Marc Foster's Monster's Ball

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Recommended: Racism Effects On Education

When a white person enters into a relationship with a person of color, their relationship will often be met with tension from friends and family. In the south, interracial couples encounter discrimination and racial slurs. Issues with interracial relationships have been long recorded the United States, and shows how people react to relationships between whites and blacks. Loving someone across the color line used to be illegal, but since segregation ended, more people are having mixed race relationships.
In the movie, Monsters Ball, the theme is interracial relationships. The movie is set in the Deep South, where Hank Grotowski and his son Sonny are correction officers at a state penitentiary in Georgia. They both live with Hanks father, who was also a corrections officer now retired, a racist whose wife committed suicide. Hanks father is abusive toward him and Sonny. With his father being racist, Hank also became racist. It was not uncommon for children raised in racist families to grow up and become racist themselves.
Some people argue that one is born with racist tendencies, but it has been shown that when one is a child they have no sense of race or color. Color has always been a problem when it came to relationships, and even mother and child. In her article In Strangers’ Glances at Family, Tensions Linger, Susan Saulny states, “Mrs Greenwood was shopping when the woman behind her, who was white, asked once she realized, by the way they were talking, that they were mother and child. “It’s just not possible,” she charged indignantly. “You’re so...dark!”” (Saulny, 2). This is common among interracial couples. People get confused when they see a mixed race child, Saulny gives a good example with this passage. The older white ...

... middle of paper ...

...ential movie; it held elements of love and racial themes. The use of the camera in the movie made all of the shot spectacular, particularly during their romance scene, which was very poetic. Leticia was devastated when she found out that Hank had a hand in executing her husband, but she did not let this ruin their love. At the end of the movie after she found the drawing her husband did of Hank, she hears Hank coming up the drive way and puts the drawing away. Though she was hurt, she never said anything to him about the drawing and they both continued their love.

Works Cited
Saulny, S. In Strangers’ Glances at Family, Tensions Linger 2005 Class Readings 2014
Saulny, S. Black and White and Married in the Deep South: A Shifting Image. 2011. Class
Readings 2014
Monsters Ball. Dir. Marc Forster. Act. Billy Bob Thornton, Haley Barry.2001. Paramount Pictures

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