Sociology in Hollywood Films

Sociology in Hollywood FilmsAuthor(s): John E. ConklinSource: The American Sociologist, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 2009), pp. 198-213Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20638843 .

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Am Soc(2009) 40:198-213 DOI 10.1007/sl2108-009-9072-3

Sociology in Hollywood Films

John ?. Conklin

Published online: 14 July 2009 ? Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract Close examination of 32 Hollywood films released between 1915 and 2006 shows that sociology is often portrayed as a discipline that focuses on the

useless, the trivial, and the obscure. Undergraduate students of sociology are sometimes presented as academically untalented and weakly motivated, but at other times as thoughtful and capable of good work. Graduate students are depicted as flawed researchers who are more interested in romance than the completion of their

degrees. The movies acknowledge the expertise of sociologists but also suggest they sometimes reach incorrect conclusions, snoop into behavior that should remain

private, and fail to maintain appropriate distance from their subjects. Sociologists occasionally appear in brief classroom scenes that contain little of substance; they are as likely to be depicted as advisers or administrators as they are to be depicted as teachers. The sources of cinematic portrayals of sociology and their influence on

popular attitudes require further research.

Keywords Sociology Sociologist Movies Film Hollywood Popular culture

Peter Berger (1963) claims that popular stereotypes of sociologists as social

reformers, theoreticians for social work, and people who like to work with others were replaced by the early 1960s with ideas that sociologists are wedded to the scientific method, obsess over statistics, obfuscate with jargon, focus on the obscure, and expound what everyone already knows. Diane Bjorklund's (2001) examination of 80 English-language novels featuring sociologists offers a similar picture of the

discipline as focused on the trivial, overly attentive to methodology and

enumeration, replete within incomprehensible jargon, and more concerned with social determinism than individual choice. The fictional sociologists were depicted

I would like to thank Ryan Centner, James Ennis, Sarah Sobieraj, and Rosemary Taylor for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

J. E. Conklin (El)

Department of Sociology, Tufts University, Eaton Hall 115, 5 The Green, Medford, MA 02155, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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as too ineffectual for their critical stance toward society to be threatening and as

patronizing, prying, and deceitful scholars who dehumanized their research subjects and in the process dehumanized themselves.

Movies differ from novels in their potential impact on popular perceptions of

sociology, its practitioners, and its students. Films reach larger audiences than all but a few novels do, and the impact of their visual images can be more powerful than the effect of words on a page. However, sociologists appear in many more novels than

movies, and they are often more fully developed as characters in the books than on the screen.

This paper examines the way that sociology, sociologists, and undergraduate and

graduate students of sociology are treated in Hollywood films. It does not explore the process by which that content made it to the screen, nor does it demonstrate how that material affects audiences.

Researching Sociology in the Movies

To examine the movies' portrayal of sociology, sociologists, and sociology students, I began with the data used for my study, Campus Life in the Movies: A Critical

Survey from the Silent Era to the Present (2008). To compile a list of college movies for that project, I did keyword searches of the American Film Institute's Catalog of

Motion Pictures Produced in the United States (1971-1999) and the Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/) for college, university, campus, professor, student, and other related terms. My list included 870 U.S.-made, feature-length films that were theatrically released between 1915 and 2006 and dealt in some significant way with college. What to include as a "college movie" was a judgment call, but I erred on the side of over-inclusion. The original list of 870 films was longer than the list of 681 used in the book, because some movies about graduate students and professors pay little or no attention to the campus life of undergraduates, the subject of the book.

I tracked down and watched all but 112 of the 870 movies; most of the 112 were from the silent era, and many no longer exist. In viewing the 758 movies, I encountered frequent references to the courses students were taking and to the

teaching, research, and administrative activities of their professors. I recorded the academic disciplines mentioned in the films, data I could not have gathered from

keyword searches alone. To illustrate, a search in the "plots" and "keywords" sections of imdb.com for "sociolog"?which picks up references to "sociology," "sociologist," and "sociological"?yielded only four of the 27 films dealing with

sociology, sociologists, or sociology students that I identified from viewing the 758

college movies. Some of the 112 films on the original list that I was unable to watch

might also include references to sociology, sociologists, or sociology students.

