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A Bronx Tale

While watching the movie, A Bronx Tale, not only is it such a good movie, but it is also helping me to understand Sociology a lot more. It is unbelievable to me the huge affect social construction and "groups" have on people. Throughout the movie, there is a huge emphasis on the different, cultured neighborhoods. Of course, the movie mostly takes place in the Italian neighborhood, but in the part we watched in class today, it showed a couple of interactions that really stuck with me. The first was the interaction between Sonny and the biker gang. The groups in that society were so "cliquey" that they were willing to do anything to prove their "rank" in their group. In this scene, Sonny created a huge fight in his bar after the bikers were disrespectful. Even though there were only a couple main guys that were disrespectful, the entire group was severely beat up by Sonny and his friends. What's interesting though, is that if there was someone else in there from another group, Sonny and his friends would most likely not have gone near them. Another scene that really stuck with me, was the scene where C's friends beat up the group of African American boys that were riding bikes, causing absolutely no harm, through their Italian neighborhood. C recently met Jane, who is African American, and had no bad feelings toward these boys or anyone else from their neighborhood. When C sees his friends going after the boys, he repeatedly yelled at them to stop, but of course no one listened. C felt like he had to go out there and look like he was doing something because his friends were doing it, even though he was totally against beating up these African American boys. The social construction really shows in this movie. All of these kids just hear that they should do something or think a certain way, like hate the other neighborhoods. If they had the chance to make their own opinions of them, like C, maybe they would see that there really was no difference between them besides skin color. I really hope that people can watch this movie and see that if they just give people a chance and make their own opinions for themselves, like C did with Jane, and not "judge a book by its cover", like C's friends did, they might think differently about people and many other things in life. I think it's important for people to find themselves on their own and learn for themselves, rather than just live off of what other people tell them.

Habitat for Humanity!!

This past Saturday I went and completed the first 8 hours of community service for the final, but it was much more than that. This experience was something that I had never experienced before. It was day 1 of the project in Elgin, IL which meant "Tear it all down, break everything" day! At first it was weird taking sledge hammers and pry-bars and hitting them as hard as possible into the ceilings and walls, but after a few swings, it became a little bit more normal. By the end of the 7-hour day, there were no more ceilings and barely any walls. All the cabinets from the kitchen were taken down and taken apart and the ceilings were just support beams and the roof. It was one of the most rewarding experiences, especially because we were working all day with the new owner of the house and her niece. Getting to know the new homeowner and seeing her excitement about it was so cool! She was so excited and told us she had to put in 250 hours to "pay" for the work Habitat for Humanity is doing for her. I think that this organization is amazing! To have all of these volunteers come out and work so hard to give something back to someone in the community is amazing! There is a long list of people just waiting to be able to come out and help them, so when we asked if we would be able to come back, the volunteer organizer said that we basically had to wait in line and go on the "short notice" list!
I've always done community service, but nothing like this before! This was totally out of my community and I went there knowing one person, but ended up becoming a part of a team for 7 hours to help out someone in the community!
The woman who was going to soon live in the 95-year-old house was so appreciative of everything we were doing for her. It was obvious that she was impressed that we went there just to help. She kept asking if we had to complete community service specifically at Habitat for Humanity and we told her that we could have gone anywhere or done anything, but we really liked this organization and she was so appreciative.
Something that surprised me was the amount of adults and kids there. There were around 15 people there and only 4 kids, one of them being the new homeowner's niece. It was amazing to me that all of these adults stopped and took a day out of their lives to just help out in their community. I thought that that was so cool!
Hopefully people read this and decide that going out of their comfort zone with this project is such a cool, exciting experience! Everyone should try to do something outside of our community if possible!!

The House!













                                                                          
                                Jamie and me hanging from the "new" ceiling!

Spit or Saliva?

Social Construction takes over society's minds.
Society truly creates how people feel about things, about almost everything.

In class, even I, someone who tries to be very open-minded, felt uncomfortable and disgusted when asked if I wanted to drink a classmate's "spit".

When Sal gave us the insight to make the realization about spit versus saliva, it really put a lot into perspective for me. I always thought that all morals came from my parents, then morals led me to my opinions, and that's how my feelings towards things are formed. This little "sociological experiment" proved some of that wrong. I never realized that "spit" is the same exact thing as "saliva".

The concept of Social Construction makes me think about the whole Proposition 8 dispute in California, and really nation-wide. If there was no background or society-pushing-beliefs, I truly believe there would be a lot less disagreement towards Gay Marriage. I really do think that if kids were allowed, from the beginning, to come up with their own opinions, there would be a lot more people that thought it was okay for any two people, if in love, can get married. I know that this is such a hot topic, but it can be brought down to a high school level...
I, as a little Freshman, was nervous about homecoming and turn about, and whether or not I would get asked or have the guts to ask someone. This led me to think that it would be a lot more fun if me and some of my close girlfriends just went in a big group to the dance together. When I brought this idea up to my friends, some of them loved the idea; they felt it took a lot of pressure off of them and they knew they would still have fun and experience the dance. Others, however, felt too embarrassed and "weird" going through with the idea. They thought other people would think a variety of negative things about them. For example, some thought that others would think they were secretly Lesbian, or couldn't get a guy, or just a loser for not getting asked.
All of these automatic thoughts were based off of Social Construction.
The majority of my friends thought it was a really good idea, but it never happened because many of them were nervous or too embarrassed because of what they thought other people would think.

Hopefully, people will take Social Construction into consideration and create their own opinions about things! ... At least that's what I want to try to do!