Romeo, the zombie

For several years, and increasingly in these past couple of years, the appearance of violence in movies has become a trend and a point of attraction to film spectators.  Last week, all my friends were talking about the new movie in the cinemas, Warm Bodies. So we decided to go see the movie. However, while watching the movie, it occurred to me that it’s a mixture of the movies: Twilight, Avatar and Romeo and Juliette. At the beginning of the movie we’re introduced to the main character as the outsider and after almost 15 minutes of the film it’s very predictable that the main issue being discussed is inequality but in the context of a more “cool” fictional theme, which is the theme of zombies.

According to Robert C. Bulman in chapter 3.2 of the book Cinematic Sociology, “The jungle metaphor conveniently summarizes the imagined differences between middle class suburban Americans and the poor urban students portrayed in the films.” What Bulman says applies to the film Warm Bodies if we closely examine the plot of the film from a sociological perspective. The living dead are the minorities or the “low brow” while the humans in the movie are the superior bourgeoisie who are doing their best to protect themselves from the danger that those corpses oppose on them. The movie highlights the issues of inequality and discrimination while using violence as a technique to achieve profitable success.

Furthermore, the similarity between the plot of Warm Bodies and Romeo and Juliette could be drawn in terms of the conflict that is being represented. Two families/groups are in a state of war against each other and the two lovers, who each belong to a different group, are the ones who bring those two families/groups together. On the other hand, the similarity that could be drawn between Warm Bodies and Twilight or Avatar is that all three movies are “sensation driven” meaning that they seek profit through the representation of “popcorn” violence. Although it could be argued that the representation of violence in the three movies is very minimal, it’s still evident that those movies are not aimed towards audiences who seek an intellectual experience while watching a movie.

ACT OF VIOLENCE CAN BE DEVIANT AMONG CHILDREN.

Deviance in sociology is defined as a behavior that violates the standards of conduct or expectations of a group or society. We are all deviants from time to time. Each of us violates common social norms in certain situations. Deviance involves the violation of group norms that may or may not be formalized into law. One of the most important problems is the violence happening in schools and universities that causes deviant behavior.



Violence is very common among our youth in this generation and it’s spread widely in our society. Violence can lead to several problems in our society.
Now the question arises why does such things happen and what’s the reason behind it?



The constant storm of television programs and violent media channels causes deviant behavior in children. When children are immature or in their infant age, they are very receptive and responsive by the things going on around them. They learn things very quickly and often kids are influenced by what they see. This process of learning in their infancy is called internalization or symbolic interaction by which they accept and adopt the norms, understand their cultural values and beliefs, which has been taught to them in their early stage of life. So we understand how nurture plays an important role in a children’s life.



From an age of three, children watching cartoons or kids based television channels starts imitating someone on the television. There are certain super heroes and characters in cartoons that act violently even for a so-called good reason. For example when characters like batman, superman, Spiderman is shown in a fighting scene to protect a girl from a bad man. This is how the media is playing with the growing minds of children. If the media is showing such stuff to the younger generation, then who knows after a couple of years we might see certain acts of negative deviance in our schools, colleges, universities, on streets and everywhere. As a sociologist, it is the responsibility of our society to impose a law of social control in order to stop certain acts.



These Children, who grew up watching violence on TV, may end up being violent students by fighting or bullying other students or in worst case they might target their professors too which can drag them into worst situations and they might be expelled out from their educational institution and ruin their lives even more. As a social audience, we name this act of violence as a deviant behavior that can occur in a child due to the symbolic interaction that has to be noticed in their early stages of life.

What Do Children Learn From Cartoons?

A few weeks ago, my mom’s friend cameover with her little son for breakfast. At first, the little boy was very shy and he didn’t say a word, butafter a while he started talking. What was shocking to me is that he wasspeaking in formal Arabic, which is barely used in casual life nowadays. Iasked his mom how did that happen, and she told me that she was worried abouther son not speaking at the proper age and she felt he didn’t understand herand her husband when they talked to him. But once, she said, her son was veryangry trying to tell his mom to give him a certain toy, and she was acting asif she didn’t know which toy he wanted to encourage him to speak. Luckily hesaid something. He screamed: (la oreed hatheh), which means no I want that onein formal Arabic. The mom was shocked to hear him speak in formal Arabic. Fromthat point, whenever she wanted to communicate with her son she used formalArabic. She told me her son was very happy to finally be able to understand andcommunicate with them.

According to her, her son learnedformal Arabic from Cartoons on TV, which are dubbed in formal Arabic most ofthe time. It is said that the family is the most important agent of socialization, but this case made me think whether this statement is true ornot. The kid learned the language from television instead of his family! May bethis happened because of the new common family structure; the mother and thefather are working for most of the day, whereas the son or the daughter, beforethey’re eligible to go to school, spend most of their time in front of TV withthe nanny who doesn’t speak Arabic. Moreover, I’ve heard many stories aboutlittle children learning the language of the nanny, which made them more ableto communicate better with her that with their own parents.

Other than language, cartoons canteach children a lot of things, like role taking. Children learn a lot abouthow to be a boy or a girl in the society from cartoons. For example, in Disneymovies most females are portrayed with longeyelashes, pink cheeks, red lips, and a very tiny waist. On the other hand,males are portrayed as tall, with wide shoulders, and big biceps.

Thisportrayal reflects the perfect shape of females and males expected in thesociety. Girls wear make up and want to be skinny, and boys want to go to thegym to build muscles. Moreover, females are associated with cleaning andsewing, whereas males are associated with jobs like mining, and competitionwith other males for either status or a possible mate.

Furthermore, somecartoons like Tom & Jerry, and Bugs Bunny, include a lot of violent material, which might affect the way children play with each other.

This suggests the need for parentsto supervise and try to control what their young children watch, becausewithout this supervision and interference of the parents, children mightinternalize the behaviors and values they watch in these cartoons, and this canbe very problematic, especially if parent consider these behaviors and valuesas inappropriate.