Keyword searches for "sociolog" in the AFI Catalog and the Internet Movie Database yielded three movies?The Caveman (1915), The Hoodlum (1919), and The Beautiful Cheat (1945)?that were not on the original list of 870 movies because they did not deal with college life. These and two other films?Johnny Eager (1942) and The Milagro Beanfield War (1988)?were added to the 27 films

referencing sociology that were on the original list. I watched 30 of the 32 films; the

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two from the silent era?The Caveman (1915) and The Hoodlum (1919)?were unavailable. The 32 films do not include a few that make a brief allusion to an unseen student who happens to be taking a sociology course or use the adjective "sociological" in place of "social" (for example, a comment in Dirty Tricks [1981] that two people have irreconcilable "sociological" differences because they like different kinds of food).

A Brief History of Sociology in the Movies

Sociology was an established presence on American campuses long before the first movie mentioning the discipline was released in 1915; courses were taught as early as the 1880s, and the first departments were established in the 1890s. The field of

sociology grew slowly between the world wars and expanded from 1946 to 1960. The 1960s were the discipline's "Golden Era," a time of unprecedented research

support and high enrollments that was followed by a period of decline and retrenchment (Turner and Turner 1990).

The first reference to sociology in a feature-length Hollywood movie is in The Cave Man (1915). In that film, a socialite wagers that she can transform a common

laborer into a convincing member of the upper class in just a week. She oversees the

grooming and manners of her guinea pig and convinces her friends that he is a

sociologist doing research on the lower classes. Even though the man is only masquerading as a sociologist, this early film reveals awareness that social inequality is a central concern of the discipline. This is also true of The Hoodlum (1919), in

which a sociologist moves into a New York slum to gather observational data for his new book.

Two decades elapsed before sociology made another appearance in a Hollywood film. This time span encompasses the Great Depression, but the absence of

sociology from the screen does not signal reluctance by filmmakers to deal with social inequality during hard times, for several college movies released in the 1930s tackled the issue head on, most notably Make a Million (1935) and Soak the Rich

(1936), each of which features an economist with radical ideas about social reform. When a sociologist reappears on the screen in 1939's 20,000 Men a Year, the female instructor is presented as thoughtful, strong-willed, and socially well-adjusted. The film focuses on a college's training program for commercial airline pilots and

contains nothing of substance about sociology. Sociology appeared in three movies during the 1940s: Johnny Eager (1942),

Weird Woman (1944) and The Beautiful Cheat (1945). Six films referencing the

discipline were released from 1958 to 1964, an era that included the civil rights movement and the Great Society programs of the Johnson administration. The student antiwar movement kept sociology in the forefront during the late 1960s and

early 1970s, as the generally liberal discipline was often linked to political activism; two 1970 movies and two more in 1971 mentioned the field. Sociology, sociologists, and sociology students appeared in nine movies between 1972 and 1989, and another seven from 1990 to 2006. Between 1915 and 1957, sociology appeared in one movie every 7 years; since 1958, a year close to the beginning of the discipline's Golden Era, it has shown up in one movie every 2 years.

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The primary genres listed by the Internet Movie Database for the 20 movies that include a sociologist or a student of sociology are comedy (9), drama (5), horror (2), action (2), and crime (2). There is no tendency for any of these genres to be more common during a particular era or to increase of decrease in frequency over time, nor do the depictions of sociologists and sociology students become more or less favorable over time. Sociologists and sociology students in comedies are not

consistently portrayed as more ridiculous than the other characters; the failings of

sociologists and sociology students are the source of much of the humor in The

Beautiful Cheat (1945) and The Milagro Beanfleld War (1988), but they are more

sensible than the other characters in Boys' Night Out (1962) and The One and Only (1978). Even those who are sources of humor seem to be so more because they are

professors than because they are sociologists per se.

