Week 3 EOC: This Charming Man

“Promoting diversity helps fulfill legal requirements and allows managers to better defend against any claims of illegal discrimination”(385).

This movie was the prime example of a lack of diversity. In fact, in this film, we saw how work places attempted to ensure that there was absolutely no diversity. Anyone who was not Swedish was treated differently. Beginning with the job agency, who’s answer for anyone with a foreign name was initially “no” about job positions. They were already not doing their job by not getting them a job. Mostly everyone in this movie had feelings of racism, except Amanda, but Amanda also seems to be the only one who had a real education, which proves to me that feelings of racism stem from ignorance.

“Stereotypes are beliefs about particular groups that assume all members of that group are the same.”(386).

The amount of stereotypes in this film were perfect to explain how stereotypes work. There were so many preconceived notions about Mr. Hasan. There were jokes made about what “they” ate, and didn’t eat, assuming that Mr. Hasan was Muslim. There were so many feelings about people who weren’t Swedish being dumb. In fact, Amanda, was picked on because she was not a city girl, meaning she was a dumber, uglier version of a Swedish girl than the city girls. At the end of the movie, the main character ends up falling for her anyway. It is funny to me that the one who is stereotyped as the “ dumb girl” is the smartest one, who doesn’t feed into all of the stereotypes.

“Discrimination is the act of treating persons unequally for reasons that do not relate to their abilities, including race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, and mental or physical abilities.”

The bar tender was the first to discriminate, against everyone. He made terrible, vile jokes against anyone who wasn’t of the Swedish race. It is a shame, that at the end of the movie, he even ended up hurting Mr. Hasan while mentioning racial slurs. Had he been in America, and had he been charged, he would have faced extra charges for simply making racial slurs. It would be considered a “hate” crime.

Although this movie is like a satirical version of what racism and discrimination is, there really is nothing funny about it in real life. It happens here, and even if people want to claim they don’t discriminate or stereotype, it’s not true. It happens everywhere, it happens here.