Moustafa 1
Razan Moustafa
Mr. Tejada
Ela Honors 2
1/17/23
Enemy Mind Allegory Essay
The movie Enemy Mine tries to make an allegory about race relations that acknowledges the terrible legacy of slavery in America and encourages white people to overcome prejudice, but it fails in several ways. The Dracs, an alien species, and humans fight over expanding their territories in the movie. The Dracs are humanoids that look like reptiles, have tails, and are "both male and female" on their own. Willis Davidge, a human fighter pilot, has a strong and even bloodthirsty prejudice against the Dracs. Davidge and Jeriba, a Drac pilot, get into a fight, and the two of them crash land on a new planet. Davidge makes multiple attempts to kill Jeriba, but Jeriba eventually captures him after Davidge is shocked electrically. Davidge treats Jeriba with disrespect and rudeness despite being held captive by someone who clearly has the power to kill him. His foolish behavior makes Davidge's initial attitude and subsequent events appear
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However, we are not shown whether the Dracs can be accepted as human, which creates a problem: The racial metaphor used in the movie suggests that racial differences can only be resolved individually rather than systemically, or that black people can accept white people but not the other way around. This is where the issue of using non-human aliens to represent black people arises, and I doubt that this was the film's intention, at least not intentionally. Due to the fact that race is a social construct that does not have a valid scientific basis and that humans and Dracs are in fact distinct species, the allegory cannot function fully. As a result, Enemy Mind's allegory about race relations encourages white people to overcome prejudice and acknowledge the terrible legacy of slavery in