Talk:Watermelon Man (film)/Archive 1

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Emptyucker.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 12:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Plot corrections

Just saw this on Retroplex. Gerber isn't actually arrested when he leaves the house, but he is apprehended by police while making his usual race against the morning bus, because the white people he runs past assume he is engaged in some felony. The bus driver vouches for him and he gets to work okay, though his boss soon schemes to turn him into an unscrupulous "negro insurance" specialist. To the character's credit, he refuses to sell black families insurance they don't need and gives them sound investment advice even when it delays immediate profit for his firm. This is our first indication that Gerber's bigotry does not run deep; he just does the right thing without deciding to. Later that day, Gerber is refused admittance to a whites-only club where he'd arranged (by phone) to meet one of his white clients, which leads to another confrontation with the police.

Also, the Norwegian secretary who seduces Gerber is not his own, she's only part of the secretarial pool he walks through every morning. His own secretary rather takes his change in stride. The Norwegian's lust for Gerber is revealed to be a different form of bigotry in a scene revealing more of Gerber's unsuspected depth. Also, he does not so much quit his job as get fired when he refuses to sell unnecessary insurance. After a montage implying that the best job even a well-educated black man can get is at a garbage dump, Gerber comes home to find the phone harassers in his living room, intent on buying him out of their neighborhood. "It's nothing personal" they insist. It's after this and his wife's insistence that she can't sleep with him anymore that he visits the Norwegian and comes home to find his wife has left him.

The final shot of the film is of Gerber and a roomful of other black men practicing karate with makeshift shinais (mop handles, etc.). Godfrey Cambrige is freeze-framed in a close-up, roaring, with the shinai looking like a spear. Fade to black, baby. Asat (talk) 08:22, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

• Have made changes to the page to reflect what is said here and cleaned up some inaccuracies. 63.215.28.173 (talk) 01:47, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Watermelon Man 2?

A joke surfacing was that there was a Watermelon Man 2 where a black pop singer suddenly wakes up and says "Now I'm white!" Gee, who could that be referring to? It sounds like a Saturday Night Live joke. Any input on such a parody? 12.41.204.3 (talk) 20:28, 26 February 2010 (UTC)