Race Representation in Friday

The movie Friday is a comedy drama released in 1995 starring Ice Cube (Craig) and Chris Tucker (Smokey) in the lead roles. (CITE) The film takes place in South Central Los Angeles during a 16 hour time period in the eventful lives of friends Craig and Smokey. After just being fired from his job, Craig decides to hang out with his friend Smokey, smoking marijuana and drinking on the front porch of his parents house. Things get interesting when Smokey brings Craig into a “little”, or rather not so little problem of his. Smokey owes local drug dealer Big Worm $200 on that Friday night by ten o'clock p.m. for smoking, rather than selling the marijuana that Big Worm gave to him, or else they'd both be killed. The movie details all the of the events in the 16 hour time period which led up to them eventually getting the $200 that they owe to Big Worm, and in turn saving their own lives. The film is full laughs brought on by comedic scenes throughout, especially due to the fact that African American characters are portrayed in a very stereotypical manner. It was evident that the common stereotypes of African American people in the early to mid 90's were fully supported by the film.

Before we get into the movie specifically, we should first talk about representation and how race is represented in the media in general. Representation is defined as the assigning of meaning through language and in culture. (CITE) Representation isn't reality, but rather a mere construction of reality and the meaning behind it. (CITE) Through representation we are able to shape how people are seen by others. Race is an aspect of people which is often represented in the media in different ways. Race itself is not a category of nature, but rather...

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...Their dialogues included nothing very intellectually stimulating, which would suggest a lack of intelligence. By portraying the characters as such, the film was able to represent the judgmental racial stereotypes commonly associated with African Americans.

Lastly, many of the characters in the film were portrayed to fit the representation of the criminal racial stereotype of African Americans. It is common today for African Americans to be stereotypes as criminals, partly due to that fact that many come from backgrounds of poverty. The criminal stereotype is a direct connotation of this poverty background. Acts of crime committed by African Americans can be found throughout the film. One of the characters which most prevalently commits acts of crime is Deebo. On many occasions Deebo will steal people's possessions, such as Red's bike and his chain necklace.