All of a sudden I found myself thinking sociologically when I went to the movies last night. I went with my best friend and we saw The Rite. This movie is about an exorcism in Rome, Italy. The movie was supposed to be based on a "real" story.The movie was pretty entertaining overall.There were elderly and younger viewers, I was really interested to know what they thought of the movie, because there has been a variety of movies about exorcism so it's easy to pick out the good and bad ones. In the movie theater everyone was quiet and respectful except this two boys that were super obnoxious. When we walked out of the movie theater the couple behind us was talking about how they really believed in exorcisms, while I on the other hand don't really think they are real. This all magically brought me back to this week's lesson in Sociology!
For one I thought of all the group/crowd terminology we had been talking about. I believe that at the movie theater all the viewers were a conventional crowd, because we all had a specific purpose which was to watch the movie. Our theory of crowd behavior are I think both emergent norm theory and convergence theory. This is because everyone was quiet and respectful when the movie came up. I was really curious to know what the word for those who act nothing like what the "norm" is, for example the two boys that acted nothing like one is supposed to act in a theater.They were a bit loud and obnoxious. Also I think we could fit in the convergence theory, because we formed a crowd in a sense,because we all have similar liking(the movie;The Rite; exorcism etc.)I also really thought about panic vs. mass hysteria. This is because I don't really know if they are real or not, so it makes me thing how many people have built up anxiety over this.Overall Friday night involved a lot of sociology.
You did a great job applying all our vocab to your movie-going experience :)
ReplyDeleteBTW--those boys would be considered deviant. We'll get to what was up with them in May :)