Thursday, September 16, 2010
A Bronx Tale
In the movie A Bronx Tale, some amazingly inhumane things happen, as a result of peoples' social constructions of reality and as a result of the groups that they are in. For example, when Sunny and his crew beat up the group of bikers in the bar, if there had been some one in the bar that was not part of the group they most likely would have been left out of it. This occurs because being in the group of bikers contributes to one's identity and if Sunny does not like a biker, then he does not like any biker. An example of how peoples' social constructions of reality influence them is clearly seen in the racial divide between blacks and whites. When a white person enters a black neighborhood, or vice versa, they are immediately either chased away or physically abused. This only happened because people were taught to hate the other race. Although a person may not do something to specifically harm another, they hate them because that is how they grew up. How have we been able to do away with some of these racial barriers? What effect do the racial barriers have in the movie?
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The difference between neighborhoods for the whites and blacks completely amazed me. I couldn't believe that C's friends beat up a gang of black bike riders just because they were black and riding through there all white neighborhood. Same for when the black kids threw a bottle at C when he dropped off Jane.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree with you Connor. I think we can attribute this hatred for the other types of people to what we learned in class about ingroups and outgroups. If we are are part of a group (the ingroup), we automatically like the people and what they stand for. We don't like the groups that we aren't a part of (the outgroup) solely for the reason that we are not in the group.
ReplyDeleteThat scene when the Italian boys beat up the black kids was actually really scary! It was disgusting to think about how people could commit such awful things. But if you think about it in their point of view, hating black people was all they grew up on. I'm sure they were taught to hate people that were different, so that had a huge influence on their opinions. So, I completely agree with what you said about upbringing being a huge influence on how people think and act.
ReplyDeleteI felt sooo bad when those bikers were getting beat up! It was so sad to see any type of violence due to discrimination.
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