Magallanes 1

Birgeet Magallanes
Professor Alvarado
Sociology 1 #32394
7 February 2016
Video/DVD Analysis
What makes a group of people be different from other groups? In the movie, The Boy in
the Striped Pajamas, shows how a child who is nine years old, called Bruno, does not care that
his family believes that Jewish people are his enemies. Bruno is living in the era of the
Holocaust, where the Nazis killing millions of people, such as Jews, ethnic groups and political
groups, because the Nazis thought that those groups were considered useless and for that reason,
they should be treated horribly and no longer live in this world. Despite of the Nazis racism,
there were people like Bruno that decided not to be like the Germans/Nazis that hated certain
groups because they were not like them. This movie shows their viewers, how Bruno maintains
the innocence of their childhood in spite of what is happening around him.
The movie starts when Bruno is moving out from Berlin, because his fathers job (A Nazi
Commandant) was the reason he had to move out; however the boy does not know what is his
fathers job is. When Bruno moves to his new house, he wonders why there are men, children,
and elders living together. He wants to make friends but his parents do not want him to socialize
with anyone they do not know. Bruno wants to socialize, meet new people, and have friends;
other than that, seeing those people near his house, converted a desire for him to explore on his
own without his parents permission. While exploring, he comes across with a boy about the
same age as him, he notices he is wearing pajamas but still decides to talk to him. The boys
name is Shmuel; Bruno learns that he is stuck behind the fence and has nothing to wear but the

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striped pajamas. Bruno does not comprehend why Shmuel and other people are there but notices
how awful it would be being behind the fence.
Bruno comes to a realization that he is not supposed to socialize and be friends with Jews
since Germans hate the Jews. He decides to keep his friendship with Shmuel in secret and does
not care if he is taking a huge risk talking to him even if his dad is a Nazi Commandant. Bruno
and Shmuel have been talking for about a year and decide that Bruno should go to the other side
to help Shmuel find his father. Sadly, Bruno still did not know what happened to the Jews once
they are in the Concentration Camp, so he goes under the fence and gets stuck with a group of
people that were going to get gassed in a chamber. Brunos parents realize that Bruno was not at
home and went hunting for him. They found out that he had a Jewish friend and that Bruno died
trying to help his friend find his father.
Sociologists, such as Comte, Marx and Durkheim would view this video using
sociological concepts. Auguste Comte, believes that society can be all held together and
maintainable that could shape the nature and direction of that change that Comte referred these
things as social statics. In order for our world to not create differences, the world must be held
together which will bring positive changes in our society. If he were to observe the Holocaust he
would think, that society is held together by unnatural Leaders. Karl Marx declared, The classes
and the races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way They must perish in
the revolutionary holocaust, he is saying that this is what the capitalist culture is doing to the
people. Marx believes that the small groups are being absorbed by large groups. Durkheim
would view this video, by mentioning how he sees society as a form of an external force existing
above the level of the individual and exerting its influence on individual behavior. Durkheims

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theory says that human beings find meaning in life through their interconnections with others. He
also remarked the significance of social order.
The paradigm of this video is Symbolic Interaction, because the boy has an interaction with a
Jew (especially how it was illegal for a German to associate with a Jew). In a Symbolic
Interactionist point of view, race and ethnicity are important sources of identity. Like this boy, he
was desperate to talk to a Jew since he did not have anyone else to talk to, and the only boy who
was the age as him was a Jew. He wanted to create a symbolic exchange in which his language,
and gestures was the only way to communicate his own identity. The boy constructed a
challenged identity since he did not know if he wanted to be a friend of a Jew or become like
his family by hating Jews. Bruno is relying on the social norms provided by society and his
parents to interact with the Jewish boy. Since Brunos father was a Nazi soldier, he was supposed
to hate all Jewish people. Fortunately, Bruno was able to show how people can share bonds with
other people from different type of groups regardless of their race, believes, and religion.