A while ago I watched the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). Here is a blurb about the movie from IMDB, “Matt and Christina Drayton are a couple whose attitudes are challenged when their daughter brings home a fiancé who is black.” At one point in the movie Christina’s fiancé, John Prentice, said this to his father-
"You tell me what rights I've got or haven't got, and what I owe to you for what you've done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing! If you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you're supposed to do! Because you brought me into this world. And from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me like I will owe my son if I ever have another. But you don't own me!"
What John Prentice said to his father has been weighing on my mind rather heavily since seeing the movie. I’m not thinking about it as a daughter but as a future mother. Imagine what the world would be like if all parents followed the words of John Prentice and made the realization that by bringing a child into the world, as parents, they owe the child everything. I believe things would look very different. Now, I’m not thinking give your kid everything he/she ever asks for because we surely don’t need any more spoiled children in this world. But parents can’t provide care and then once their children are grown hang it over their heads as if they now owe them. At least that is what I think.
2 comments:
i have often thought about this quote after we watched the movie. Actually, i have thought a lot about the movie in general. so many policital and personal ideas shoved into it. i may have to go back and watch it again.
I watched that movie for the first time last year. It was really interesting!
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