Hidden Stereotypes There is one hard and very evident fact that exists in the world we inhabit; that fact is that stereotypes are as common as rain. A stereotype, as defined by bing.com, is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. They happen so often that we aren’t even aware that they occur. These atrocities appear in books, films, the news, and other worldwide forms of media. The troubled teen who just so happens to be of African American descent; or the saying of how the Chinese community cooks dogs as a source of meat; or how most people from Mexico are illegal immigrants; these are just some small examples of stereotypes. They exist in reality why should they exist in films. In the film A Family Thing, Ray’s troubled childhood is a stereotype, along with the films portrayal of African Americans.
Towards the beginning of the film after Earl travels to find his brother, he is car jacked by non-other than three “Black” gangsters. As to why the writers needed to add this scene in the movie baffles me. The writers furthers this stereotype by making the three gang
…show more content…
The writer imposed a troubled childhood to the characters backstory. The character says that he was a child who had got in trouble so frequently that a judge gave him two choices; he would either go into a juvenile detention center or resort to entering the military. This particular history is one that is/was common up until this day. The film doesn’t help to dissuade this reoccurring theme of troubled youth by placing Ray’s family in a less than desirable neighborhood rather than one that is luxurious and decent. Since the film is set in 1996, a time in which race played a major role in how someone was perceived is heavily centered on this