Moana and the Sociological Perspectives
We may all have grown up watching Disney movies. Some movies can heavily relate to sociological perspectives. The most recent movies that came out is Moana, released in late 2016. This movie is heavily focused on functional and conflict theory throughout the movie. Moana is based on a young girl born and raised in a generation of the highest power in the island. As Moana was growing up, she always hear a story from her grandmother. The story she tells her and the rest of the younger children is that Te Fiti was once a peaceful woman, until Maui stole her heart. She tells that the lands will deteriorate overtime. When Moana grew up, she started training to be a chief. From there, her goal is to find Maui and have him return the heart. There were many outburst to convince Maui in repairing the damage. Overtime, they both helped Te Fiti in returning the heart. Recalling a functionalist perspective, it is a society with different work status coming together and working together in order to achieve a goal. Overall of functionalist perspective, it is either a positive or negative outcome toward the community. Emile Durkheim developed the theory of functionalism. This theory overlaps in social factors and norms. In Moana, functionalist perspective is shown throughout the movie. As Moana was raised in representation of the highest power, she was in charge to keeping the community together. At one time, she felt the deterioration with the lack of food, and resources available for the community. Therefore, her grandmother’s tale of Te Fiti’s heart being stolen was a true story. Her goal was to find Maui and have him return the heart of Te Fiti. Even with returning the heart, there’s a lot of obstacles to avoid. From there, Maui is a demi god, which has a higher status than Moana. Functional perspective plays a role of Moana and Maui together in different statuses but have the same goal, bringing back peace to Te Fiti. Although throughout the movie, Maui always wants to back down with the obstacles, but the problem is if he backs out, Te Fiti will eventually destruct all islands. This shows the strenght of functional pardigm that even level status does not bother into achieving the goal. Moana may be the one trying to boss Maui, but in the end, teamwork is the key. Ideally we all face conflict theory, whether it’s by gender, status, or anything that judges from various logics. Karl Marx’s conflict theory claiming that society is in constant perpetual conflict due to competition with possible limited resources. It is usually presentable when a higher power dominates lower power. With Marx’s theory in mind, Moana faced conflict theory throughout the whole movie. In the beginning as she was growing up, she faced conflict because of her gender. Her dad kept on insisting to stay out of the water because she was a female and knew it was too dangerous for her. Although she may have never been taught to sail on the ocean her dad’s experience doesn’t want her to do so. Even when she was brave enough to go on a journey with Maui, she was conflicted from Maui that she was not strong enough to do any hard tasks. Sure, Maui is a strong masculine demi god, and Moana a young girl of Motunui. This is the conflict of gender inequality. Although Maui disagreed most of the time that she is not able to survive and reach to the goal, she still showed Maui that she is dedicated. Maui taught Moana with many skills, such as reinforcing the boat, and game plans. Throughout the way, she learns more and more from each obstacle they cross. Moana is strong to show Maui of what she’s capable of doing. When Moana returned the heart to Te Fiti, Maui finally took the load from Moana and show appreciation to her. The conflict towards gender competition died down due to Moana’s ability and in change towards the island. |
In this part of the ePortfolio, I will reflect on a video assignment we did in the fourth week of the online class. In here, we reflect on a video and analyze it by using the social paradigms. At that time, we learned of three perspectives: functionalist, conflict, and interaction. These perspectives were founded by Comte, Marx and Durkheim. I had used a Disney movie, Moana to help me guide and translate this movie using either of the perspectives. I had chose this movie because I like Disney movies and it also helped me guide through the sociological perspectives.
Using the movie, Moana, had a great connection with two of the three theories. From there, I connected it with functional and conflict theory. This assignment helped me understand better in the theories. At first, I wasn’t grasping the concept of a functionalist theory, until we had to connect it with a video. I am more of a visual learner, so having the video handy helped me understand, and now even looking at videos, I find it interesting in looking through the sociological perspectives. I felt like my timing of working in this assignment was right, I still feel like I rushed it through. I felt like I explained more about the movie than reflecting it towards the movie. It seems really detailed about the movie and not much of the perspectives. I felt like this is more like a movie review rather than a sociology review. Even though there wasn’t much of research going on in this part of the project, it still felt like time was hard to be at reach. Throughout this semester, I work full time, and the only time I’m available to work on this assignment was during my 30 minutes lunch, and when I return home from work. It was difficult to manage time, but it took me a long time to get used to the circumstances. At that time, I managed to vaguely pinpoint what’s necessary at work and finish it off at home. I felt like it worked fine in this assignment, but I would always have the doubt that it isn’t what I wanted it to be. Overall, I have learned well on time management, as this was new to me in a new environmental state. Also, I learned that visual learning goes far beyond expectations. So, for my future assignments in other classes, I know a part of my visual learning can help me improve my knowledge over topics. I want to satisfy my learning abilities, and having this assignment helped me out to open more resources that can correlate to understanding information. |