The Bronx Tale

This week in Sociology, we watched a movie called "The Bronx Tale." This movie was about a boy named Calogero, who lived in the Bronx, and grew up under the direction of a mobster, Sonny. Throughout the movie, Calogero showed to belong to many groups. He was a part of his family, his childhood friends, the Italian mobsters, Italians in general, and his girlfriend. However, although he belonged to many different groups, his master status was with the Italian mobsters. That's because, as soon as he covered Sonny's crime, he was given lots of respect, even at his young age. People seemed to see him, and have immediate fear just because he was associated with Sonny. However, although that was his master status, it wasn't the group that he was actually a part of. For example, when Sonny and his group beat up the cyclists in the bar, Sonny was hiding in fear. Although violence is associated with the Italian mobsters, Sonny shows no act of violence throughout the film because the group he's actually a part of are the Italians. Calogero is associated with the mobsters, but it doesn't mean that he is also a violent person. Also, this movie showed examples of the Social Construction of Reality because of the racial mindset throughout the movie. For example, when Calogero was young, he was with his group of friends when a bus passed by with an African American boy. Although the boy didn't do anything to harm or offend Calogero and his friends, they used violence and language against the boy. Since Calogero and his friends were young, it was clear that they hadn't been exposed to many African Americans enough to develop their own hatred towards them. Therefore, it was obvious that their society had made hatred towards African Americans an acceptable thing to do. Also, they had learned to swear at a very young age, and their parents didn't seem to mind. That shows that in their society, swearing is a way of expressing anger that has become normal to them. One way this applies to my life is that one day while I was babysitting, this little boy thought it would be okay to swear at me when I told him that he couldn't touch a glass vase on the counter. Although I thought that it was absurd that he was swearing at such a young age, it didn't surprise me all that much. However, it's amazing how much I was scolded for swearing in my household, in my teens, but how this little boy wasn't scolded at all by his parents.   Although we were both doing the same thing, our society has rationalized everything that little kids do because they say "they're too young to know what they're doing/saying."