Media Analysis
Movies and films convey messages to their audience concerning themes that the film or movies’ producer regarded as essential for the movie’s target audience to receive. These messages sent to the audience fall in different categories depending on the type of information that the message contains. Issues such as racism have been seen to impact the social structure, peace, and stability among people, causing stress related issues (Waelde et al. 4). Therefore, analyzing the information conveyed in the message of a film is important to help in identifying the target audience of the movie. “Django Unchained” and “Orange is the New Black” have represented how the themes of race, sexuality, class identities, and gender manifest in people’s daily lives.
“The Django Unchained” movie describes the alienation between the white and the black race. The film shows how racism had made the white population to oppress the black people. This created animosity between the two races and the hostility is evident when Django kills the white people as a way of revenge. This act proves that the two races hated each other so much and goes on to support a conclusion by Waelde et al. that, “Greater exposure to race-related stressors was associated with more severe posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms among ethnic minority but not White respondents” (4).
Moreover, the “Django Unchained” movie also talks about the representation of class during the slavery age. The film portrays the different classes that existed and their specific characters. For instance, the white educated population was a class composed of people who behaved decently and were more dominating than the uneducated fellow white population due to the sense of feeling more masculine. The film also covers other classes such as the free black people and those who were still slaves. The characters of these classes of individuals represented the influence of social stratification on the general population.
Additionally, the film has an equal representation of both genders. The film represents the values that each gender try to uphold. For instance, the black males try to be as masculine as the white men. Fradley points that, “white masculinity has represented itself within the utopian masculine sphere of the Hollywood imaginary” (235). Thus, this sense of masculinity represents the values that most men would prefer to have at that age to show control. Although the women worked on upholding their dignity, the film depicted them as voiceless characters. For instance, Broomhilda von Shaft was a poor slave woman who relied on salvation from Django, her husband. The role of women makes the film to be appealing to fewer women since feminism beliefs are less encouraged in the movie, although esearchers such as Meyer and Wood have illustrated that sexuality is a growing norm in most television shows, especially when presenting women (442). Thus, the film has an in-depth representation of both genders despite the movie’s lesser inspiration to the female gender.
The themes of race, class and gender identities have a good representation in the film “Django Unchained”. Through the many scenarios performed in the film, the film has demonstrated how the above themes manifested during the slavery period and how the themes shaped the interactions between the people at that time. This demonstration helps the present societies to understand their past societal interactions and lifestyles, and how they can use this information to make informed decisions in future on related subjects. Thus, the film proves to be relevant and useful to the society.
Works Cited
Fradley, Martin. “Maximus Melodramaticus: Masculinity, masochism, and white male paranoia in contemporary Hollywood cinema.” Action and Adventure Cinema (2004): 235-251.
Meyer, Michaela D. E., and Megan M. Wood. “Sexuality and teen television: Emerging adults respond to representations of queer identity on Glee.” Sexuality & Culture 17.3 (2013): 434-448.
Waelde, Lynn C., et al. “Psychometric properties of the Race-Related Events Scale.” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 2.1 (2010): 4-7.
