Guess Who's Coming To Dinner Interracial Relationship

In many older pieces of media, there tends to be a theme related to the issue of racial divide. This is true within the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee and the movie, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, produced by Stanley Kramer and written by William Rose. Both titles touch upon the idea of interracial relationships in a time when the idea of “race-mixing” was highly frowned upon by the general public, although the novel presumably takes place three decades before the movie’s setting. The novel, taking place in 1930s Alabama, and the movie, taking place in 1960s California, may represent society’s different stances upon interracial relationships throughout the years and locale. Although the two couples are met with varying levels
of disapproval, as the times and tolerance of the locations are dissimilar, many parallels between the book and the movie remain. One thing that remains true in both titles is the persistence of a general resentment towards people of color, expressed by white people. Maycomb, the society depicted in To Kill A Mockingbird, has a multitude of racist characters, as ignorance was far from uncommon and certainly not discouraged in the South during the early 20th century. Many of the white characters in the novel held a sense of superiority over the African Americans in the community, for example, Aunt Alexandra, Mrs. Dubose, Mr. Underwood, and Mrs. Merriweather, to name a few who openly displayed their racism. Even the children of Maycomb, young souls like Dill, Scout, and Jem, were still guilty of their own prejudices. For example, upon first becoming acquainted with a man in an interracial relationship, Dill proceeds to express that he doesn’t appear to be “trash”, implying that in his innocent mind was the belief that the act of miscegenation was reserved for only the scum of the Earth. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, animosity towards interracial relationships was also expressed. When Joanna Drayton returns from a trip to Hawaii engaged to a black man, her parents were flabbergasted, to say the least.Even despite learning that John Prentice, Joanna’s fiance, was a philanthropic and incredibly skilled doctor, Matt Dayton, Joanna’s father, still displayed an extreme aversion to the idea of his daughter marrying a black man, showing that even the “liberals” of the era still held their own prejudices. Even his wife, Christine, warmed up to the idea of the couple, clearly seeing that they loved each other., and even firing an ignorant employee when she expressed that Joanna’s relationship was “appallingly stupid.” Apprehension wasn’t only demonstrated by Joanna’s father; John’s parents paralleled the actions of Joanna’s.
Just as Christine and Matt had been predominantly trepidatious at first, with Christine eventually embracing the relationship, John’s father had taken a bit longer to accept the romance than his wife. John expressed his frustration with his parents’ lack of support, telling his father that he couldn’t “try to get [him] to live [his] life according to [his outdated] rules.” Pristine denounced his father’s reluctance to shed his old-fashioned aversion to interracial relationships, saying that even if he “tried to explain it for the rest of [his father’s life],” he would never understand, as his father’s generation believed “the way it was for [them] is the way it’s got to be.” John’s protests are comparable to the demonstrations of Dolphus Raymond, a character in To Kill A Mockingbird. Raymond is a white man in an interracial relationship with a black woman, who resorted to perpetuating his reputation as a drunkard as a means to protect his family. Because he lived in the South in the 1930s, a time when racism was alive and well, Raymond found it vital to destroy his own reputation, as it would mean that his family would escape persecution due to the crime he had committed - being in love with a black woman. When explaining to Scout that his facade is necessary to continue his way of life, he states that the people of Maycomb "could never, never understand" that he
lived a life regarded as sinful and heathenous by the general public because it was his own inclination, rather than a product of an irrational mindset brought by intoxication.
Another parallel between John Pristine and Dolphus Raymond are their statuses as widowers. Pristine lost his wife and child in a tragic train accident, whilst Raymond’s fiancee killed herself at their wedding rehearsal - presumably after hearing about Raymond’s relations with a woman of color. It’s likely that Raymond’s late fiancee couldn’t handle the fact that her soon-to-be-husband was cheating with someone she most likely viewed as lesser and possibly even nonhuman, given the context.
Both Dolphus Raymond and his family, and Joanna and John faced antipathy from society for merely loving each other.
Raymond faced a more physical form of the hostility, fearing for the life and safety of himself and his children, whilst Joanna and John were spared the horror, as they lived in a more liberal California. Joanna and John faced a social form of the antagonism, receiving criticism from peers and family. Compared to Raymond’s life in the deep South, the couple, presumably living in the 60s, had a rather simple experience. The 60s were a time when the civil rights movement had begun to pick up momentum, and the Black Panther Party was gaining prominence within society. Despite this, interracial marriage was still illegal in over a quarter of states. No matter the progression of society, the one thing the novel and the movie had in common was the prevalence of racism. In the South during the 1930s, in California during the 60s, and even in some places today, people expressed an aversion to the concept of interracial relationships. This apprehension comes from ignorance and hatred, but even if the masses remain reluctant to accept progression, people will always find a way to love who they want to
love.