Movie Analysis: Cocaine Cowboys

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Cocaine Cowboys. Billy Corben. Jon Roberts, Mickey Munday, Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, and Jan Hammer. Magnolia Pictures. 2006. Cocaine Cowboys is documentary film that was released in 2006 that was directed Billy Corben, and produced by Alfred Spellman and Corben. The film is about the rise of cocaine smuggling and the Miami drug war during the years of 1970s-1980s in Miami, Florida. In our textbook that is chosen for this course which is called, “Sociology: A Global Perspective” (Ferrante). We go over deviance, conformity, and social control in chapter seven; all in which becomes very relevant when put in the same conversation with this film, Cocaine Cowboys. This film is a true example of deviance that our society struggles with still to this day. The film presents the development of the illegal …show more content…

Many enforcers were careful on not being caught in the act of their deviance, which allows them to go unnoticed and not properly face the consequences of their actions. According the textbook, Emile Durkheim (1901) argued that although definitions of what constitutes deviance vary by place, it is present in all societies. He defined deviance as acts that offend collective norms and expectations. Durkheim believed that what makes an act or appearance deviant is not so much its character or consequences, but that a group has defined it as dangerous or threatening to its well-being (Ferrante, 134). Despite all the people involved in the business that committed certain crimes, they also had their own opinion of deviance in their inner circle. Griselda Blanco for example, was a threat to the group, untrustworthy and psychotic to all other underground organizations. Law enforcement and media can be labeled as the social audience that involve people who accepted the mores of society and live by

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