Instructions
Sociological Analysis of a Movie
Movies can tell us a lot about society and culture. A movie may discuss social roles in a particular time and culture, history, views of socially constructed norms such as sexual morality, cultural fears, and many other sociological facets. By reviewing the movie from a sociological perspective, we can gain insight into a director or writer’s vision, but also how contemporary society views itself and its world.
Using a sociological theoretical perspective of either Conflict Theory or Symbolic Interactionist Theory, analyze a movie of your choice, applying sociological concepts from your text to the movie to support what you believe the movie has to say sociologically. You will not summarize the whole movie; rather, focus on the parts of it that are most important to your argument. You will be doing this in the body of your paper, while applying the concepts of the text to support your sociological argument(s).
To begin, write an introduction to introduce the movie you will be analyzing, providing a brief summary, the theoretical perspective you will be using as a framework to view the movie, and provide a hook to bring the reader in. You will also use the introduction to introduce sociological argument. The body of your paper will use evidence from the movie, such as events from the plot, descriptions of important scenes, and direct quotes from character dialogue to support the assertions you made in the introduction paragraph. Your conclusion paragraph ties it all together and restates your argument regarding the theoretical perspective used.
Here are some questions to ask yourself as you are watching the movie of your choice:
How would a theorist using the perspective of my choice view this movie?
What does the movie have to say sociologically?
Can I identify any sociological themes in the movie?
In what ways the movie reflects the events and social reality of its time and in what ways it distorts them?
Does the movie reflect on universal human concerns and problems and, if so, how.?
How well the movie fits into sociological ideas and research, or if it contradicts them?
What does it say, if anything, on the relationship between the individual and the society in which s/he lives?
