Introduction of Assignment THE MOVIE I PICKED IS MATILDA Our ideas about marriag

Introduction of Assignment THE MOVIE I PICKED IS MATILDA
Our ideas about marriage and family are shaped by the various experiences we have in our own culture. We are influenced by the families we live in or have lived in. We are exposed to other families, perhaps those of our friends or neighbors. We may have been formally taught in a structured setting (like school) things about marriage and family. Also, our ideas about marriage and family are shaped by the mass media. Think, for example, of the family of the 1950s. Images from popular TV shows, such as Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best may come to mind. Many of our ideas about the family of the 50s are shaped by these popular TV shows. Movies also tell us a lot about families whether we.re looking at a serious drama like American Beauty or a hilarious comedy depiction of family life like Meet The Parents. While these are all fantasy depictions of family life, they tend to be grounded in real-life experiences with families. There are usually the basic components of family that Strong and DeVault (1995) mention: one or more people; some relationship of blood, marriage, or affiliation; some economic cooperation; usually sharing a common dwelling place; often include child rearing. You can look at these movies and tell who the members are, why they are considered parts of the family, etc. The theories we will be dealing with in this class can be used not only to make sense of family life of real-world people but to make sense of the movie/television families that help shape our impressions of family. These images have a role as an agency of socialization and are therefore worth pushing through the grinder of theory to see if they can be analyzed just like the families that they reflect. Your challenge is to write a coherent essay analyzing the family experience shown in a movie through a specific theoretical model discussed in class. You will be evaluated on how well you have been able to relate aspects of the theory to the encapsulated 2 hour experience you have with the movie family. This is more than just an opportunity to simply review a cool movie. It is important that you recognize our challenge to integrate course knowledge and maybe even some outside research in order to approach what you find critically. This paper should be a thoughtful, creative, synthetic, well-written analysis of a movie family as seen through the eyes of someone who is familiar with theories and research in the sociology of families and households. Remember, the point of this assignment is to help you move beyond catharsis to some level of competency as critical sociologists.
Stages Of The Project
Pick a movie. There is a list on the webpage, but you should feel free to move beyond that list for other choices. Please do your best to pick a movie that is focused on ONE particular family and seems to have the relationships of the family members as its primary plot.
Pick a theory that interests you. Make sure you understand the key concepts, some of the propositions that come out of the theory, and how people who use the theory to study real families do so. The textbook reviews the empirical applications sections of the theory text will help with this. They may also serve as guides. For example, in the symbolic interaction theory chapter, the authors use “dating aggression” as an empirical application of the theory. Movies about domestic violence would be a place to start because the chapter gives you some sense of how the theory is related to that particular issue in family living.
Watch the movie and take notes. Are there key scenes that really show aspects of the theory? If you’re using systems theory, are there scenes that show closed or open boundaries? In Meet The Parents, how does the difficulty that Ben Stiller’s character has in being a part of that family show the closed boundary concept? How do the interactions of the three sisters in Hanging Up reflect the conflict theory proposition that coalitions form when families have more democratic authority patterns?
Begin to write your paper. a) Describe the family in the movie. Who are the members of the family and how are they related to each other? What type of family is it (nuclear, extended, cohabitating, single parent, homosexual, blended, dualworker, etc.)? Why do you characterize this group as a family? Is the plot of the movie realistic? How likely is it that a real family would be faced with this problem? If your only impression of families was based on this movie, what would that impression be? In other words, what would you think families are like if the only thing you knew about them was based on this movie. This could probably be the first of the ten pages. Do not just answer these questions as if we’re asking for a short answer essay. Bring the answers together into a coherent thought.
b) Give me a broad sense of why you’ve chosen the theory and what it has to offer in explaining the family interaction. Then tell me about the theory. Please use the class texts to help you with this; both texts MUST be in your bibliography. Pretend I don’t know anything about the theory. Make it clear to us that you do. This will give me some way to organize our thinking as we read the paper. This will tell me how I should think about what you’re going to do. This will probably be two pages or so.
c) Pick some scenes (2-3) that most clearly reflect the themes, concepts, and propositions of the theory you have chosen. Discuss how the interactions or other aspects of the family relationships do this. Use the notes that you took and support your analysis with specific examples from your notes. For example, if you say that both mother and father have equal power in decision-making, give clear and descriptive examples from the movie that show this. We imagine a page or two using each scene, but you don’t have to stick to this format. We just think it would be easier to write a coherent paper if you try to analyze key incidents rather than rambling all over the place trying to analyze the whole story.
d) Finally, surround the paper with an introduction and a conclusion that brings the reader into the paper and then closes the paper. Don’t just stop writing and hand it in. A paper, like a book and like the movies you will watch, should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Please give us all three parts of your paper.
As usual, the paper should be single-spaced, have one inch margins, and have page numbers. The font should be Times or Times New Roman and nothing bigger than 12 point. The paper should be a minimum of 2 pages long. The paper is worth 100 points.
The grading criteria is as follows: The balance in your paper between “the story”—that is, your description of the movie, your telling of the tale—and your sociological analysis should be weighted towards the “critical” more than the “descriptive.” We will be looking at how well you describe the movie, relationships, and situations (i.e., with concrete facts and vivid details), but will be more interested in how well you analyze the relationships in the context of what we’ve discussed about the theory you’re using. I obviously expect explicit references to course concepts and readings.
Mechanics: Is the paper free of spelling, typographical, and grammatical errors? Are sources correctly cited throughout the paper and in the bibliography. Use APA documentation style for citations.