Rag time (movie) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Rag time (movie) - Essay Example the height of success and sophistication (Forman, n.p.).Walker Coalhouse has walked up the ladder of the social class courtesy of his talent in music, where he plays the piano in a successful Jazz band, allowing him to become successful both in fame and fortune (Canby, n.p.). Under the current social stratification of the community in which Coalhouse lives, he belongs to the bottom layer of the social class; the blacks, and thus some of the white people volunteering at a firehouse in New York cannot stand to see a black man riding in such an expensive and state-of-the-art car. This makes the fire chief, Conklin to rally the volunteers to blockade the way and stop him from passing with his car, and later leads them in wrecking Coalhouse’s Model-T (Forman, n.p.). The attempt by Coalhouse to seek justice for the racial mistreatment that he received fails completely, because the justice system is dedicated to racism, thus it cannot offer a black man any justice (Forman, n.p.). Starting with the search for a lawyer to represent him in the case to petitioning the police to address his case by having the fire chief charged for the injustice he committed against him, the whole system refuses to work in his favor not because Coalhouse is on the wrong or because he cannot afford to pay the requisite legal fees, but simply because he s black (Canby, n.p.). Therefore, the theme of racism has featured in the entire film, building up from one episode to the other until the film ends without a clear solution to the problem of racism having been devised. The motif of the film is presented through fantasy and illusion, where the film has mixed up real life characters and events with other imaginary and unreal narratives that create a sense of confusion and lack of comprehension of the film. The historical events in the film are so mixed up, while there lacks the focus on one-sided historical narration (Canby, n.p.). Contrary, the film presents a multiplicity view of the