Durkheim In Pleasantville

Emile Durkheim, was a French sociologist. His theories and writings helped establish the foundations of modern sociology. Durkheim disagreed with most social theorists of the late 1800 's because they thought that individual psychology was the basis of sociology. Durkheim regarded sociology as the study of the society that surrounds and influences the individual. Durkheim explained his theories in his book The Rules of Sociological Method (1895). He says there is relationship between moral values and religious beliefs, which establishes unity in society.Emile Durkheim has long been viewed as one of the founders of the so called variables oriented approach to sociological investigation. Durkheim developed the theory that societies are bound together by two sources of unity. He called these sources mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. Mechanical solidarity refers to similarities that many people in the society share, such as values and religious beliefs. Organic solidarity results from the division of labor into specialized jobs. Durkheim believed that the division of labor makes people depend on one another and thus helps create unity in a society. Durkheim studied thousands of cases of suicide to demonstrate his theory that a person commits suicide because of the

Emile Durkheim is considered to be the Father of Sociology. In contrast to Karl Marx’s theory of Sociology, Durkheim believed that society is made up of a bunch of social facts and can be studied empirically. Durkheim did put a lot of emphasis on the idea of social facts. This made him stand apart from all other theorists and their ideas. (Ritzer 2004) This is what Durkheim said of social facts.

In DHN, Durkheim argues that sociology must examine what an individual consists of because it is a result of the whole society. It is this society

Pleasantville is a film about two teenagers from the 90’s who mysteriously find themselves in a black and white 1950s television show. They become residents of Pleasantville; a suburbia where sex doesn’t exist, the high school basketball team always wins, married couples sleep in twin beds, books have no words, and everything is pleasant. The citizens of Pleasantville don’t seem to question their “good life,” until Bud and Mary Sue come along and disturb the conformity. Suddenly parts of Pleasantville become colorful, repressed desires surface, the 50’s lifestyle is broken apart, and its citizens lives change in a strange, yet exciting way. Some people are opposed to the transformation, but in the end the entire town turns to color and the citizens are liberated.

David and Jennifer are zapped into the 50’s Pleasantville show and become the son and daughter.

Analyse how Nineteen Eighty Four and Pleasantville imaginatively portray individuals who challenge the established values of their time.

The decade following the Second World War brought about a new sensation of the ‘perfect housewife' and her duties at home. Men being drafted and shipped oversees during World War II had taken a lot of women out of the kitchen and put them into the workplace. This was the biggest movement thus yet of women changing roles in society and moving away from domestication. This movement was thwarted by returning soldiers, their moving back to the workplace, and the repositioning of women in the home. The baby boom followed the Second World War, furthering the encouragement of women to stay home and be the ideal mother and wife. Television greatly reflected this attitude. Sitcoms about the ideal family emerged left and right. Shows like

A TV repairman shows up out of nowhere on their doorstep offering to fix the remote. The repairman quizzes David on Pleasantville trivia and after he answers all of his questions correctly, he gives David a “special remote”. The brother and sister fight over the remote and get zapped into the television show “Pleasantville”. This sets up a majority of the clashes with a 1990’s brother and sister team going back in time to a perfect small town family of 1958. The time period chosen for the television show was intentional. The oldies telev

The movie is about two teenagers, David and Jennifer who get drawn into the 1950s fictional, black-and-white television sitcom, Pleasantville. The show portrays a very stereotypical image of the 1950s. In Pleasantville, both David and Jennifer are forced to take on the roles of Bud and Mary-Sue. As they play along in the perfect town of Pleasantville their presence influences drastic changes. As the citizens of Pleasantville discover sex, art, books, music and the concept of nonconformity, color takes over the black-and-white world.

Along with Marx and Weber, Durkheim is considered one of the founding members of modern sociology. He is also credited with making sociology a science through his application of scientific and empirical research. Durkheim believed that sociology should be seen as a science separate from other sciences such as psychology, by studying “social facts” objectively as things. (Kiviston, 2011)

Pleasantville, a drama/fantasy movie that was created in 1998 revolves around siblings, David and Jennifer as they travel into the “perfect” 1950’s tv show known as “Pleasantville”. David and Jennifer enter this “perfect” tv show by complete accident. The siblings have an enormous fight about who gets the remote, the eve of the twenty-four hour “Pleasantville” marathon, and this eventually leads to a mysterious television repairman showing up on their doorstep with a brand-new remote. This brand-new remote transfers them into the tv show. Pleasantville provides viewers with an insight into what life was truly like in the 50’s. The movie shows how fearful citizens are when new information is discovered by others in society and how these events

The film starts with two teenagers, David and Jennifer. David has an addiction to old reruns of a fifties sitcom also by the name of "Pleasantville". Jennifer is the complete opposite of her brother, leading a rather promiscuous lifestyle. During an argument, their TV remote

Emile Durkheim was a taught by a teacher and to add was a sociologist. Durkheim singularly developed sociology and is credited for expanding to academic discipline, social structures, social relationships, and social institutions, in attempt to understand human nature. Later Durkheim took these and applied them into religion. Durkheim focused on the importance of the concept of the sacred" and its relevance to the welfare of the entire community.

After determining what resulted from modernization, Durkheim unlike Marx was interested in reforming not eliminating modern society. In analyzing Durkheim’s theory of modern society, I will begin with the focal point of it, namely solidarity.

Durkheim is a highly influential name to remember when thinking of sociology. Durkheim’s mission was to develop sociology so it could be defined and to develop a method on how sociology should be used. Durkheim’s main concern in his career was primarily associated with how societies might preserve their integrity and rationality within modernised society, when things such as shared religious views and ethnic backgrounds are seen as things of the past. In relation to Durkheim’s social realism his concern was with the growing individualism in society. Durkheim argues that we are in an era which is imperfectly moving towards a morality based on individualism as “Durkheim regarded individualism as a collective representation, a force that