For my film project, I will explore the 1978 film Grease directed by Randal Kleiser and produced by Allan Carr. The movie depicts the love story of an American teenage couple who unexpectedly reunite at high school after falling in love over the summer. Sandy, the female protagonist, is a new exchange student who must adapt to the social hierarchy of the public-school system. Throughout the film, the couple navigates the social rules of high school romances, friendships, and experiences while trying to find their identity. I chose this classic and entertaining movie because it accurately represents certain anthropological concepts such as acculturation, ethnocentrism, and sexuality. From an anthropological perspective, Grease is an excellent film to analyze. Rizzo's sexuality is uncommon and often looked down upon in most films and society. In the scene where Rizzo's possible pregnancy is announced to her friend Marty, the news spreads like wildfire, and Rizzo experiences social ridicule and glaring because of it. In these scenes, Grease shows the social mores and presence of female sexuality and liberation. In the end, Rizzo's pregnancy is a false alarm, and she moves on with her life, ultimately promoting sexually active female behavior. Rizzo's sexually active, experienced, and even aggressive behavior is often ridiculed as a female, but Grease tells its audience that female sexuality, such as Rizzo's, is acceptable and does not make you a "bad girl." This contradicts the stereotypical female personality that is said to be passive and soft, but Rizzo is shown to have a male-like aggressiveness. Rizzo's singing number, "There are worse things I could do," stands up to slut-shaming and criticism of open female sexual activity. In this song, Rizzo declares that there are far worse things she could do than having sex with a boy or two and that this behavior should not be ridiculed or regulated by society. My culture and the preppy culture are both similar and different in many ways. I feel like I can relate to Sandy because of her culture and values. In this film, Sandy is very similar to how I was in high school: naive and innocent. I attended private school until college, which made me feel sheltered from different cultures, like Sandy. When Sandy arrives at Rydell High School, she does not seem to fully understand the social structure of high school due to the different cultures among her classmates. When I got to college, I was surprised by the diversity, different people, values, and behaviors I was introduced to. Sandy’s preppy subculture and upbringing are what make her studious, good-spirited, and a rule follower, like myself.
In conclusion, in Conley’s memoir he focuses on his experience of switching schools, while in the third grade, from a predominantly African American and Latino school to a predominantly caucasian elementary school. His memoir focuses on the differences in his experiences at each school and how race and class further separated the similarities between his two schools. Conley focuses equally on race and class and how they both influenced and shaped his life, but class was the primary influence on Conley’s
The film that I decided to watch for this assignment was the show Jane the Virgin. The film is about a working and religious young Latina virgin, who becomes pregnant after being unintentionally artificially impregnated. The program humorously mocks commonly used figures and plans in Latin telenovelas. The show has never shied away from getting into political topics, which is why it is one of the most advanced shows on TV right now. The intersectionality aspect in Jane the Virgin is how the show gives us a lesson about abortion, teen pregnancy, and the institutional racism that Latino people face.
The Socs— the well-to-do kids loved by society— may seem like an unusual choice as outsiders, however they, too, are not insusceptible to a teenage identity
A large portion of contemporary film and theatre has been lacking in substance. More often than not, we are presented with a “been there, seen that” scenario. One such exception to this rule is Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a film by John Cameron Mitchell that was released in 2001. Set primarily in post-Cold War America, Hedwig is a film that characteristically breaks convention. Our story follows Hedwig, a forgotten and confused homo…trans…well, human being. Growing up in East Berlin during the Cold War, Hansel Schmidt (John Cameron Mitchell) lives what I would call a horrible childhood in the bleak landscape of communist occupied Germany. He falls in love with an American soldier, and undergoes a sex change in order to marry him and leave East Berlin. The operation is botched, leaving him/her as a physical contradiction. Not quite a man, but not yet a woman, Hansel (now Hedwig) has what she describes as an “angry inch.” When describing it in lighter terms, she calls it a “Barbie doll crotch.” Upon arriving in America, the soldier leaves her the same day the Berlin wall comes down. Destroyed, Hedwig spends some time discovering her new self and eventually finds a soul mate in a young boy named Tommy Speck (Michael Pitt). They collaborate musically and romantically, but upon discovering Hedwig’s secret he leaves with all of their music. He becomes a huge rock star, living Hedwig’s dream while simultaneously leaving her in the dust. From then on, Hedwig and her band “The Angry Inch” follow Tommy as he tours the nation while Hedwig tries desperately to gain the notoriety she deserves for her music. Viewing this film through the lens of a feminist gender perspective, I find that Hedwig is a pioneer on the forefront of changing the gende...
According to Ruby’s book, film can be used a research tool. Visually experiencing something gives us a greater understanding of it, rather than just reading or hearing about it. Ruby expresses the idea that film makers looking to make a visual ethnography have a lot of responsibility to the culture they are sharing so as to give them fair and accurate representation, free from artistic molding or outside influences. They should not highlight the differences in culture, but merely document it in true form. We have studied many people that have made contributions to ethnography such as Robert Flaherty, Timothy Asch and Jean Rouch. An anthropologist that is currently still making major a contribution to this field is Robert Lemelson.
and the best bit of the film is that it is a mix of genre so it suits
We’ve gone over many sociological concepts in class, but the three that I believe apply the most to this film are socialization, deviance, and resocialization. “What sort of world is it at
When life becomes overwhelming during adolescence, a child’s first response is to withdraw from the confinement of what is considered socially correct. Individuality then replaces the desire to meet social expectations, and thus the spiral into social non-conformity begins. During the course of Susanna’s high school career, she is different from the other kids. Susanna:
Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" and George Tillman's box-office hit Soul Food explore the hardships and trials of black family life, and through the characters, setting, and theme of both the story and the film, the issue of class and the search for community is discussed.
