Race and Gender Displayed on "The Road" and "The Quest"
Searching for Angela Shelton and The Grace Lee Project are similar and different in many ways relating to the use of “the road� and “the quest� and how each is raced or gendered.
In Searching for Angela Shelton “the road� has a strong presence. There are many scenes that take place in the RV as Angela and her camera man travel the country to visit the other Angela’s. However, in The Grace Lee Project we witness Grace travel on the road only a couple of times. Instead, most of the film plays out at different locations that are important to the other Grace’s.
The quest that both women find themselves on is similar as they both are looking to discover something. Angela is looking to discover just who she is and wants to inform the population about how common violence against women is. Grace is looking to distinguish herself from all the other Grace Lee’s.
Angela does not use race to distinguish the road or her quest. She visits both white and black Angela Shelton’s. I think this is important in her documentary because she is able to show violence against women holds no racial bias. Grace uses race in her film to distinguish the road and her quest. She limits her focus on Grace Lee’s to Asian women. I think this is important in her documentary because she is trying to get at the stereotypes Asian women experience (nice, smart, quiet, pure, etc.).
about the violence women experience. However, a large part of her story comes out when she meets with her step-brother and her father. She also incorporates the husbands and fathers of some of the Angela’s as character references. Grace uses gender in a different way than Angela and in a similar way to her use of race. She uses gender as a way to limit her focus and spend more time truly developing her characters. She focuses on the women in the film and will occasionally ask the men for their opinions about the women. For example with the deaf Grace, Grace asked her son to talk about his mother.
While both Angela and Grace have some similarities, their different uses of gender and race within “the road� and “the quest� relate to the main point they are trying to make and how they feel they can best get that point across to their audience.