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A Class for Film Buffs

 


When I was in my second year in college, I took a class called “General Sociology Through Film.” It seemed like it would be a fun class. Watching movies was part of the curriculum. I like movies. It was a great concept, and a popular class. I am not sure how much actual sociology I learned from that class, but maybe some of it sunk in.

The class met on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Monday was a one-hour lecture about some sociological principle. Wednesday was a two-hour period where we watched the film for that week. Friday was a discussion of the film. There were a couple of mid-term exams and a final exam where we could prove that this was an academic experience. As I said, I couldn’t tell you what concepts I learned in the class, but I do remember the movies.

Part of the class focused on human development: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, etc.. We skipped early development. For the young-adult leaving home for the first time, we watched Next Stop Greenwich Village. For marriage, we watched Ryan’s Daughter. For divorce, we watched An Unmarried Woman. For old age, we watched Harry and Tonto. There were other movies we watched that I don’t remember the concepts being illustrated, but the movies included: Soylent Green, A Boy and His Dog, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The ones I have listed are the ones I remember. I remember them because they had some kind of impact on me. Some of them I had seen before on television. But seeing them in class uncut on a large screen pulled me in more than they ever had before.

A Boy and hid Dog was an eye-opening experience for me. I had never seen it, didn’t know anything about it, and it was my first exposure to Harlan Ellison (well, other than the Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever,” but that hardly counts as Ellison denounced what they did to his script). I was blown away by this post-apocalyptic tale and the dystopian society the boy was lured into, that it was a satire of certain American subcultures (and it is set in 2024).

I am guessing that this class took place around 1980, so these movies were not all that old at the time. As the years passed, I have been struck by the thought that maybe this class did not say as much about general sociology as it did about the psychology of the professor who was teaching it. The movies that he chose said something about him. For example, he chose a movie about divorce implying that divorce was a normal part of human development. I understand that many couples get divorced, but does that make it a normal part of what it means to be human? Hmm. Discuss amongst yourselves. I notice looking back that many of the films have death as a central theme or major sub theme. Perhaps he was saying the way we deal with death is one of the most important traits that make up our society. To put it in the words of Captain Kirk, “How we face death is at least as important as how we face life.” (but I took this class before Kirk ever said that line).

Star Liner

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