Falling Down - Movie Analysi

APSS112 Term Paper

Film analysis--- Falling Down

Fong Ki Ng 16080793d

LMSS- shipping and logistic

I choose the film- Falling Down to be the topic of the term paper is because there are many sociological concepts filled in the film and can reflect our daily life.

First of all, I would like to talk about the design of the main character, William Foster who was an engineer. He was dressed well with shirt and tie. In the society, people always judge a person by his cover. In the concept of social reality, dressing well means the person earns a high income, he is rich, is in the upper crust of the society. In fact, William was just fired by the company, divorced with her wife and lose custody of her daughter. He is in the slump of his life and his situation may poorer than many people. However, people may think that he was good by his appearance.

In the film, it showed social stratification. It means the society is separated into different classes in terms of wealth, property and access to material goods and cultural products, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability and age. There are different kinds of main character such as two gangster, William and the fast food restaurant owner. They are divided into lower class, middle class and upper class respectively. Two gangster were black and they have no official job. They robbed people to get money. For William, he got professional skills and could earn high income. However, he was laid off. Therefore, it seemed that he dropped into lower class. For the restaurant owner, he was upper class as he got a business to earn money. He could deprive of people by raising the price of food he provided anytime.

Thirdly, the film put different social expectation into different gender. The main character William had a great family at the beginning. He was a professional engineer in a military company. He earned a stable income to raise her wife and daughter. However, after being fired by the company. The wife and daughter left her at the same time. In the film, the society expected man should bear all the responsibility to raise the family including earning income, providing financial support. For women, they can stay at home and handle housework. So, when William lost his job, his family left him. There was social inequality between man and women. In fact, although the film was produced at 1993, the gender inequality concepts is still consisting in today’s society. There are news interviewing the housefather (which mean a man take the responsibility of a housewife as fulltime). Their work maybe cleaning house, buying food and pick their children to school. In contrast, the mother works outside and earn money for the family. The housefathers state that they have been laughed by other parents and judged by supercilious look.

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