My Fair Lady: A Movie Lab for Your Students
SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES
by
This week, AMC offered My Fair Lady to it's viewers.
My Fair Lady is an excellent vehicle for a set of core concepts with which to teach
critical sociology to your students.
Those who teach symbolic interaction and social psychology with find My Fair Lady most
helpful to the learning process.
Those who teach gender relations and Women's Studies will find all the sexist content one
could want...especially when Henry Higgins sings, 'Why can't a Woman be like a Man?'
Those who teach class and inequality will find the movie a treasure trove of class
privilege and underclass powerlessness.
Those who teach child development and/or moral development will find that morality is
corrupted by class, status, gender and power.
Those who teach Intro will find that students like movie labs a lot more than they like
objective tests...and will retain course content a lot better.
I encourage you to create your own movie labs...you can use mine as pattern.
One sets a movie lab for 2-3 hours and uses a worksheet on which students are asked to
select one of three or four choices listing scenes which best embody/illuminate a given
concept. The Worksheet I use for My Fair Lady is at:
http://www.tryoung.com/movielabs/011liza.html
The concepts I use in movie labs using My Fair Lady are at:
http://www.tryoung.com/movielabs/011terms.html
and include:
A. PYGMALION STUDIES: A series of studies which show that human beings are influenced in
thought, action, and acquisition of social identities by others in a social interaction.
B. PRIMARY GROUP: A set of persons with intimate and holistic relations in every day life:
family, friends, close co-workers, team-members and co-religionists are usually primary
group members.
C. MASTER STATUS: the status central to one's self system; that status which organizes
one's behavior across differing social occasions.
D. CLASS STRATIFICATION: a system of inequality based upon wealth and one's relationship
to the means to get wealth.
E. GENDER STRATIFICATION: a system of inequality based upon one's gender.
F. SYMBOLs AND CONSTRUCTION THEORY: people use different combinations of symbols to
construct social identities and social occasions: voice, body talk, clothing and body
decorations as well as behavioral patterns. These must agree with each other if
others are to make sense of the definitions of the identity and the situation at hand...if
not, people are in a 'double bind'.
G. SYMBOLIC INTERACTION AND POWER: All symbolic interaction is shaped by the systems of
inequality in a society: racist, class, gender, ethnic, religious and so on.
H. SOCIAL NORMS: rules about how one is to behave in a given social occasion: the norms at
Ascot are different from the norms at Covent Garden.
J. NONPERSON: one who is treated as if s/he had little or no social status. Rather
like a piece of furniture or a tool to be used.
K. MALE HEGEMONY: a system of inequality in which females are expected to do as fathers,
husbands, brothers, bosses and sons tell them to do.
L. SOCIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS: a branch of sociology which studies the ways in which emotions
are called forth or repressed in given social occasions.
M. STATUS INCONSISTENCY: That uncertainty about what to do when one has two or more
conflicting social identities: father and police officer; minister and parent; Republican
and Catholic; Upper class and thief...for example.
N. STATUS PANIC: that great uncertainty about what to do when one hasn't a social identity
with which to function well in a given social occasion...or in the whole of life for that
matter.
O. ANOMIE [ANOMIC]: Literally, a = without; nomy = order. Similar to status panic except
this time, there are no norms even though social identities are present and firmly held in
the self system.
P. PRETHEORETICAL REBELLION; Behavior in response to a problem which has little chance of
solving that problem. Tears, anger, prayer and charm will do little to change the
systems of inequality found in a society.
Q. GENDER SOCIALIZATION: a set of socialization experiences in which young girls are
taught to be 'good women' and young boys taught to be 'proper men.'
R. GEMEINSCHAFT: Folk society--marked by close relationship, strong emotions, solidarity
and mutual sharing...see also Gesellschaft.
S. SOCIO-EMOTIONAL ROLE: Bales identified two roles in any group; a task leader and one
who repaired the emotional harm done by the task leader.
T. DYAD: two persons in a close social relationship. Others are treated as outsiders
or sometimes, non-persons.
U. CO-OPTATION: The practice of bribing or enticing opponents over to one's side in a
conflict situation.
V. IMMISERATION THESIS: One of the major effects of any system of inequality is to debase
and degrade those at the bottom; mind, self and society becomes corrupted by great
differences in wealth, power, and status. Those at the bottom sell themselves in
many way; hunger, disease, and early death is the price; those at the top also pay a price
in loss of humanity and compassion.
W. LUMPEN-PROLETARIAT: the wretched refuse of any system of inequality. Marx used it to
refer to those cast adrift by capitalism: thieves, prostitutes, hustlers, con-men and
beggars---all disemployed by owners in the quest for ever higher profits
*******
Other Movie Labs can be found at:
http://www.tryoung.com/movielabs/000movielabindex.html
Each teacher will want to use her/his own concepts and will construct a Worksheet
appropriate to his/her course content, and as mentioned, everyone is welcome to use Red
Feather Movie Lab materials as basis for one's own labs.
And, of course, I am available to help with both lists of terms and worksheet content if
help is required.
TR