The movie that I picked to watch was the World’s Fastest Indian. Now one would think this is about Native Americans, but for others they know an Indian is a motorcycle. The movie is about a man named Burt Munroe that is in his late sixties but is still a child at Heart. He has been modifying his Indian Motorcycle for over 20 years so he can beat the land speed record in Bonneville, Utah. As he makes his journey he faces many challenges that seem to try their best to slow Burt down, but being the quirky man he is, he finds ways to get around the obstacles that are set before to achieve his dream, which he does achieve in the end. This movie does have an instance where the term sociological imagination would come in to play and that is the motive
‘Lad flicks’ or ‘lad movies’ is a type of film genre that emerged in the late 1990s. They are defined as a “‘hybrid of “buddy movies”, romantic comedies and “chick flicks”, which centre on the trials and tribulations of a young man as he grows up to become a ‘real man’. ‘Lad flicks’ respond in part to the much-debated ‘crisis in masculinity’” (Benjamin A. Brabon 116). This genre of film explored what it meant to be a ‘real man’ in the twentieth century and in order to do so, they would have to grow up and leave their juvenile ways behind to enter the heterosexual world. Gender relations in ‘lad flicks’ portray masculinity as a troubled, anxious cultural category hiding behind a humorous façade and also rely greatly on a knowing gaze and irony. The two ‘lad flicks’ that will be analyzed are The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Judd Apatow 2005) and Role Models (David Wain 2008).
Almost everyone in America today has seen one of John Hughes’ iconic 1980’s teen movies. From Pretty in Pink, to Ferris Buellers Day Off, these iconic 80’s hits are still viewed as pop culture even two decades after their release. None of John Hughes movies has had as great an impact on society in America as The Breakfast Club. The 1980’s in America were filled with nuclear threats from the Cold War, President Reagan’s war on drugs and an increasing gap in wealth distribution. Even with America experiencing these heightened tensions, American teenagers were able to be more carefree, in a large part due to the draft being over, and worry about “teenage” problems. The Breakfast Club was able to capture this newfound freedom among teenagers as well as the feelings of anxiety, fear, and drama that came with high school. The film showed that one’s parents don’t determine your life, that breaking out of a label is possible, and that the emotions and issues that take place during this period of life aren’t any less important than the ones you face later on. The Breakfast Club by John Hughes was so impactful on 1980’s American culture because it gave hope for social class mobility, fought against the conservative politics of the era, and was one of the first movies to be shot from an accurate teenage perspective.
While watching movies, we are not simply relaxing or enjoy a leisure period of time. What’s more, we are learning things at the same time, such as how people from other ethnicities are like. In this way, movies formatting our concepts of people even before we actually know them. For example, even though a mysterious Asian woman character who acts as a sexy allurement may escalate a movie’s enticement and exoticism, it leads to a misrepresented image of the Asian women which are portrayed to be submissive, low self-esteem, and “eager for sex” (Hagedorn, para. 5). In the movie The World of Suzie Wong (1960), the Asian female protagonist is described as a prostitute who is a “cute, dancing sex machine” (Hagedorn, para.3), and eagerly wants a man’s love, which describes Asian women as sexuality objects and tragic individuals. Unfortunately, these stereotypes of Asian female will lead to the discrimination and disrespect to them which even result in insult and sexually abuse again Asian women. Thus, movies are definitely not just entertaining methods but are responsible in forming people’s conceptions and understandings, which will bring numerous societal
Also, the film revealed women empowerment and how superior they can be compared to men. While demonstrating sexual objectification, empowerment, there was also sexual exploitation of the women, shown through the film. Throughout this essay, gender based issues that were associated with the film character will be demonstrated while connecting to the real world and popular culture.
“Year after year, twenty-something women come to New York City in search of the two L's: labels and love” is the very catchy line that opens the film with Fergie’s ‘Labels or Love’ as the soundtrack and The Big Apple as its introductory shot. The scaling deduced from the bird’s eye-view-point of New York City, showing its Metropolitan atmosphere with skyscrapers and the famous Brooklyn Bridge; to the urbanites of the City; then to the lead actors of the film. A fifteen year-old girl watches the film, mesmerizing the ecstatic city while admiring the skinny white bodies of the ladies. And last but never forgotten, she gets carried away with the funky upbeat rhythm of the song emphasizing “Gucci, Fendi, [and] Prada . . .” That is the introduction of Sex and the City and the focus of its cinematography. With its elements, the movie can honestly influence teenage girls. Yet as much as critics such as Maya Gordon of Psychology of Women Quarterly say how media contributes to the sexual objectification and values women “based on their appearance,” this film should be an exemption.