Ethnicity in Moses Jones
In Moses Jone, ethnicity is represented in many different ways the use of dialogue, camera, editing and mise en scene.
In the first few shots, we see a band of black males playing some typical blues which is renowned for its black origins. Shots with obstructions in the foreground show that there are a lot of people together, showing their unity as a group, breaking the stereotype of black youths together being considered as dangerous gangs. The fact that they are al playing music shows they are all very talented and can exhibit their talents. This shows that they are likely to have been playing these instruments for a long time and are very dedicated people. The lighting in these shots is fairly low-key which makes it seem like a jaz cafe or somewhere similar that they are playing in.
The next few shots are of an old man, being lost in a marketplace. The music being played in the previous shots is still overlaid seeming quite contrapuntal with the music being fairly upbeat and the old man being lost as shown by a zooming out crane shot of him dressed in light colours with a fairly traditional looking hat, surrounded by a lot of white people dressed in black. More shots of this man are shown cross-cutting between him and the band. Most of the shots are quite obscure and obstructed and are mainly LS or VLS’s which all make him seem lost, like he doesn’t know where he is. There are also cutaways of large white and Asian men shouting. This makes the situation seem very intimidating. When the man talks to the hairdresser, he has a fairly thick accent, typical of some black people. In contrast, later in the extract, when we hear Moses speak, he speaks very well, without an accent. This is accentuated by the fact that the he is speaking to a young white male. This by speaks very poorly with bad grammar and lots of slang. This make white people seem lower class and uneducated. This white boy also calls Moses ’dread’ which is a reference to Jamaican people, which he seems to be calling Moses just because he is black. This shows an element of racial stereotypical racial ignorance on the behalf of the white person.
