit the nail on the head when pointing out that "…underlying tensions that still persist"; however, those tensions do not -- contrary to the Notes -- remain "hushed away within the national dialogue." In fact the not so subtle racist tones and themes that are alive and well in the Obama era -- he was born in Kenya; he is a Muslim; his birth certificate is phony; he is a socialist; he wants to take away gun owners' rights, etc. -- clearly show the alert observer that there are still major hurdles to get over before there is a sense of acceptance, tolerance, and welcoming for persons of color in America. Why would Tea Party members show up at town hall meetings focusing on healthcare carrying rifles, and signs that depict the president of the United States….....