Sociological Analysis Of Julia's Weeds '

Showtime’s Weeds is a television series that premiered in 2005. It tells the story about a suburban mother, named Nancy Botwin, of two boys, Silas and Shane, whose husband dies and, in order to maintain her standard of living, sells marijuana. The entire show is filled with ups and downs, plot twists, and a wide variety of sociological concepts. The four main sociological concepts present in the show are sex and gender, deviance, race and ethnicity, and socialization and social interaction. Sex and gender is a relatively blatant topic present in Weeds. The show covers a wide variety of aspects including sexual orientation, gender roles, sex and many others. Gender roles and gender stereotypes are emphasized especially in the character of …show more content…
Celia’s daughter, Isabelle, suffers from her constant need to have a stereotypical view of what a girl should look like and be. Isabelle is chubby and enjoys to indulge in sweets and other unhealthy foods which her mother forbids. In the first episode of season one, Isabelle is in a soccer game while Celia is talking to Nancy and when Isabelle runs up to her mother to receive praise for the goal she just made, her mother tells her to run a little more and goes on to call her “Isa-belly”. Along with this, in episode two of season one, Celia goes on to replace her daughter’s secret stash of chocolate with laxative in order for her to lose weight. Celia’s constant actions to form her daughter into a skinny girl show that society expects a girl to be molded into a certain stereotype. In the show there is another character named Doug Wilson who also lives near Nancy. He is a member of the city council, one of Nancy’s biggest buyers, and has a gay son. In the first episode of season one, Nancy discovers that Doug’s son is gay and, to keep him from dealing weed to children, uses the knowledge against him because his father, Doug, would not be accepting of his sexuality. In episode thirteen of …show more content…
Nancy Botwin possessing and selling marijuana is an example of negative deviance along with the use of it and other drugs. In episode ten of season one, Nancy’s older son Silas is taken home by the police because he was caught using the deadly drug ecstasy. It is is socially unacceptable to be under the influence of drugs and Silas openly being under the influence makes him an example of deviance in the show. The main drug referenced in the show is obvious;y marijuana and a majority of the characters in the show take part in using some of them going to the extremes to obtain it. In episode three of season one, Doug Wilson illegally bribes a doctor to write a card to legally allow him to buy medical marijuana. He makes up the fact that he has depression to get away with legally buying the drug until he is told that it would show up on his records and would prevent him from reelection in the next vote for city council. This perfectly embodies deviance in the aspects of illegally going against society’s rules and getting drugs and also Doug being turned away by society, if he were caught, because he used an illegal drug. However, not all of the examples of deviance in Weeds are drug related. In episode three of season six, while the Botwin family is on the run, Silas and his Uncle Andy visit a man by the name of “The Chinaman”