Miss Congeniality
The Film Miss Congeniality (2000), directed by Donald Petrie, attempted to show typical stereotypes of women and show how they can be disproved and unfair in a slightly dramatic and comical way. This holds true throughout the whole movie. The film shows a typical tomboy whom no one notices to be attractive change into a stunningly beautiful woman that most definitely everyone notices. This happens because Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) who is at the bottom of the ranks in her FBI division takes on an assignment that changes her life and how every one of her colleagues view her. The assignment is to go undercover at the Miss America pageant to find out and try to prevent someone from doing terrorist acts at the pageant. Agent Gracy Hart is then forced to become Gracie Lou Freebush "a.k.a. Miss New Jersey? so get an inside position in the pageant. Because of her doing this assignment, everyone sees her beauty and she does an excellent job against everyone?s beliefs and catches the terrorist in the act.
The genre of this movie takes the taste of three different types of movies and blends them cohesively together to make a somewhat dramatic action-comedy. John Belton describes this type of comedy in one of his works. It talks about women in the workplace rising up to show everyone they are just as qualified as men. Belton says, ?In Working Girl (1988), the traditional office hierarchy (the status quo) is upset when a lower-class secretary, Tess (Melanie Griffith), puts together a big deal without the knowledge of her upper middle-class boss (Sigourney Weaver). Working outside the prescribed system, Tess pools her efforts with an upper middle-class male executive from another company (Harrison Ford). Together they create an ideal business team, which functions more efficiently and effectively than any pairing within the existing system. This new order, which democratically combines members of different classes, ultimately triumphs over the old, more hierarchic,
The genre of this movie takes the taste of three different types of movies and blends them cohesively together to make a somewhat dramatic action-comedy. John Belton describes this type of comedy in one of his works. It talks about women in the workplace rising up to show everyone they are just as qualified as men. Belton says, ?In Working Girl (1988), the traditional office hierarchy (the status quo) is upset when a lower-class secretary, Tess (Melanie Griffith), puts together a big deal without the knowledge of her upper middle-class boss (Sigourney Weaver). Working outside the prescribed system, Tess pools her efforts with an upper middle-class male executive from another company (Harrison Ford). Together they create an ideal business team, which functions more efficiently and effectively than any pairing within the existing system. This new order, which democratically combines members of different classes, ultimately triumphs over the old, more hierarchic,
Cited: Belton, John. American Cinema/ American Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994. Ebert, Roger. ?Miss Congeniality.? Current Review. 22 Dec. 2000. Chicago Sun-Times. 1 Mar. 2004 http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/2000/12/122210.html. Multicultural Film. Crook E. and Martinez M. Boston: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2004.