There’s a new romantic comedy out with some heavy-hitting actors like Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jonas Hill, David Duchovny, Nia Long and newcomer (at least to me) Lauren London. The film tackles all the social awkwardness around race relations when Jonas falls for Lauren and vice-versa.
It’s a Romeo and Juliet romance where the families serve to pull the lovebirds apart. One such scene occurs around the dinner table. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jonah’s mom, starts down the whole ‘our parents came to this country to work’ reasoning for success, and Nia Long, Lauren’s mom, challenges her with the benefits of heredity in the family profession.
As expected, Jonah’s father is a podiatrist, as was his grandfather and his great-grandfather. But what does the implication of this occupational lineage? In what does it offer an advantage? In a competitive situation, having access to information at any time or season has clear advantages. This may be knowledge about educational issues, school entrance requirements, course work, or internship insights. And not only can one tap a family member at any time, but there is also a stronger guarantee than with any other group that their response will serve your best interests.
This unconditional support is further enhanced through connections to others in the field who may serve to advance the student’s objectives. Favor trading within a group happens naturally. So a lineage of family members with contacts throughout the profession offers access to others who will also work on the child’s behalf. This reaching out to lend a hand may also occur with a sense of nostalgia- Remember when we were only twenty and had not a cent in our pockets?
It’s important to pull these tasks apart and take them on an individual level. Understanding how institutions work if it’s deemed important to get some outside blood into highly competitive professions.
As far as the movie goes- it was humorous, and that’s saying a lot given how worn out the black/white/wokeness dialogue has become in recent years. It made me laugh and I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say the girl gets her guy in the end.
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