The 1940’s was very well represented in this film, things like gay men being looked down upon, women’s right’s and also how the government really didn’t care about how inmates were being treated.
Black men were looked down on by society in the 1940’s, especially if they were criminal. In fact, black men were often the face of crime back then so they didn’t have much chance of winning a court case if they were being accused by a white man/woman. This is represented in the film by the character Red, played by Morgan Freeman who is a black man who in the film has been accused of murder. He repeatedly says in the film when he’s asked why he’s in here that “he’s innocent” in a sarcastic tone because he’s fed up of explaining his story because no matter how strong his case was he knew he’d loose because he’s black. This is how racism was represented in this era so it shows that the film did a good job with representation. In the film, there is a small group of gay men who pick on all of the new inmates when they come into the prison and try to take advantage of them sexually when no one is watching or in the prison showers. This is a very stereotypical image of what people used to think/ still may think happens in prison environments so I would say that it is represented well in the film. Women’s rights are also represented in the film in scene such as when the warden is talking to a businessman about how the cheap labour from the inmates is running him out of business so he offers the warden a bribe along with a nice homemade cake that his wife made which the warden later on gives to Andy because “the woman can’t cook for shit” which suggests that men only value their woman for their cooking and home skills. This is another good example of representation in the film.
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AuthorOliver Lowe Archives
March 2016
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