Heat of the Night Reflection

 Before seeing the movie “In the Heat of the Night,” I wasn't excited to sit through another boring history movie. After the first few minutes of the film, I got more and more intrigued until I realized this film is also based around crime. I don't necessarily like watching movies unless they are about crime or horror, so I was interested in what the rest of the film had to offer. Overall, I really liked the story and thought it was really entertaining as a whole.

In this time period, separate but equal was huge, and white and African Americans couldn't share the same space, but were initially equal. In Sparta, the community lied about this because everyone wanted to point fingers at Mr Tibbs for the murder found that night because he is black.

I also think a lot of the other detectives didn't want to side with him because they didn't want to own up to the fact that an African American police officer was better than them. I think he felt very alienated and outnumbered by the other police officers and detectives. In the scene, he was probably also eager to get his name cleared in the case.

The relationship between Det. Tibbs and police chief Gillespie start off very distant, and they don't really trust each other at all. Police Chief Gillespie doesn't value Det. Tibbs' skills till he proves he is reliable, and Police Chief Gillespie begins to trust him and later on advocates for him. Their relationship grows throughout the movie, I guess, put it into perspective of how quickly people were to judge back then, and not let others have a chance.

After watching the movie, I was really looking forward to them finding the killer and the case coming to a resolution, so I was left with a more positive feeling.

The female characters of this movie, Mrs. Colbert,  Delores Purdy, and Mamma Caleba, all represent some sort of place in separate but equal standards. Mrs. Colbert doesn't face any backlash because of her race as a white woman or her marital status. While Delores Purdy is not married and poor, she faces more issues as a low-class, unmarried, white woman. I think Mamma Caleba has the worst placement, with little to no rights, as she is a poor African American woman.

The scene in the nursery is one of importance because Endicott slaps Tibbs, and he slaps him back. This is a pivotal moment in the film because it portrays a black man standing up for himself and also not facing immediate punishment. This represented both parties, one being the enslaved and one being the slave owners, and his pushing back was extremely surprising. He starts crying because he realizes how powerless he's becoming and how the world around him is changing.

In the Heat of the Night, the film doesn't really speak on abortion as a main problem, but they do show how little control women had in this time period. Purdy announces she is pregnant, and a lot of the decisions leading up are handled by the men and police. This shows that she and a lot of women couldn't handle big decisions in their lives on their own, unlike today.

For the male characters, I didn't think they were treated equally at all. Race is a huge factor for some, but a lot of the white male characters also didn't have a lot of rights because they were poor. This did shock me because I didn't know that wealth was such a strong factor in the socioeconomic pyramid at this time.