Tough Guise Movie Review

Jorge Turcios

Professor Williams

Sociology 360

04 March 2012

Tough Guise Movie Review

Though Guise is a story that addresses how American society has build cultural and sociological ideas about what is to be a man and how masculinity should be represented in our daily life. The media in particular has enforced the representation that a man should be respected and in order to earn that respect he must poses the following qualities, strong, independent, thought, and primarily detached himself from feelings or emotions because he will be seeing as weak, fragile, and worst case scenario called “faggot”. This offensive word is use by others, not on reference to a   sexual preference, but to put someone masculinity in question. Guilligan talks about it in his article “Shame, Guilt, and Violence”  He mentioned that while conducting his interview one of the main focus in the mind of most of the guys in prison was that they  value their “pride” That it the only thing they have left and their willing to protected.

            Through out the movie guys are being asked what they consider valuable as men. Many of them promote violent behaviors; winch can be supported by their necessity of power, control, and feeling superior. Fox and Levin touched on those topics in their article “Serial Murder: Popular Myths and Empirical Realities” They also mentioned how the media influences, even though not necessarily that every person that act on a violent behavior should be considered crazy or sick that there are many levels to that type of behavior and one that society and the media do not  take in consideration is the construction of masculinity and the overall expectations.

            The way this film to the course is the fact that we are studying deviant minds and how some behaviors are socially construct. How those constructed ideas influence in our daily activities and how they affect society in general. We see on television every day guys killing each other, man abusing man, women, and children, also, bullies in schools. All this problems are consequences of those social pressures that we consider important and valuable as a society.  

             I am agreed that social institutions should re consider the idea of masculinity and focus on a less violent approached to this issue. Since we are kids, our families start shaping us to become strong, independent, and successful at in early age. However, not every individual is equal, therefore not everyone should be expected to act the same way.

I was not agreed with the fact that violent creates more violent. It is the construction of this idea of masculinity that is embedded in our brains, but if we can change what society valued and change those concepts and ideas surrounding masculinity; we may help change the behaviors of some individuals.

Mainly I want to know the impact that television, video games, and movies have on influencing violent behaviors in teenagers. I will like to conduct an experiment that will having two groups of teenagers. Group one will be expose to sports, classical music, and social activities. Group two will be expose to violent behaviors through television, video games, and movies; after a few months will record those individuals behavior by  observation and how they socialize with other groups.

 Works Cited

Fox, James. Levin, Jack. “Serial Murder: Popular Myths And Empirical Realities.” Reading In Deviant Behavior. Eds. Alex Thio, Thomas Calhoun, Addrain Conyers. Boston, MA. 2010. 77-75. Print.

Gilligan, James. “Shame, Guilt, and Violance.” Social Research. Volume 70. Issue 2005. 1149-1180. Web. 3 Mar. 2012.

Kimmel, Michael. Mahler, Matthew. “What Triggers School Shootings?” Reading In Deviant Behavior. Eds. Alex Thio, Thomas Calhoun, Addrain Conyers. Boston, MA. 2010. 76-82. Print.

Though Guise. Dir. Sut Jhally. Perf. Steve Austin, Marlon Brandon, James Caan. Media Education Foundation. 1999. Film.

WC: 634