Dancehall Queen from an Inclusive Stereotypical perspective
Film Summary
Dancehall Queen is the story of a woman called Marcia, a neighborhood vendor surviving in the inner-city slums of Kingston, Jamaica. A single mother coping with her two daughters and her more youthful sibling Junior, Marcia functioned selling snacks in the daytime as a way of earning a meagre income for her family. Uncle Larry, a wealthy friend, contributed economically to her home and payed for the children's education, food, clothing, etc. Marcia's little girl revealed to her 1 day, that Uncle Larry have been molesting her. Marcia reluctantly advised to her daughter that she should comply with his desires lest they might lose his necessary financial contribution. After her daughter's rape and succeeding denunciation of Uncle Larry, he angrily withdrew his support from the house and Marcia was still left with charges to pay, no food, no money, and a cracked vending cart. Marcia's problems were compounded when she and her sibling, Junior observed the murder of a pal. Before the police appeared, Marcia fled the scene and beckoned to Junior to do the same, but he remained behind and was apprehended by the police for questioning. He told the police nothing and therefore, was beaten and terrorized by them every single day. In addition to the authorities, Junior was threatened by the murderer himself, who had taken a liking to Marcia and stalked them both frequently. Junior eventually lost his mind and was sent to the country to have along with his parents, leaving Marcia alone to guard herself along with her children and earn a living to aid them. Marcia had to resort to working another job to make ends meet on her behalf family. This is a evening job, in a dancehall, evening club-like world where women would dance and compete for the money. She was inspired by their affluence and in desperation, she started to educate herself how to boogie and enlisted the help of a seamstress to aid her to build an alter-ego and so became a dancehall queen. 1 day while she is at clothes shop she ran into Uncle Larry where he unwittingly fell deeply in love with her and started to shower her with expensive items and money, which she used to help pay for her children's schooling and home expenses. By the finish of the film, Marcia used her block smarts and resources to rid herself of both Uncle Larry and the murderous gangster and triumphed in a significant dancehall competition with a reward of $100, 000 US which she used to reunite her family and secure their future.
Critique
This movie gives a full spectral range of interpersonal commentary and it presents the daily drawback that some individuals in present day Jamaica have to undergo. In the social world of Jamaica, very little emphasis is located on equality and the equitable treatment of most humans as a basic right. Some groups have significantly less than others; some are capable of doing more and see more and say more and eat more; while others are able to do much less and never have the opportunity to experience other things. As a result, more often we have been positioned into in-groups and out groupings, categorized by our dissimilarities and similarities. It also recognizes that some organizations are definitely more favoured than others, in that they have more usage of resources and electric power looked after examines large-scale cultural, structural and institutional phenomena, rather than individual circumstances. It supports that some groupings have more power than others and these power relationships have been set up historically. One group, which has consistently experienced the consequences of electricity imbalances in contemporary society, is women. One can observe how oppression, victimization and degradation of women are compounded by and linked to interpersonal categories and constructs such as contest, category, and gender. This was illustrated via an analysis of the 1997 film Dancehall Queen (Letts & Elgood) which focused on stereotypes and its own contribution to these implications for minority women.
Marcia was an unhealthy, black, single mom who was simply like a great many other ladies in her community, yet her liberty to govern her life and to gain access to resources was tied to her gender and school, and therefore she was oppressed continuously by external macro-level buildings, such as patriarchy, capitalism, and sexist prominent ideologies. To get an advantage of these forces, it was not enough that Marcia was required to work outside the home both as a street vendor in your day and a dancehall queen at night, but she also were required to rely upon the income of men, Uncle Larry and her brother Junior, in order for her and her children to endure. This falls consistent with Du Bois' theory of the double-consciousness. For Marcia, her economical social composition was working against her, and her gender, sexuality and status as a mother combined to intensify her problems. She was measuring her circumstances through the eyes of (in cases like this) Uncle Larry who presented her in contempt or disdain. Also to develop up as a female, finding oneself through the eyes of those who assume that women are incompetent, is to be saddled with a potentially damaging sense of one's overall worth. The more a woman incorporates female characteristics within her personal information, the less positively she is more likely to view herself and become viewed by others. Women, who have been goals of prejudice, confront a significant conflict in being truly a woman or achieving success. Evidence of this was present when Larry refused to contribute to the family's expenses and was no longer in touch with her children; Marcia was kept to depend entirely on the meager profits from her vending business.
