Prejudice And Racism In The Film 'Qu'

In Qu’est-ce-qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu?, the use of second degree-humor allowed the viewer to see that the discourse surrounding race in the film was more complex than a single black-white binary; all of the characters, regardless of whether or not or not they were minorities, engaged in some form of racism with one another. Firstly, it is very easy to see for the viewer that Claude and Marie are representative of the old, white, bourgeois population that is commonly associated with racism. For example, in the beginning of the movie, at a family dinner, Claude begins making racist jokes about Barbes, saying he was in Bab el Oued, and when confronted, says, “Can’t we debate without anger?” (9:33). This represents the top-down, vertical racism
Political correctness, which seems to be an attack on freedom of expression, cannot be understood by Claude not simply because he is a bad person, but because he grew up with a very different upbringing than his daughters and sons-in-laws. The idea of upbringing muddles the waters when it comes to portraying racism in the film. The milieu in which the characters grew up in affects the way the engage in dialogue about race & ethnicity, as demonstrated by when Marie accuses Claude of being too lax with the girls by letting them go study in Paris (46:58). The city is blamed as the factor that radicalized their girls into getting married to spouses who were markedly different from the white, Catholic, Français de souche men desired by their parents. In contrast, Claude and Marie, who continue to live in the countryside, are seen as stiff and stagnant, unable to engage with the cultural differences present among their sons-in-law. Finally, another way the film shows how racial dialogue is far more complex than a binary is with the interactions of the