Sociological Themes In The Freedom Writers Diary
The movie, The Freedom Writers Diary is based on the story of a class of students and their English Teacher, Erin Gruwell at Wilson High School in Long Beach California. The movie covers the lives of the students through their freshman to senior years. The students that she handles consists of mainly Latino, African American, and Asian races. At the onset of her interaction with the students, Ms. Erin Gruwell experiences racial discriminations among and between the students. The students, apart from expressing hostility towards themselves, have a sort of unified hatred towards their teacher.
This is because she is white, and they have lived in a society where the white community is responsible for looking down on the other races and treating them with prejudice. She is dedicated to helping her students to overcome the racial discriminations among themselves and to leave the criminal lives that they had been living. The efforts that she put in place attract a significant amount of media attention, in addition to receiving negative responses from some of her rival teachers. The success that the teacher attains with her students is mainly as a result of the unique teaching methods that she adopts, primarily involving participation, reading of books and writing of journal entries, consequently wins over the trust of her students, in addition to eradicating the suspicion that exists between them. Ms. Gruwell creates her relationship with her students in a manner that portrays to them that she fully understands their lives and the troubles that they go through.
As they get to their Sophomore year, she organizes a toast for change theme, a subject that helps the students to focus on their past and set goals regarding what they want for their future, an issue that enables them even to become better. Among the key things that happen is that the students, after reading an epic book that most of them related to, Anne Frank, raises money through different platforms to have the author of the book come to speak to them as a guest speaker. As the students got to their junior year, their teacher instructs the students to convert the journal entries into a book, something they did and titled the book The Freedom Writers Diary. This is inspired by their learning of the Civil Rights Era Freedom Riders who in the 1960s, had taken a bus trip to protest the vice of Racial Segregation.
The Social Context of the Movie
The social context of the movie is that of young delinquent individuals who are kept in a correctional school with the aim of helping them improve. The film is based in a society where the white race is considered to be superior in comparison to the other races. As a result, there is a lot of racial profiling, with the other faces, including the African Americans, the Asians, and the Latinos being considered to be of the lower class. As a result, these other races have the feeling that the law is continuously against them, and they are unfairly targeted and associated with crime. They are consequently exposed to drugs and crime in the process of trying to survive. The children who are born and raised under these conditions naturally adopt the criminal way of life as a mean of survival. They primarily view the other races as enemies and perceive the living conditions to be based on the need for protecting one’s race.
Sociological Themes in the Movie
The sociological themes that arise from the movie include the subjects of racial profiling and discrimination. According to Downes, Rock & McLaughlin, (2016). Sociological themes entail the inevitable connection between a society and individuals. It focuses on the aspect of the stable and the changing nature of the society, and the nature of the results that it has on the people living in the society. While in most cases the aspect of racial profiling and discrimination is focused on the white race and the African American race, the movie portrays the subject to be vast, including other races, mainly the Latinos and the Asians. The aspect is represented as the white race sabotaging the other races, expressed by the explanation that there are killings of the other races that happen on a continuous and regular basis, and each time they step out of their houses, they fear getting killed. Profiling between the white races and the other races g-has consequently led to the rise of suspicion between the other races, with them not having trust on each other, and always of the thought that the other races are targeting them; thus, they have to stay superior.
Representation of Social Realities, and Distortion of Social Realities
The movie expresses social realities by revealing the fact that through a system where individuals receive the necessary attention and care in the required manner, there is the possibility of delinquents to change and adhere to the rules of the society and consequently become better people. Through the movie, it is possible to understand that people do not need harsh rules such as the ones in approved schools and correctional facilities to become better people. In some instances, what is required is the ability to be able to express one's self and the feeling that there are people who understand the predicaments that one is experiencing (Schaefer, & Erickson, 2016). The movie also proves that there are individuals who are not naturally evil, instead what causes them to get into criminal behaviors and activity is the nature of the exposure that they have and the conditions under which they live. The movie distorts the social realities by portraying a society that is governed by very minimum rules of law, and where the authority seems not to be concerned about the happening that take place. By the fact that the students are informed of issues that took place in periods such as the 1960s, for instance, the Civil Rights Era Freedom Riders, the assumption is that the movie is based on a more significantly recent community.
As a result, the facts should be that in the community in which the movie is based, laws should be more uptight, with a team of authority that is more concerned regarding the happenings of the society.
Reflection of Universal Human Concerns
The subject of universal human concerns refers to those factors that are viewed to be of importance across the realm of human existence. They may be viewed to form the aspect of human needs and human values (Shestack, 2017). The movie portrays the subject of universal human concerns through the presentation of a society that consists of different races. Even though the races do not necessarily coexist harmoniously, it is evident that all the members of the community are focused towards achieving the same goals and express the same fears, among the obvious goals that are of concern to all the races, are the aspect of education. This is apparent by the fact that despite their differences, all the races still attend school. Also, through the expression of the students, it is evident that all of them show the need for security. Basic needs are also among the requirements that fall on all of the represented races. All of the represented parties also express the fear of insecurity, and not being able to make their own choices.
Startling Observations
An observation that I find startling in the movie is that by being given the opportunity to express themselves, the students can open up more, and even become better people. Seemingly, almost all of the students in the class have been to correctional institutions and facilities. However, through their behaviors at the beginning of the movie, they do not appear to have received any help from the facilities. Instead, they seem to have become more hostile and indifferent. However, through being given the opportunity to express themselves through the journals, and to get to know each other better through the games they played in class, they managed to become better people.
Sociological Argument
The aspect of the sociological argument entails the factor of social involvement and relationships. It involves the illustration of factors such as discrimination and prejudice, law and crime, and school and education (Cooper, 2017). From the movie, the sociological argument that can be developed as that in most cases, the correctional institutions and facilities that are meant to take care to take care of individuals with special needs hardly achieve their objectives, instead, they tend to make the situations worse. This argument is supported by the fact that in the movie, a significant number of the students had been to correctional facilities yet they did not express a change in behavior. The argument could be that the correctional facilities do not much attention to the issues that the individuals face. As a result, they are not able to help to provide viable solutions.
What the Movie Has to Say Sociologically
Sociologically, the movie states that despite the social conditions that an individual grows up in, there is the ability to change a person and helping them to achieve better status in the instance that they are exposed to desirable conditions. The movie explains that society has the responsibility to help individuals overcome fear and prejudice if they expect them to achieve better goals. From the movie, the initial pattern was that the students would join the school, and most of them would drop from it due to the delinquent behaviors. Seemingly, no one paid much attention to the students, and the teachers would only focus on teaching, not caring if the students were in the proper conditions to learn. However, Ms. Gruwell changed the pattern by ensuring that her students got to be able to overcome the existing social construct and get along with each other. As a result, the students were able to become better students and achieve other successes, such as the book that they eventually wrote.