Sociology and Other Social Sciences in the Movies

Michael Kimmel (2008) asserts in an article published in the American Sociological Association's journal Contexts that there are very few movies about sociologists, citing just four as examples. He says "the question is less the enumeration of sociology sightings in the mass media and more about the sociology of our absence," but without an enumeration there is no basis for his claim that sociology is absent from the movies

(p. 63). His conclusion that movies, television shows, and novels depict sociologists as

"idealistic yet clueless liberals, perverse voyeurs, pseudo-scientific poseurs, or hopeless apologists for the status quo" is based in part on his erroneous inclusion on his list of four movies supposedly about sociologists one that is actually about an anthropologist {Beach Party [1963]) and another that is about a psychologist {The Chapman Report [1962]) (p. 62). He even uses those two films as evidence that popular culture depicts sociologists less favorably than anthropologists and psychologists.

How does the frequency with which sociology appears in the movies compare to that of other social sciences? Table 1 displays the results of keyword searches of my detailed notes on the 758 college movies I watched for each of five social sciences:

psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, and political science. Each film was coded as to whether it included a professor, teacher, or researcher in the

discipline; an undergraduate or graduate student in the field; or a passing reference to

the social science but no professor, teacher, researcher, or student. Some films were

coded as including both a student and a professor, teacher, or researcher.

Psychology greatly exceeds the other social sciences in total number of

appearances in college movies, with more than twice as many as it closest

competitor, anthropology, and nearly three times as many as sociology. Many more

films feature professors, teachers, and researchers who are psychologists than is the case for any other social science. Sociologists appear in about one-fourth as many movies as psychologists, fewer than half as many as anthropologists, the same

number as economists, and a few more than political scientists. Undergraduate and

graduate students of psychology also appear more frequently than students of the other social sciences. Fewer movies feature students of sociology than is the case for

any other social science except economics, a mere 13 in comparison to 51 for

psychology.

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Table 1 Number of appearances of five social sciences in 758 college films, 1915-20063

Social Total number With a professor, With a With only a science of films teacher, or researcher student passing reference

Psychology 76b 44 51 14

Anthropology 34c 26 21 1

Sociology 27d 10 13 12 Economics 23 10 12 6 Political Science 21 6 17 3

a Some films are coded as including both a student and a professor, teacher, or researcher

b Movies referencing psychology in a nonacademic context and parapsychology are not included c

Includes 13 references to archaeology d The Cave Man, The Hoodlum, The Beautiful Cheat, Johnny Eager, and The Milagro Beanfield War are

omitted because they were not on the original list of 758 college movies

What is perhaps most interesting about Table 1 is the number of passing references to sociology in comparison to the other social sciences. Whereas

anthropology, economics, and political science are rarely alluded to unless there is a character who is a professor, teacher, researcher, or student of the discipline, sociology and psychology are often referenced in passing. Moreover, nearly all

passing references to social sciences other than sociology are either neutral (for example, a reference to a book with psychology in the title) or positive (for example, an insight attributed to a psychologist), while most passing references to sociology are critical, sarcastic, or dismissive. The first passing reference to sociology appears in Senior Prom in 1958, suggesting that by then the discipline had become familiar

enough to the general public to permit such a brief allusion. Since 1958, nearly half of the films mentioning sociology include only a passing reference to the field but no characters who are sociologists or students of the discipline. These passing references are no more common in one genre than another, appearing in dramas as often comedies.

The Discipline of Sociology

Two movies suggest that before 1958 the public was unfamiliar with sociology. An

airplane mechanic in 20,000 Men a Year (1939) describes a professor of sociology as a teacher of "socigraphy" who "learns kids about animals." In Johnny Eager (1942), a gangster who is introduced by his parole officer to two sociology students muses,

"Sociology, hmm, well, let's see now..." One of the students replies, "It's a study of social conditions, seeing how the other half lives." Realizing she is being condescending, she continues, "I mean, things like crime." Embarrassed again, she

says, "Well, you understand what I mean, Mr. Eager," to which he replies, "I get it." More recently, an elderly man in The Milagro Beanfield War (1988) responds to a

graduate student's explanation that he is a sociologist conducting a study of

indigenous cultures in the Southwest by asking what a sociologist is.

