American History X

American History X

INTRODUCTION

American History X is based on several sociological concepts. The concept that is visible throughout the movie and continuously in the forefront is the ethnocentric beliefs and racism. Even though these two concepts are the extremely highlighted but they are not very significant. The most significant sociological concept in the movie is primary socialization; however this concept is not displayed until later. Primarily racism is made highlighted in the beginning scenes with the use of derogatory terms. The leading character Derek Vineyard, starts referring to Afro-Americans and several other people from minority as parasites and issues in America. In this scene he moreover exhibits the views of white supremacy.

Message of the movie is that “Nobody is born with hate and Nazism, it's something you get taught through socialization, environment and upbringing, because frustrated and young fragile kids are easy to manipulate, and then they evolve the frustration into anger and hate. But it does not make you feel any better, so it is hopeless”.

DISCUSSION

Analysis of Alison Young on American History X

According to Alison, History exhibits that we human beings are violent beings, Brutal wars, torture, genocide and crime have turned out to be a ordinary and routine content of news showing the stories of retribution and curious crime stories. Small disputes detonate into violent wars as small people are capable of controlling their fury (Young, 2010).

The success of film American History X was observed for its scene of violence and this would confirm this propensity even more. It is specifically the attraction of people to this film that has led Alison young to study the impact of violence showed on screen in her book “The Scene of Crime: Is there such a thing as "just looking”. She opted for ignoring all except the crime against people and terrorism (Young, 2010).

Alison young begins from the disagreement between fear of people and revulsion of violence and their apparent attraction with the film that has extreme violent scenes, like American History X. Even though known for extreme violence, this film is also recommended as the quality film. In her research of attraction of revulsion, Alison recommended several ways the crimes scenes are perceived With the use of her knowledge as criminologist to interrogate the experience of movie goers while they are involved in watching cinematic images of crime, Alison Young brings her evaluation back in the end to the symbol of law and justice prefigured by the violence in the films (Young, 2010).

The approach of Alison young is holistic, she examined both the cognitive and the affective outcome as well, brought out while the film was watched by people. Alison young turns to the theory of cinema for the discussion of the impact of this material on the mind and body of the spectator (Young, 2010). The central question is what may take place in the person watching the movie as he is facing the scenes of the crime on the screen. Young analyses the involvement of the ...