The Castle Movie Analysis

If someone was to ask you to best describe the movie ‘The Castle’ in one word, how would you respond? You’d probably respond by saying something like ‘witty’ or maybe ‘relatable’. Well, you wouldn’t exactly be wrong, but what if I were to tell you that actually it’d be ‘unfair’.

Throughout the movie ‘The Castle’, Sitch implements innuendo such as racism, classism, and sexism to effectively convey a satirical and consequently unfair representation of Australian society. Read as Bentley Burke analyses ‘The Castle’ and justifies how it is an unfair representation of Australian society.

Racism is a common innuendo contrived through aesthetic features; Sitch appeals to the audience by playing the harmful and bigoted racism off as harmless and innocuous. The two instances of racism that the character Farouk embodies are that Middle Eastern people are terrorists and drug dealers. This is expressed multiple times, through dialogue and mise-en-scene. An example of these being exploited through mise-en-scene is when Darryl asks his neighbours for $500 each to pay Dennis Denuto, the lawyer representing Darryl and the neighbours in court's fee, and Farouk pulls $500 in cash out of his pockets. This alludes to the unfair stereotype that 'wogs' are drug dealers. Moreover, Middle Eastern people being terrorists is communicated when Farouk says "He say plane fly overhead, drop value. I don't care. In Beirut, plane fly over, drop bomb. I like these planes" and "My friend go to your house, put bomb under your car and blow you to f*cking sky". This racism unfairly isolates Middle Eastern people as a threat to society and promotes the notion that they are wogs, deadbeats. 

Farouk's grammar in the dialogue above is an example of diminutisation, which is insinuated to be the result of Farouk's lower-class background. This is a case of classism, a reoccurring theme throughout the movie, and leads me to my next point. 

The movie depicts the working-class as bold but naïve, arbitrary, and ignorant. However, in reality, Australians would describe the working-class as hardworking and neither necessarily ignorant nor genius.

In particular, when the working-class has been portrayed as bold but naïve was when Darryl first went to court; Darryl made bold statements and accusations, however, when asked what law exactly the Government was breaking, Darryl was speechless, unable to back up what he was saying, and the case was thrown out of court immediately. Furthermore, Darryl not being prepared infers he is whimsical and arbitrary. This unfairly implies the working class doesn’t prepare for things and doesn’t think things through properly before doing something.

Darryl is a   tow-truck driver, a ‘typical'   working-class job, and makes an honest living.  The working-class is shown to enjoy the simple pleasantries of life, watching greyhound racing, going fishing, and DIY projects. A running joke in the film is that all working-class families have a pool room where they keep their prized possessions; whenever Darryl is gifted something, he routinely exclaims "This is going straight to the pool room". This appeals to the audience as, albeit a stereotype, is still relatable. In Chris Lilley’s ‘Ja’mie: Private School Girl’, the upper-class Ja’mie is portrayed as the near opposite of the middle-class Darryl, which is suggested to be the result of the class distinction.

The middle-class is also portrayed as being somewhat ignorant. Tracey is the 'pride of the family’ because she has a TAFE degree in hairdressing, which most of society wouldn't accredit as much as Darryl does. Moreover, Tracey’s degree in hairdressing is a snide sexist joke and leads me to my next point.

'Light-hearted' sexism is a stereotype touched on in the film. The stereotype that the stay-at-home wife cooks and cleans is very apparent in ‘The Castle'. Sitch portrays Sal as heavily dependent on Darryl, who is the breadwinner for the family, and further emphasises Darryl’s dominance in the household by frequently filming him from low-angle close-up shots. Tracey’s degree in hairdressing is a very feminine subject to have a degree in and alludes to Sitch’s bigoted view that women can’t do the same things as men as they are universally different. This trait is shared in Ja’mie, who is portrayed as the harmony of femininity.  

In summary, Sitch successfully uses prejudices such as racism, classism, and sexism, in order to efficiently manifest an unfair representation of Australian society. We vividly remember 'The Castle' fondly for its comical and witty humour, but we often forget its crude and unsavoury undertone. To top it all off, I believe movies like ‘The Castle’ and their unfair representations of Australian society are detrimental to the community and if they are to continue it is possible that someday society will forget how to judge people by their character, and instead base their views off excessively melodramatic films.