Hannah (Huiqing) Peng

SOC 001 2016 Fall

Professor Lookholder
November 20, 2016
Project 1: Video/DVD Analysis
As for the first project video analysis, I want to choose a video from Youtube named My Dad is
a Liar to analyze. My Dad is a Liar is one of my favorite video during the years and its touched and
unforgettable. The video is about a letter from a little girl to her daddy. Her daddy just lying to his
intelligent daughter, no matter how hard he tried to hide everything, and his little girl can see everything
and understand how deeply her father's love is. The little girl knows that her daddy is lying about having
a job, he lies about having money and pretending he's not tired, she knows that he is hungry but doesn't
want to share her food because their money is tight. At the end of the video they embrace together, and it
has shown A childs future is worth every sacrifice pursue more form life. The video is an Emotional
Commercial but is showing the deeply love from a daddy. Furthermore, it represents ascribed status and
achieved status in our society. The little kid as a young age girl and her dad as middle-age male for
ascribed status. On the other hand, the girl as a well-behaved student at her school and the dad as a hardworking worker at his work places for achieved status.
In the view of sociology perspective, there has three important paradigms to help us to get a
better understanding of our society. According the article from Witt chapter 1, Auguste Comte was a
sociologist and philosopher from French, he argues that the science of society that would represent the
basic law of society. Comte believed that getting the knowledge of the laws can help lead the people to
the complete society. In simple terms, our society cannot be running well without law. Connecting to the
video, the dad being a hard-working worker in order to get a better life and education for his daughter,
even though he is doing some part time jobs in different kinds of difficult areas, but he is still trying his
best in society instead of transgress morality or offend against the law. Such as being a thief. In Comtes
worlds, the daddy in the video is complying with the laws of society. Next, another famous sociologist

who named Karl Marx, he took a different approach from Comte, he considers social inequality and
people need to compete for the limit sources in the society, people are shaped by power, coercion and
authority. In his worlds, he thinks individuals are divided into different group based on the society status,
personal background, the resources and the power that human being controlling. While the video, the dad
wearing business suit, he dressing up very nice every times when he picks his daughter up, and he dresses
formal when he attends to his daughters competition. In other worlds, he doesnt want people to look
down upon his daughter and he wants to let daughter fit in the society by his power. Also, he wants to stay
in a higher position in his daughters mind, being a dad with authority.
Last but not least, we have another important sociologist who named Durkheim and he interested
in functionalism. He argues that individuals playing different roles in areas and taking care of the own
responsibilities maintain the stable society. More than that, he believes people can share the similar
beliefs, symbols, resources, and language. I think Functionalist perspectives is most represented in my
video which is Durkheim's view. The daughter and father make me think about functionalism because in
the society his daughter plays a good role. She is a good student, get award from school and she knows
how to care about her father. She expressed us what is daughter should do in our society. In the society,
the father not just represent father in the society he also is a worker. He didnt do the crime just because
he is poor. The father knows him not just a worker he also a father. So, he should know what a father
should do, which is given the daughter better life and better education. This also responds the main idea
of the video A childs future is worth every sacrifice. In functionalism, the father is hard worker
because he cant find a full time job but he got multiple part time jobs to express himself as a worker in
the society. He also gives his child a better life and education to make his daughter to get award from
school. He did both for the society, this is the reason why I think functionalism is the most paradigms for
my video.