The movie centered on the story of any struggling woman looking to get by, contrary to the pushes of masculinity around her. Uncle Larry, the don, wanted to use her, the pimp wished to use her (and her children) and her male friends were either unconcerned or ineffectual. This is apparent in the film when Uncle Larry stated that because he payed for almost all of the family's bills, he should be referred to as the breadwinner and Marcia should be responsible for the daily maintenance of the house. This emphasized the male stereotype as competence and the woman viewed as the dependant, and subjective. Despite the fact that both Marcia and her sibling worked beyond your home for an income, Uncle Larry's contribution was still greatly needed if the kids were to wait school and to eat an effective meal. This need validated both Kurt Lewin and Du Bois' theory that a person of the principal effects of being the mark of prejudice is to see one and measure one's home worthy of through the despairing eye of the prominent bulk. As seen by Marcia, she allowed this man to steal her identification which got her sense self-denigration and rejection. Her involvement in the dancehall industry as a dancehall queen was a counteraction to this feeling for her to feel empowered. This issue intuits the issue of twoness' which remains a issue where Marcia as a minority women was required to dwell in a world identified by those in dominant positions such as Uncle Larry and needing to pay the bills. Marcia's work in the dancehall also granted her self-determination. She uses her female body and feminine sexuality, as well as classic attitudes, towards the screen of sexualized images of the feminine body, and reproducing the perspectives and concerns of the dominating society. In other words, Marcia was experiencing what we call alternation' which really is a strategy that allows an individual to move back and forth between two contrasting and frequently disparate identities; which often times leads to a commitment to neither.
In the Jamaican dancehall culture, Marcia was able to have the freedom that can be played out an eroticised role that might not exactly have been ordinarily able during her day-to-day cultural conventions. Therefore, she takes on the submissive women by day and dancer by night time. However the dancehall world is more of the erogenous zone where the celebration of female sexuality and fertility is ritualised, Marcia had not been inspired by this. It was not the guarantee of gender/romance that tempted her but instead the prize money which would guarantee a way of measuring economic self-reliance, however momentary. She was motivated to succeed in her bet for the crown of Dancehall Queen by her acknowledgement of the energy and to make a fusion which emerges both lifestyles. The sexual mother nature to be a dancehall queen led Marcia to disguise herself for dread that, if she was determined, she would be discredited as a dancer and shunned by her community. However, her profession was a choice that she made which allowed her to be empowered and have an agency. These were shock but motivated because she could merge both divergent cultural identities in which produced an totally new fused social identity for everyone. When Marcia, earned the crown of Dancehall Queen it was essential that she resumed the lifestyle of a avenue vendor in order to reclaim her own sense of identification.
This film also displayed some social forces that were combined to impact women who are victimized not only by individuals, but also by their communities, the state of hawaii and society as a whole. Before, women have quite often been the prospective for violence and persecution because of this of their gender and assigned social roles, but when race and class are put into the formula, those most susceptible to victimization have typically been people that have the least usage of resources and power in their neighborhoods. The victimization of poor minority women will not will have to be physical to be looked at violent, but can also include workplace harassment and discrimination. Violence against women can be covert and worried more about the dehumanization of the average person in order to gain power. In the case of Marcia, assault and victimization came in the form of Priest, the murderous gangster, who murdered her friend and stalked her sibling. Priest's constant existence in Marcia's life after the fatality of Sonny, a guy who shielded both her and her daughters, was not due and then his sexual appeal to her and just how she resisted him, but also to ensure that she and her brother remained silent about the murder and his id. Never once did Priest episode or physically harmed Marcia for he didn't have to. Her subjugation was easily compelled when he stalked her sibling, isolated her from those who could help her, stole her products for sale effectively restricting her money, and by monitoring her contact with outsiders such as Uncle Larry. Priest also targeted Marcia's children, joining her home one night and playing with her children until she delivered from work and determined.
Violence against women can also arise by using an ideological level, where, while it can be more understated, it can stay severe and lasting. In other words, Stereotypes don't vanish; they may become implicit, so that they have a home in the unconscious, can lead to an automatic operation. Marcia experienced self-stereotyping, as she noticed that the only way to make ends meet for her and her family was to exploit her body. Furthermore, a dancehall queen normally partcipates in costumes to disguise themselves; by putting on wigs, weaves and extensions in various hues. Picky-picky head' women proceed through all measures to lay claim the sex appeal that is recognized to reside obviously in tall-hair' women - as was visible in the prominent images of pin-up feminine sexiness in the mainstream press in Jamaica and somewhere else. In other words the extension brings a movie turn to her, and this portrayal of women can be used as a symbol of erotic pleasuring. The dancehall diva, appropriates as a border-crossing potential of disguise, and together undermines the beauty of African-Jamaican women and devalues their self-esteem. For most African Jamaican women, the politics of beauty is complicated by stereotypes and prejudice. Unlike their African sisters, for whom beauty was typically defined in indigenous conditions, many African women in Jamaica are judged by benchmarks of beauty predicated on non-African phenotypes. Faced with these marks of removal, many African Jamaican women experienced to settle for being sexy, instead of being beautiful. As observed in the film this dancehall disguise gave Marcia an extreme position. The disguises of the dancehall - the head of hair, clothes, make-up and body language that are assumed - increased Marcia's everyday home into an eroticised making love object.
