Rhetoric of Space

Thursday, February 19, 2015

22 Jump Street Representation Test

22 Jump Street Rep Test Results

For those of you that have seen 21 Jump Street you
know that it is a strong comedy with some offensive
aspects. 22 Jump Street follows suit and uses the
f-word over140 times. Not surprisingly, 22 Jump
Street scored a low "C" on the representation test.
I gave it a score of four points based on my
personal opinion.

There was a large amount of men in this movie. There were only two women in the film that had speaking roles and they never talked to each other. However, one of these women were of color and they both had diverse bodies. Also, one of the women in the film was not an object of mail gain for she was in charge of this "drug cartel". This movie is about undercover police work and it is disappointing to see that there was not a single woman working in the station. It was all men. Including the two protagonists, their boss and their chief.

The movie poster also does display the two main characters completely surrounded by women in bikinis. It is displaying a "spring break" idea where all the girls are wearing very little clothing. There is only a brief moment during one of the spring break scenes where Channing Tatum's character grabs a random woman and kisses her after he has won a fight. 
This movie is about undercover police officers so a majority of the movie was in fact glorifying violent men. It also glorified the use of guns and that the men with guns had the upper advantage. The movie's use of guns was very casual because they were cops. However the movie did use men of two very different body types. So it scored a point in the area of "avoid perpetuating a body ideal for men". For one cop was physically strong and the other was mentally strong.
The film completely failed when it came to the male role of color and offending races and cultures. "Ice cube" plays their boss in the movie and he is the cookie cutout version of the black intense chief who says the f-word with every conjunction. They also perpetuate the opposite of racism where in one scene Jonah Hill's character is very happy that they are finally working with a black person and he would not care if they were trying to help a white "cracker".
When it came to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender characters there were none and they did not score any points in this area. However, there is a scene where Channing Tatum's character defends and counteracts the derogatory use of "faggot" in the culture. This counteracts the first 21 Jump Street where this same character was beating kids up for being "gay".


This movie is an R rated comedy. I am not surprised that it did not pass the Representation test with flying colors. I don't think this is exactly the best way to test movies because it all depends on the genre, the rating, the content and the theme. This is a comedy and most comedic styles are found out of making fun of others. This movie made millions and was considered a success even if it offended others. However, it was a good test when it came to women. 22 Jump Street scored 3/6 on the classification of women which was better than I expected and the movie didn't really degrade women too much other than the lack of them. The only thing I would change is the amount of questions about the protagonist. There can only be one or two protagonist and whoever that is defines the movie. So a movie should not lose points in other areas simply because they chose a different route of main characters.

1 comment:

  1. I find it interesting that 22 Jump Street scored a 50% on the woman's section considering it is degrading in that the men are surrounded by woman in bikini's and talk about sleeping with them often. If the representation test was structured differently 22 jump street could have scored higher because it features LGBTQ topics.Channing Tatum's character defends Gay Rights often throughout the movie and it should have been recognized.

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