Miss Congeniality Film Essay

The Movie, Miss Congeniality, portrayed the story of Gracie Hart, an FBI agent who is sent undercover into a Beauty Pageant. The Conflict paradigm is largely portrayed in this film because even in a progressive society women are still viewed as less dangerous and powerful, therefore granting them a lower social status than men. Gracie Hart, not only feels inferior to the men that she works with in the FBI, but upon being placed into the Pageant, she had to learn the values and norms of the Pageant girls in order to raise her social status among them, while coming to terms with her own social identity. The majority of the scenes involving the FBI portrayed Gracie as the only female agent, this proved that even in modern society, gender inequality is still a large problem. Many of the other …show more content…
Melling’s had Gracie watch videos of past girls that he had trained in the hopes that she would use them as reference groups and eventually fall into what the pageant girls consider to be the dominant culture. However, in watching the girls, all Gracie managed to do is see everything that she did not want to be and make fun of them, “He takes one look at that fake rack, he’s gonna send her right back.”, “Look, she’s gonna cry again. ‘If I only had a brain!’”. In making fun of the girls, Gracie believed that she was raising her social status because she is proving that she is everything they are not, which is why she was considered deviant in the society because she didn’t care how she appeared, An example of this fact is when Agent Matthew’s date came to talk to her. “Does every agent have to wear those manly shoes?”, to which Gracie replied., “No, I get these specially made by the same guy that tattoo’s my ass.” Her sarcasm, while funny to the other male agents, is confusing to those that did not know her because they were unable to identify with her “feminine”