42 is a movie about Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play baseball in the MLB. Robinson is a remarkable man who has to deal with racism from all aspects; his teammates, coaches, and fans. The only thing he can do to stop this racism is to show the true talent for the sport he has and he does just that.
There are a couple scenes in particular that are wroth noting. First, in one scene Robinson goes up to bat and a player on the other team is saying some truly awful, racist things to him. This guy knows that Jackie Robinson can’t fight back or he will lose his hard earned spot. Robinson’s teammate then stands up for him and gets in the racist mans face telling him to knock it off. As we’ve seen through the semester, “the other” can often be put in lonely and tough situations like Robinson was here and sometimes that other needs help from people you’d least expect. Later in the movie, Robinson begins to lose it and has a mental breakdown after continuously dealing with racist remarks. The owner then comes down Robinson tells him he can’t do this no more while the owner responds that he needs to do this because of what it represents for him and the African American population. And that right there is the biggest takeaway about intercultural relationships. As we saw when we talked about 9/11 and the effect on Muslims, one action can cause a reaction against an entire group, especially when it is a minority. Here, if Robinson had quit, the white people would have labeled black people has quitters, losers, and more. This is why relationships and especially intercultural relationships mean so much because it’s bigger than you and it is bigger than that one single relationship you may have.
The writer wants us to see how one thing can cause such a ripple effect especially when it comes to topics like Race. Robinson joining baseball helped his team win games in the small picture. In the big picture, it opened doors for minorities of all kinds to do what they loved and help break that racial barrier. Robinson. like many other important historical figures, paved a way for the future by putting these intercultural relations into perspective to successfully complete the big picture.