Even though I wasn't able to see all of A Bronx Tale, the social construction of reality in this movie was present from the very beginning. The unwritten laws and rules all pertain to the gang that Collogero finds himself so intrigued with. Sonny and his gang have a presence about them and everybody knows not to "mess with them." The adults know that these men are dangerous and do everything they can to keep their children off the streets. In Collogero's case, as soon as he gets off his father's bus his mother greets him at the window and motions for him to come upstairs right away.
I think the racist attitudes are also due to the community's social construction. This is seen as the bus of African-American children rolls by Collogero's stoop, a few of his friends chase after them screaming derogatory terms. This social construction was produced by the era that they are living in. This was a time when African-Americans and anglo-Americans had terrible relations.
In our own community, there are unwritten laws and rules that many of us follow because we believe that this is what we should be doing and there are no questions about it. For example, living in a middle-class community and going to a highly-acclaimed high school, many of us believe that we must go to college to continue our education. In our social construction of reality, this is the next step. If we were living in a different part of the state, country, world perhaps, this social construction may be very very different. At this age, some people may be going straight to work, starting a family, joining the military, etc.
Unlike Collogero's social construction of reality, in our community we don't have gangs to look out for and have been taught to be open-minded individuals who don't see the world in black and white. Of course these things still exist elsewhere, but in our community there is a bit of a different social construction of reality than in the south side of Chicago per say.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
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