Sociological analysis of media items

Media Analysis -- Your Media Analysis is due this week. For this assignment, you will conduct a sociologica

This analysis focuses on the 2006 film Bordertown, which starred Antonio Banderas, Jennifer Lopez and was directed by Gregory Nava. The movie was widely panned by critics, and received limited publicity in the U.S. Such adversity was largely due to the political nature of this film, which widely depicted a series of brutal, unsolved murders (which were still prevalent during the time the film was made) of young women -- from mid-adolescence to their early 20's -- in Mexico's Ciudad Juarez. There is a reporter from Chicago who travels to Juarez specifically to write a story about these occurrences, and the major media outlet that she writes for (The Chicago Tribune) refuses to publish the story. Despite the fact that the star witness for the story has her life threatened to cooperate with the Tribune, the story is never published because all of the murdered women were working for U.S. funded factories in exploitive labor situations (Bordertown, 2006). The film ends with the reporter quitting the Tribune and becoming an editor for a Mexican newspaper which regularly covers the murders.

Socialization

Bordertown is an agent of socialization for the simple fact that it highlights repressive labor conditions which involve the U.S. And labor-cheap countries like Mexico, and educates people (Schaefer, 2010) about this phenomenon. The boons benefit both the U.S. And the Mexican governments and are a direct result of the somewhat dubious North American Free Trade Agreement. This agreement is primarily used for U.S. based corporations to implement factory systems in Mexico, most typically those right across the border in locations such as Ciudad Juarez, which are extremely exploitative for the local (and mostly female) laborers. The film serves as a means of education, and possible mobilization of the masses, about this issue.

Sociological Perspective

There are a plethora of sociological concepts that directly apply to the circumstances shown in this movie. Gender roles are probably the most prominent of these, for the simple fact that the movie is largely about the murder of women on their way back and forth from working. Traditional gender roles revolve around the fact that the woman is supposed to be the weaker sex and is subservient to the wills of men. Thus, men can do with women whatsoever they desire. In the movie this concept is demonstrated by the fact that many of the women killed were oftentimes raped beforehand. The notion of gender roles and the other sociological concepts in this movie can best be understood by functionalist theory, which posits that society operates with a number of different mechanisms to help it maintain a healthy balance (McLelland, 2000). Thus, the issue of gender roles is one of the problems that the film, which educates and empowers people about it, serves to help.