Interracial Marriage In Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
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In 1967, Stanley Kramer’s critically acclaimed film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner addressed the issue of interracial marriage and the generational divide between the alarmed parents of both races and the optimistic young couple. The release of the film occurred at the height of the Civil Rights movement in America, a time when people were fighting for social, political, and economic equality. While some aspects of Kramer’s dramatization were progressive and influential for the era, the film more accurately serves as a reflection of the larger social and political context of 1960s America in regards to both attitudes of opposition and acceptance of interracial marriage.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is the story of the interracial relationship between Dr. John Wade Prentice (Sidney Poitier), a successful, intelligent African American doctor, and Joanna Drayton (Katharine Houghton), the daughter of liberal parents Matt (Spencer Tracy) and…show more content… John and Joanna arrive at the Drayton’s home to announce their engagement and to receive approval from Joanna’s parents before flying to Geneva for John’s work with the World Health Organization. Early in the film, John confronts Joanna’s shocked parents and stresses that if they don’t approve of the marriage completely, he will call off the engagement. While Joanna enthusiastically prepares for her life with John, Matt and Christina are forced to confront their own principles and decide whether their liberal beliefs will allow them to accept their daughter marrying an African American. Tensions further escalate in a comedic manner when John’s parents arrive for dinner as well. Quickly, both Mrs. Drayton and Mrs. Prentice approve of the marriage while their husbands maintain the impracticality of the union. The climax of the film is Matt Drayton’s declaration of his approval of the marriage on the basis that “love conquers