Marcia's girl, Tanya, is equally incredulous when she found out her mom rehearsing the role of dancehall queen: "Mama, is that you? The eroticisation of motherhood is the ultimate manifestation of the abandonment of traditional meanings of woman as desexualised caregiver. In Dancehall Queen', motherhood is a disorder that conceals the erotic probable of the girl. The sexuality of the old girl that is usually disguised by her role as mom is released in the dealing with of the persona of dancehall queen. This re-eroticisation of motherhood troubles the presumption that after a certain era and especially after child-bearing the girl naturally manages to lose her sex appeal and must be replaced by a more radiant woman - quite often her very own daughter becomes the mark for her putative mate who's normally sexually drawn to his supposedly step-daughter. In the film, Marcia makes a difficult decision and advises her little princess to comply with Uncle Larry's sexual advances to be able to please him and ensure his continuing financial support for the family. Similarly, she regretted leading her little princess down such a journey but on the other was motivated with a need to provide her young girls with the education she never received and still could not manage. Later in the film when she came to the realization her error in the event of her daughter's rape, Marcia finally decided to take things into her own hands and earn another income in the dancehall. The "Good Mother does not parade around in disclosing clothing, leaving her children at home during the night and frequenting nightclubs where she competes in party contests for the money, but for Marcia the alternative was grim. Her family had been poor, yet things experienced the to aggravate if more income could not be produced and her daughters could not attend university. Thus, Marcia used her sexuality as a means of providing for her family, and in a sense, victimized herself by reassigning her personal value. It had been no longer the actual fact that she was a dark-colored woman -and mother, capable of production and possessing personal value and ability, but instead a sexual thing to be associated with money.
In addition to stereotyping, poor women tend to be degraded and devalued as a group, often because of specific circumstances related with their contest, gender, sexuality and/or sexual orientation, category, and era, and also because of ideologies which consider the poor to be inferior and throw-away. Such ideologies have permeated communal institutions and therefore are perpetuated throughout years and therefore womanhood became associated with dependency because men usually attained the wage for the family. For poor women, however, this male breadwinner trend was unrealistic as women were required to work to aid themselves and their own families because the men in their lives were often absent. This was visible in the film for the reason that Marcia proved helpful as both a vendor and a dancehall queen because the men in her life (her brother and the fathers of her children) deserted her and disregarded their tasks. In doing so, she was challenging equality and equitable treatment from the Jamaican modern culture which did little to help her or the countless other ladies in her situation, but sanctioned male absenteeism. Poor women with children, who stay in deprived, crime prominent neighbourhoods, are especially vunerable to degradation and collapse as moms as a result of circumstances under that they live and increase their children. These moms face structural and systemic barriers which work to together prevent them from rising from poverty and degrade them further.
These conditions were experienced by Marcia in the film when she was obligated to rely after her daughter's boyfriend for baby relaxing services while she worked in the dancehall, so when she argued with her eldest child who claimed that she was unable to love, because she was not married and may not keep a guy.
The sociable and structural makes that contributed to the degradation of Marcia and is constantly on the degrade other poor, minority women and moms was an idea which describes how usage of beneficial resources are related to a person's cultural location in a social composition and in interactions. It includes kinds of knowledge, specific skills, and one's education and talks about how and just why some individuals are more lucrative specifically situations than others. Marcia was a respected person in her community, but she was still an unhealthy, black, feminine, and uneducated in the educational sense, a mother, and sole, which put her at a specific level in the lower end of her interpersonal hierarchy (the typical stereotype). At the end of the film when her individuality as a dancehall queen was exposed to the public, the storyplot of her have difficulties and her determination granted her admiration from her peers and concluded the degradation she experienced in the past, giving her an opportunity to change her life and her children's future.
Dancehall Queen is a film which talks about the perseverance, courage, and eventual triumph of the poor over their circumstances and stereotypes. It is motivating, yet it remains just a film, however, realistic and somewhat sensible when put on the real world. It gives insight into the conditions and tests endured by the indegent and sheds light on specific issues which have an effect on poor minority women with children. While using inclusive understanding of stereotype point of view, it is visible that all poor people do not show in the same problems, but instead are influenced differently by larger social makes and institutions based on their particular characteristics. While handling each one of these characteristics may appear to be always a difficult feat, examination of the bigger problems can provide insight into the smaller ones and therefore, while stereotypes do incorporate with individual quality to victimize, oppress and degrade the poor, equality are available in ideologies which try to analyze and expose why some are more privileged than others, and exactly how such problems can be settled in the future.
