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Sociological Analysis Of The Movie 'The Help'

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Sociological Analysis Of The Movie 'The Help'
This paper is going to analyze the sociological perspectives put on women during the civil rights era, by using the movie The Help to give examples. There are many themes evident in this movie, such as, gender socialization, counter framing/ social deviance and sexualization.

During the civil rights era, when this movie took place, white women were seen as the homemakers. They were expected to get married, have babies, be involved in social events and supervise “the help”. In no means were they to work, in or out of the home. This would be an example of gender socialization. In the movie white women were oppressed in this way. Many of the white women played into this role and when a woman did not play into this role they criticized them. One …show more content…
Very rarely are black men apart of this film, this not only reflects todays society but also the society back during this day. The movie The Help shows an accurate representation of how black men are viewed on a daily basis. This socialization of black men has become an increasing problem in 2015 but the stereotype had to come from somewhere. As the movie depicts that this was even a stereotype happening back during the 1960s. Research shows that during the 1960s 19.9% of black children lived without the presence of their biological father (U.S. Census Bureau 2012). Looking at these statistics the gender socialization is wrong, many fathers were present during this time. The movie The Help was produced in 2011 and absentee black fathers has become a very well known socialization. The producers own stereotypes played into the making of the movie and were very inaccurate in this aspect of the …show more content…
Somehow the film ended up being focused more on the white women. This could be because the people who wrote this book/movie did not have any variation of gender or race.

In conclusion, the movie The Help had many different sociological aspects that could have been looked at and even some underlying concepts that one would have to dig deep to see. Overall the sociological aspects of the movie that really stood out were gender socialization, counter framing/social deviance, and femininity. As (Lewis and Altamit 2015:94) said in their review of the article “The Help not only shows us how far we have come regarding race relations, it also illustrates the strides that have been made in redefining female gender
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