Free «Sociological Analysis of the movie The Green Mile» Essay Sample

The movie Green Mile depicts criminal scenes, imprisonment and prosecution as a part of social life and community affairs. The movie states that criminality is influenced by diverse social factors and reflects social situation in a particular country. Also, the movie underlines that rates of criminality depends upon economic influences as drivers of antisocial behavior patterns. Poverty is a type of injustice; it is the main world’s problem of today, but it is also a main cause of crime. The relationship between cultural and social characteristics and the life consequence of criminal behavior is observed for other events: life expectancy, mobility, automobile accidents, and suicide.

Through the main characters and their relations with the world, the movie depicts the society and culture as markers of personal communication. John Coffey, Percy Wetmore (the guarde), Eduard "Del" Delacroix are all represent different cultures but influenced by difficult social conditions and cultural discrepancies. Through these characters, the movie depicts that nobody knows, when over world will live without material problems, when everybody will be satiated, dressed, and will earn that sums of money, which will give him everything he wants. It all resembles Utopia. However, previously meant wishes can not come true, but we can do something for people who require food, clothes, money for worthy living. This must be the primary aim of the world’s community.

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The social structure theory allows to position the main characters at social stratification system. All of them belong to low social classes influenced by poverty and lack of education. Changing environments and the advancement of technology allow unnoticeable crimes such as fraud and money laundering. Crime commonly plays this co-ordinating role, locating, instructing, and employing a range of different persons performing a range of functions in order to carry out the crimes. Over centuries society has put rules in place and established ways of dealing with the rule-breakers. Those methods have been modified by experience, by trial and error. Through the character of Paul Edgecomb, the movie portrays that as the responsibility for law enforcement passed to the state — the sovereign or executive government — an imbalance of power was created. The state, with all its resources, prosecuting in its own courts, brings its full weight against (usually) an individual of limited power and means. Without procedural safeguards — checks in place at all stages of proceedings against an individual — there is the potential for injustice to occur. The movie shows that as our numbers have grown and the structure of our community and its institutions and its activities have become more complex, the systems and processes have also had to become more complex and detailed. This separation is demonstrated within the courtroom. Another example of this separation of powers in practice is that the courts, not the Parliament (the legislature), must impose penalties for criminal offending — although they do so within ranges set by the legislature Operational and procedural safeguards for the individual apply to the police (and other investigative agencies, which are part of the executive) and the courts. It might be said that there is a series of gateways through which a suspected or accused person must pass on the journey to conviction and punishment. Unless each gateway is negotiated satisfactorily, the journey stops and the suspect or accused goes free. The reason for the existence of the gateways is the prevention of injustice and abuse of the weak at the hands of the strong (the community at large). The gateways are there to attempt to ensure fairness in the criminal justice process — but it must be fairness to both the accused and the community. A balance is always required when fairness is to be achieved and sometimes it is difficult to strike the right one. The system can always be improved, but the process of reform is inherently cautious. It moves more slowly than some people might want, but that may be no bad thing.

Family, marriage and kinship play a secondary role in lives of people; still, they may prevent criminals from cruelty and aggression towards other people. Through characters of Eduard "Del" and John Coffey, the movie portrays that the executive power is the prosecutor. The prosecutor cannot also be the judge: you cannot have somebody making allegations and also deciding if those allegations are true. There are rules to ensure that the judiciary exists and acts independently of the executive. For Del, crime has generally earned its “organised” tag by reference to its networks or structures beyond the immediate group that plan and direct the criminal’s activity. The main points of the organised crime are: planned, complex and long term. So that the main goal of organised crime is to earn huge sums of money by illicit means it engages a range of specialists and professionals in various fields to contribute crime enforcement. Rather executors are recruited by threats to be killed, intimidations, as well their own will.

 
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The relations between crime and deviance are evident in the movie as all of the victims suffer from some sort of mental disorders or challenging behaviors. For instance, John Coffey, accused in raping and killing of two girls, possesses strange supernatural abilities he could not explain. Percy Wetmore has sadistic inclinations which led him to improper behavior and cruelty against inmates. People's rights are being affected in significant ways and we should not be anxious to rush into mistakes. We should resist demands for instant change for the sake of change — an alteration in one respect is likely to have effects elsewhere,

In terms of social change theory, social links and modernization directs social relations. Applied to the Green Mile, it can be seen that the process of criminal justice through the gateways described is far from a joke. But it is also not like the operation of a computer program or a multiple-choice, tick-the-boxes, type of exercise. It is a careful and measured progress. In case of Paul Edgecomb, judgment and discretion are required at virtually all stages from a number of different operatives; and whenever judgment or discretion is exercised there will be room for differing views. In this system the views of the decision makers and the reasons for their decisions are publicly known. A system where judgment and discretion are applied under the glare of the public spotlight, while not operating with the precision and certainty of a computer program, is also very different from the kind of system often portrayed by the talkback ‘entertainers’. For Paul, “green mile” is too long but he endures all sufferings and hardship prepared by life. That is a perfectly natural reaction at the individual level. But it will be taken up and magnified by the (adult) public media: that twelve-year-old will be portrayed as a lawless vandal and all sorts of retribution will be demanded against him and against all other children of that age who carry out anti-social acts of all kinds. That individual anger and frustration will be generalized.

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In sum, the Green Mile vividly portrays social relations and stratification system affected lives of all individuals and their communities. A person does not live in isolation from the world but remains a part of his community and cultural heritage. The criminal process cannot restore rights to those who have been deprived of them. There is much discussion these days about the means of achieving justice in particular situ-ations, it being accepted that the criminal trial process is not the only means. What is justice? Does it mean people getting what they deserve? Who decides what is deserved, and what are the criteria? People talk of justice as the affirmation of human dignity and of deterrent justice, compensatory justice, rehabilitative justice and justice as exoneration. ‘Restorative justice’ is another catchphrase. These are issues for another time. There are remnants of these instincts in most human souls; the first reaction of most wronged individuals is an understandable lust for revenge.

   

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