After watching the movie, I want to discuss about three issue appear in the movie:religion,education and stratification. First, I want to talk about the religion issue in movie. When Jenny was running in the field afraid of being catcher, she pray to God to be a bird to fly away. From Deuterium’s view, The focus of religion is “things that surpass the limits of our knowledge”. Here, almighty God performs the supportive function.
He supports Jenny during her difficult times and gives her hope of being a bird and get rid of her father. From Marx view, “Religion is the opium of the masses” and religion is a true reflection of reality. Jenny prayed to be a bird and from this act we can see that she was looking forward to get rid of his father. However, Just like Marx said, religion is only opium and she can’t get help from god indeed. ‘ also have similar experience like this. Before exams, I always wish God can let the questions be easy and I can do it.
However, this is useless, what I an do is to study and learn more knowledge. Second, I want to talk about the education issue. Len the movie, Forrest was not accepted by the public school because of low IQ. Through school education, the values and skills as recognized by mainstream clusters in society is convey to kids. As a “mid-way’ training institution, as a “colonization agent”, prepares kids to adapt to the rules and regulations of society. So a good school is very important to a children. Forest’s mom did not want him to go to a special school and became a worker in the future.
However, Forest’s IQ didn’t attain 80 and was not allowed to go to public school. From here we can see that the interest group that won decides what part of their preferred “status culture ” to be cooperated into the school curriculum. The main function of school is to produce “cultivated man” and provide with the ruling class a favorable environment. The meaning of “cultivated” is certainly decided by the ruling class. Len the movie, only IQ higher than 80 is regarded as cultivated. The “cultivated” individuals will be selected to Join the elite stratum.
Those failed ones are also, along the way, trained to respect the values and culture of the ruling authority. And Forrest entered university because he can run fast. This also shows the standard of “cultivated” is decided by the ruling class due to their need. This is Just like our university entrance exam. We are tested for some certain knowledge that required by the ruling class. Last, I want to talk about social stratification. Len the movie, the conflict between black people and white people is very sharp. The stratification is found in terms of their kin color.
The white people have many privilege. Many white people such as UK Klux Klan mentioned in the movie thought they are more honorable and did not want to contact with black people. In the object world, people have different skin large-scale grouping of people who share common economic resources and lifestyle. White people are much richer and take control of economic resources so they are regarded as upper class. From anomie theory, black people want to get equal position with white people. However, their skin color cannot change and they always receive bias.
Society emphasizes too much on the success goal and too little on the legitimate means for achieving the goal. This make black people rebel and have conflict with white people. From the symbolic interactions perspective,different color like different labels put on people. The labels made the conflict between the two classes sharper. After watching this movie and apply sociology knowledge to discuss it, I find sociology is quite an interesting and useful subject. We still need to learn more in the future.
