Sociological Analysis Of Kinsey

Kinsey, a film written and directed by Bill Condon, chronicles the story of well renowned human sexuality researcher Alfred Kinsey, and his struggles of being the first to study what was considered a taboo subject back in that time period. The film does a great job of not only telling his story, but it also integrating real theories from psychology and sociology.
The first thing about this film that caught my eye from a sociological perspective is that the society in the film is not depicted as a “perfect society” as most films do, instead it shows the real conflicts that society had back then with certain subjects. The film shows us the prejudices, and misconceptions that people had about things like sex, and homosexuality at the time.
The

structural-functional perspective is the first of the three sociological theories that I saw in this film. At the beginning of the film society is working together, just like the structural-functional approach states, and it is fine for a majority of the society to have such subjects like sex, and homosexuality that they don't talk about, but it is still an underlying problem that is being ignored. This can be considered as a latent function, because the consequences of letting such subjects go ignored for so long would go unnoticed and be hidden. Kinsey sees this as a problem and decided to study human sexuality, something he feels as if it should be common knowledge for everyone, turning a taboo subject into everyday knowledge.
The conflict perspective comes into play once Kinsey starts his research. There’s two sides of society working against each other: those who want to know more about human sexuality, and those who insist it remains a subject that is not discussed. At this point in time, the side that wants it to remain as a undiscussed subject has more power, but as the film goes on, Kinsey’s side slowly starts to gain more power as human sexuality starts to become less of a taboo subject.
The symbolic-interaction perspective can be seen in certain situation throughout the film. This perspective states that social interaction helps shape our identity or sense of self. This is shown when Kinsey and his team are talking to their volunteers and taking their sex history. As the volunteers talk more about sex, they seem to get more comfortable with it, and as they open up, they realize their true self when it comes to their sexuality. This can be seen in scenes in the movie like the scene when Kinsey is taking his dad’s sex history, or near the end of the film in another scene with an older homosexual woman that was finally okay with who she truly is after she saw Kinsey’s work.
Overall, I thought it was a great film that was very well done. I knew little of Kinsey before watching the film, and the film was very informative about who he was and what he did. It did a great job of telling his story, and everything he brought to the world of human sexuality. The film also had great psychological, and sociological aspect to it, and if you knew what to look for, it makes the film that much more enjoyable.