Similarities Between Guess Who's Coming To Dinner And Crash

In the films Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) and Crash (2004), the concepts of race and social class are prevalent, as well as the intersectionality of both labeling theory and strain theory in the building of both film’s social worlds. In support of these concepts, the works of Rodney Coates and Robert Merton support the arguments that the films build upon the inequality of race and social class. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), the film identifies the stratification of race and social class and how both act as a double negative when looked at together. Together they expand the idea of strain theory when race and social class are used to weaken an individual and their goals. In Crash (2004) race and social class are examined through

During this time in social context, race relations were not at their best. This film takes place during the same decade as desegregation and the civil rights act. As this time was more accepting than the past, it was not at the best it ever has been. This was the case for John. Even though he financially was part of a higher social class and more socially mobile, he was still restrained from the strain of being African American in a “white world.” He was living the same life essentially, economically successful, in love, was able to provide for himself, and so on. But because he was African American, he was seen as though he should not have those similar things, wants, or desires. In the work of Rodney Coates, “race is unarguably a social construct, it is also a means of social control. This particular form of social control differentially serves to restrict and regulate the behavior of specified racial groups to the advantage of other specified racial groups. Systems of inequality and oppression must be preserved and perpetuated by societal control mechanisms,” Coates 2007: 208. Essentially, as a way of social control, one’s race determines what they should and should not be able to

In the work of Robert Merton, he examines “the key elements of the culture structure are the prescribed goals (or ends) of action and the normatively approved (or institutionalized) means for realizing these goals. The other component of social organization—social structure—refers to patterned social relationships,” Merton 2010: 5. Here, social structures aim at “labeling” its participants and proscribe them ideals to follow to control their behaviors. But when the “labels” go outside of the normally proscribed ones by the social system, these individuals fall under the negative influence of labeling theory. The negative influence of labeling theory is the way in which the idea and process of labeling becomes negative, and the labels are to mark those as “bad” or “not worthy” of having something as much as others, like racial inequality or social class inequality. Examples of labels used within the film are those associated as African American men being criminals, Latino men are criminals, and women are inferior to