Fast And Furious Characters

The Fast and Furious franchise is a box office hit that exemplifies America’s dominant cultural narrative and the constructs of ethnicity and race within our society. Exclusively, focusing on the second film in the series, 2 Fast 2 Furious, we can assess the representation of race and ethnicity through the lens of rhetorical critic bell hooks. The characters that will be analyzed in this film are Monica Fuentes, a female character depicted as Hispanic, and Rome, the illustrated black male sidekick to Brian O’Conner. Both characters fit into bell hooks’ definitions of “the other” as they are depicted as ethnicities or races that are marginalized and considered a minority within society. In bell hooks’ book, “Black Looks; Race and Representation,” she discusses the ways in which our dominant cultural narrative contributes to the ongoing cycle of

The collocation of the characters and these traits only amplifies bell hooks’ claim that today’s society has “the overall tendency in culture to see young black men as dangerous and desirable” (36). For example, when Brian and Rome first meet up in the film they initially get into a fistfight, started by Rome. They give him the act of throwing the first punch and then make the filming decision to focus in on his home-arrest tracking anklet. Rome is shown being quick to lose his tempter, shouting, acting out, pacing, and essentially dangerous in several scenes. Rome’s character is a criminal who is on house arrest that needs Brian to gain his freedom. In the beginning of the film Rome is made out to be a thief, stealing from others and being dishonest, while in the end of the film, with Brian’s help and moral guidance, he was able to change his ways for the better. Through the white man’s “help” he was able to guide the nonwhite man on the morally correct