Save the Last Dance

In the movie Save the last dance the film explores various issues current in the United States as well as all over the world. The movie explores peer pressure especially in a black dominant school population. Themes of Violence, adolescent pride and interracial relationships were greatly represented in the film. Also it touches on early parenthood, pressures of a low income environment, racial status, racial stereotypes and prejudice as well as loyalty to friends. Psychologically the movie represents Memory, Learning, Thinking, Motivation and emotion, Development, Sex and gender as well as Social realm.
The movie's success depends on using dated stereotypes: "angry black woman," "thuggish black man," and "innocent" white women. White men, with few exceptions such as Sara's father, barely register in that inner-city flick. The movie is set in South Side, a predominately black area of Chicago. She's taken in by her jazz musician father who barely figured in her life. His home, in contrast to his daughter's large, decorative suburban house, was a small flat. The apartment building where her estranged father Roy lived, was dilapidated and in desperate need of repairs. His apartment was no better. It was sort of unkempt, keeping with the stereotypes of bachelor and artists not having a care in the world. Meanwhile, blonde Sarah is trying to adjust her life in the inner city, going to Wheatley High, a predominantly black high school where students check in going through metal detectors, which were absent in Sara's old school in Lemont. That says a lot about the racial/class disparities of two neighborhoods. It was at Wheatley where Sarah met a gifted young man named Derek. Derek is a very hardworking student who is also college-bound. He's going to Georgetown to study pediatrics so he can become a doctor. Sarah becomes friend with bold teenage mother Chenille (Derek’s sister) who shows her around. Chenille takes Sarah to a club where Sarah realizes that she can not