Deviance

Hail Satan?

Hail Satan?

2019, 1h 35m… The film does a fantastic job of presenting The Satanic Temple as a social movement fighting against the codification of Christianity in American society. We learn that the Constitution does not establish the United States as a Christian nation, and that efforts to formalize Christianity in government largely began with the evangelical lobby of the 1950s. This was the time where “under God” was added to the pledge of allegiance and “In God We Trust” was added to money. Interestingly, part of the success of the evangelical lobby was its ability to connect capitalism with Christianity based on the godless communist threat of era. Ever since this time, politicians and advocates have been trying to impose more Christian elements in our government, such as prayer services before public hearings and Ten Commandments monuments in capital buildings. The Satanic Temple arose to counter these encroachments through creative activism.

Tickled

Tickled

Tickled is basically a film about how the YouTube-based world of “competitive tickling” is a run by a secretive exploitative millionaire named David D’Amato, a man who inherited his fortune and served as an assistant principal to 8 different high schools over the course of just 10 years. D’Amato would pay young straight men to tickle and be tickled by their friends, all on film, all completely clothed, and all under the guise of a homophobic, pseudo-religious media organization called Jane O’Brien media.

Lady Bird

Lady Bird

A coming of age film set in the mid-2000s, Lady Bird follows the senior year of a student as she resists the soul-crushing conformity of her Catholic high school. Several key themes in this film are deviance, identity, and social class. Lady Bird comes from a working-class family experiencing downward mobility which sets her aside from the more privileged students at her private school. As a result, she periodically attempts to pass as economically-secure, and nowhere is this more evident than in her pursuit of popular friends.

The Florida Project

The Florida Project

By far, this was my favorite film of 2017/18. Though it was shunned by mainstream awards committees, I bet the sociologist in you will find this more true-to-life than any other film from last year. Furthermore, this would be an excellent movie to show to students of sociology because it exhibits so many concepts and social problems. Yet what makes this film particularly beautiful is that the characters exhibit agency and empathy in their complex relationships.