Film Analysis Meet the Parents

Abstract

The film I chose to analyze is Meet the Parents. It is about a young couple that resides in the city of Chicago, one is a male nurse (Greg) and his partner, a female (Pam) works as a preschool teacher. Greg is ready to propose to Pam after dating for two years and sets up a whole scene with Pam's preschool kids but after hearing from Pam that her sister (Debby) is about to marry a doctor (Bob) he decides not to propose at the moment. Greg and Pam fly out to visit Pam's parents for Debby's wedding.

Soon after Greg and Pam reach their destination and having a small get together with Pam's parents (Jack and Dina) where they are exchanging gifts and getting to know each other, Greg's work field comes up. Pam, very proud of her boyfriend, mentions how Greg has been transferred to triage, and Dina (Pam's mom) asks Greg directly with a curious facial expression if triage is better than nursing. Pam replies almost instantly with a sort of dissatisfaction in her face stating that triage, is a unit of the E.R. where all the top nurses work, Dina looks at him with discontent and Jack, cuts the awkward silence and comments about how there are not too many males nurses in Greg's working field and that finalizes the conversation.

Later in the film, when all characters have emerged, there is a scene where everyone (Pam's relatives and significant others) is having breakfast and almost everyone makes fun of Greg's medicine field, looking at him down for being a nurse and truly not understand the reason of why Greg decided to stay in the nursing field and not wanting to pursue the M.D. There is even a line that follows after that where Jack, mentions to Debby's fianc© (Bob) of having Greg as one his ushers at his wedding and Bob being hesitant about what wanting to respond, clearly hiding his truly feelings about not wanting Greg to serve as his usher possibly to his unfit nursing role. Throughout the whole film, all male characters and some female included, act and conform to a very common but yet biased relating to the area of gender, which is gender roles in the workplace.

When we think about who is best suited for a particular position or job, we take into consideration people's education level, background, and skills but we also have an idea about who should fill or adapt to a certain position. When entering man dominated fields, women can rise up to positions of leadership and power to a certain extent but certainly not to the highest level, in spite of having the same qualifications as man, there seems to be an artificial level that blocks them reaching that kind of power.

If women reach these high levels, they are still not going to be obtaining the same benefits of power and wages that come with these high-level positions. When women do enter female-dominated positions, sometimes they are subject to tokenization, they are either seen as the representative of all of those people that represent whether that is women or women of color. However, the opposite phenomenon occurs when male enter female-dominated professions, the idea that man is more suitable for positions of power and leadership, and that they would not want to start as a teacher, they must want to be a position of power to be promoted faster (Missari 2017).

An example of a female dominated profession in the United States is nursing, this was one of those profession that are ninety percent and above women, with only nine percent of registered nurses as man, maybe it is a connection between nursing and caring, and nurturing work that is associated with femininity and this could be because man, maybe want to become doctors (male-dominated profession) if they want to be in the field of medicine at all therefore in that way, they would not have to stay home and have a family.

When it comes to having equality in these two fields, the best approach would be to put a stop to stereotyping both genders as a society as a whole hence, man could still see themselves as being in the nursing field without thinking of them as being feminine but still can be caring and nurturing and the same goes for women, they have this idea that they are suited to become doctors because women are not as brave as males are and therefore, cannot handle things that doctors do. Personally, I think that it would be easier to integrate women in the idea of wanting to become doctors because it is only a matter of making them believe that they have the same capacity and ability to achieve the same things that man can.

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