Nowadays the world progresses faster than ever. The nation has been swept by rapid developments in technology and inspiring social movements. Directors and artists notice these changes, and as a result, film adapts. The release date of a film can speak volumes about a film. It is a marker of all the elements available at a specific time to form the formal and social qualities of a film.…
In recent years the topic of slavery has become a big hit in the film industry. Films like Ben Hur, Spartacus, Gladiator, and D’jango Unchained have all shared the same theme of slavery. These films tell stories of slaves and the terrible hardship of being held captive. Due to its thought-provoking nature films about slavery have become a reoccurring manifestation in the film industry. As a result of their popularity, slavery has been morphed into an almost glamorized notion.…
METHOD / APPROACH TO THE FILM This paper will focus on the conversation on how race and opacity convey power in Blaxploitation films. This paper will analyze the film Shaft (1971) and how its uses of opacity and race parallels other films and how it was interpreted. This paper will explore six articles…
A Weberian or Marxian Train Ride In Social Inequality class, we watched a movie called Snowpiercer the main characters were Chris Evans (Curtis), Song Kang-ho (Namgoong Minsoo), Jaime Bell (Edgar), John Hurt (Gilliam), Tida Swinton (Mason), Ah-sung Ko (Yona) and Ed Harris (Wilford). The movie plot is an engine that keeps a super-powered locomotive speeding around the planet, the depleted lower classes lived-in the rear cars (Curtis, Edgar, Gilliam, and many others) while the privileged upper classes are indulged in the front( Mason and Wilford along with others). The balance of power between the lower and upper classes begins to shift, however, when an enigmatic message sparks a revolt that cannot be quelled.…
Popular culture and mass media has a large influence on our identities, behaviors, and interacts with people in society. Thousands of movies are made and watched throughout the globe, it is a form of entertainment that presents a bigger picture than most of us can capture. When we begin to analyze films using sociological theory, we are introduced to new themes, conflicts, and emotions that we do not originally notice. In this case, I will be analyzing a clip from the movie Mean Girls, one of the most popular films in mass media today, and use it to demonstrate how class conflict and dramaturgy occur. A well-known sociological theorist by the name of Karl Marx spent his time analyzing and understanding how class conflict arises.…
Super Size Me represents an example of a work that both circumvents and reinforces the tenets of corporate capitalism. Morgan Spurlock uses the grotesque human body in his film in order to address excessive consumption and the facilitation of this consumption by capitalism. However, in doing so, he inevitably uses capitalism as a tool to promote his message, creating a paradox Ross Singer dubs a “commodified form of cinematic dissent” (150). The irony of protesting capitalism through capitalism still has the potential to result in widespread viewership and subsequent activism.…
Within the film, you will find a deep and fierce sense of power, stratification, and socialization. The film is a base for sociology that includes functionalism, symbolic interactionism and of course conflict theory. We will…
The movie that I have chosen to write about is called Inequality for All. It is about a former labor secretary Robert Reich. What he talks about is how economic and social consequences that may have played a part of the widening gap of the rich and the poor. I will be doing an editorial or review of this movie. In his wealth and poverty class at Berkley he talks about how the rich is getting richer and the poor is getting poor.…
Jinhee Choi presents the argument that an effective artwork that elicits emotion is a web comprised of components. If those components are altered, the emotion from the audience can change with them. She also states that an audience reacts based off of their moral views and social norms. An effective director must establish and properly inform an audience about the storyworld to control the audience’s emotions. Similarly, Alan Stone looks more specifically at Tarantino’s use of absurd dialogue, and how it can change the emotion of violence.…
Freedom Writers: Sociological Issues There are many films out in the industry that focus on detailing the works of everyday life. Those whose main message is to give us a more forward understanding in the society we as a nation live in. After going through a few, I narrowed it down to one film in particular that touches on many sociological issues we face every day to this day.…
“Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.” Known for his infamous creations of film which usually have a depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity, Martin Scorsese has had an overwhelming abundance of success in the film industry. In this essay I will discuss how the director Martin Scorsese uses certain techniques such as long tracking shots, freeze frames and the structure of his films in the films like “Goodfellas” and “Casino”. I will discuss and analyse these cinematic techniques and explain how this is then used to engage his audience to an extent that keeps them eager to watch.…
This film displays many examples of privilege, roles in social groups, and paths of least resistance that help to connect and further Johnson’s overall view on the function of social systems within…
Classical Hollywood and neorealism are two important movements that have equally influenced the development of filmmaking. They both engage the audience into the film but their narrative conventions do differ from each other. The significance of the location and actors used differentiates the two approaches; as neorealism focuses on portraying reality by avoiding the glimmer of Hollywood stars and mise-en-scène. This allows neorealism to express the natural occurrences in life and the social issues of its time. CHC is known to use continuity editing to produce a naturalistic flow in its narrative to engage the audience in the film, but neorealism avoids these techniques because they simply illustrate an illusion of reality.…
Books are an ancient form of entertainment that have lived on for a boundless amount of generations. Inherently, a book has more than just words, it gives every reader a different experience because there is always an abundance of ways to analyze the words. Furthermore, Karl Marx, an influential nineteenth century economist utilizes books to explain his socioeconomic method of analysis called, Marxism. One part of Marxism states the imbalance between the proletariats (lower class) and the bourgeoisie (upper class) (Blunden, Marxism). To add on, the author of The Hunger Games uses her interpretations of Marx’s books to create a novel revolving around the main theme which centres around society’s favoritism of the upper class.…
Empowerment and disempowerment using the gaze is manifested as one of the fundamental themes in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) as well as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). Written soon after the Second World War, Nineteen Eighty-Four was a novel which portrayed the experiences of Winston Smith, the protagonist and other significant characters who are bound to live within a totalitarian regime in which the powerful forces are punishment and fear. The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985 and set in the Republic of Gilead is also a novel which utilizes the notion of a totalitarian regime. Although both novels originate from contrasting literary traditions, they both share the visionary concept of how totalitarian…