Tight Jeans

 Can comedy be used to make a serious point?

The short film Tight Jeans focuses on three young men waiting for their friend who see someone walk by wearing a pair of skinny jeans, sparking a conversation on race and culture. 

The director of the film, Destiny Ekaragha, approaches topics of relations between different cultures throughout history with a lighthearted, slightly silly tone, helping to make the points made by the characters more palatable for the viewer. By hiding hard-hitting theories on racism and slavery amongst penis jokes, Ekaragha manages to ease the audience into thinking about the divides and relations between different ethnic groups today.

As well as managing to balance comedy and political commentary, Ekaragha also uses mise-en-scene to further emphasise her themes of cultural divides. The costuming plays into the idea of 'tribes', dressing the group in similar hoodies and baggy jeans while dressing passers by in vastly different clothing to the main characters. This exaggerates the sense that these young men are separated from the people walking past and that they don't really relate to one another, enhancing the themes Ekaragha is portraying in this film.