Hotel Babylon (Ethnicity Essay)

At the very beginning of the extract tense non-diegetic music is playing in the background as the immigration officers arrive. This music makes this seen suspenseful and in turn is reinforcing the ethnicity stereotype of "Danger", as the audience isn't to know whats about to happen. This is also helped by the pace of this scene as it is quite fast editing coupled with the character Ben and the other man rushing down to the office, making the scene more tense and making the audience nervous in anticipation of whats going to happen. Also in this scene, the receptionist is dressed in white, while the immigration officers are dressed in black. Seeing as the receptionist appears to be in charge of all the employees (who most of which are immigrants) you could say she stands for all of them. Now when the oppositely dressed immigration officers show up, there is a clash between the two colors. I feel this somehow subtly reinforces the stereotype of conflict in ethnicity.

In the next scene, we see almost all the staff in the staff closet. We see all them in one of tow uniforms when they are all together. I saw this as positively influencing the stereotype of "Unification" among them all, although earlier in the extract, all the different ethnicity's seem to be separated. Also i believe that the scene with all the staff in the closet not only reinforces the stereotype, but challenges it as well, as the unification is between multiple ethnicity's. Also in this scene we see the character Ibrahim on his own in a corridor. I saw this as reinforcing the stereotype of "Pity" towards different ethnicity's, as he is distracted by his headphones and the sound of the vacuum so the audience can anticipate his capture by the immigration officers. Also, the sound of the vacuum, i may point out is a "working" diegetic sound, of which is to reflect his so called "soul" purpose of manual labor. As well as this, in this scene we see a white women faint due to a diabetic attack, but she is given help to stop her suffering by a black man, the shot reverse shots between the character Jackie and the character Adam show the diversity between the two. I feel this challenges both the stereotypes of ethnicity, "Dangerous" and "Conflict", as he is doing exactly the opposite, instead of being a threat to her, he is a aid.

In the last scene of the extract, we see all the different ethnicity's sat on different tables, all speaking different dialects. This is shown via a sweep shot across the room showing all the different ethnic groups. I felt the choice of diolouge and the languages they were spoken in shows the segregation between all the different ethnicity's in "Hotel Babylon". This then reinforces the stereotype of conflict between the ethnic groups. Along side this is a non-diegetic soundtrack that plays a relativly sad sounding song, again reienforcing the stereotype of "Pity" towards different ethnicity's.