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Several movies suggest that sociology is a useless discipline that focuses on the trivial and the obscure. In R.P.M. (Revolutions per Minute) (1970), a drunken and

despondent sociology professor asks his graduate student what her field of study is. She answers, "Sociology," and he replies, "Sociology. What the hell good is that? You should have chosen something relevant, like auto mechanics." A college senior in The One and Only (1978) asks her boyfriend, "So I have this degree in sociology and, urn, well, what'll I do with it?" He answers, "Open a sociology store."

Skepticism about the value of studying sociology is also expressed by a character in

Splitz (1984):

So, after carefully weighing the pros and cons that higher education had to offer

me, I realized that a degree in sociology with an emphasis on premenstrual activities of aboriginal tribeswomen could pose a problem when it came to finding a real job. That's when I decided to become a rock and roll manager. Hey, my parents always told me, you gotta have something solid to fall back on.

Another film that implies that sociology is concerned with the trivial and the obscure is The Prodigy (1999), which briefly shows an online course listing for

"Sociology 351: Ancestors of Modern Tagging. Hidden revolutionary subtexts found in pre-1960 graffiti dating from Ancient Greece as a political art form."

Some films are gratuitously antagonistic toward sociology. In Zabriskie Point

(1970), a political activist responds to a discussion about how to end ROTC on

campus by asking, "But what if you want to end sociology?" A young woman

masquerading as a delinquent in The Beautiful Cheat (1945) looks at the books in a

sociologist's office and asks, "Say, what's your racket?" He answers, "Racket? I'm a

sociologist." She replies, "Oh, oh, I was afraid of that." When the man is later thrown out of a nightclub for fighting, his brother, an attorney, defends him to the

police; and a friend remarks, "This man is a well-known sociologist." An officer

responds, "Oh, I get it...antisocial," then comments to his partner, "Well, that's life for you, Joe. One brother gets along okay and the other's a black sheep."

A few movies suggest that sociology is not an appropriate field for a male who wants to be "a real man," one defined by the culture as competent, physically dominant, and heterosexual. In Dirty Harry (1971), when Inspector Harry Callahan

(Clint Eastwood) of the San Francisco Police Department learns that his new partner, Chico Gonzalez (Reni Santoni), went to San Jose State, he remarks, "Just what I

needed, a college boy." Callahan asks Gonzalez if he got his degree, and Gonzalez

says he did, in sociology. Callahan comments, "Ah, sociology. Oh, you'll go far. That's if you live....Just don't let your college degree get you killed. I'm liable to be killed along with you." Callahan's contempt for a college education seems to grow when he learns that Gonzalez majored in sociology.

Disdain of a similar sort is expressed in A Raisin in the Sun (1961). When the

stuffy George (Louis Gossett, Jr.) arrives at an apartment for a date with a college student, he clashes with her drunken brother Walter Lee (Sidney Poitier). Irritated at

George's cool response to his suggestion that they discuss his business plans sometime, Walter Lee says,

I know you are a busy little boy...l know ain't nothing in the world as busy as

you colored college boys, with your fraternity pins and your white shoes....I

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see you all the time, with your books tucked under your arm going to your classes. What are you learning down there? What are they filling your head

with, hey? Sociology? Psychology? They teaching you how to be a man? How to take over and run this world, boy? How to run a rubber plantation or a steel

mill or something? No. Just how to read books and talk proper. Yes, and wear

faggoty white shoes.

The idea that sociology is emasculating is also apparent in the character of Dr. Alexander Haven (Noah Beery, Jr.) in The Beautiful Cheat (1945). The sociologist's every action is controlled by his two sisters, his secretary, and his cook; the four women even keep him from drinking coffee because milk is better for him. Haven was a member of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard University, but he is inept at baseball, unable to dance, and needs to ask for advice about how to propose marriage.

Because Hollywood movies contain little that is favorable about the discipline of

sociology to counterbalance their negative depictions, they end up framing the field as useless, concerned with the trivial and the obscure, and even emasculating. This critical stance is most apparent when the field of sociology itself is the subject; characters who are sociologists and sociology students are sometimes presented in more balanced ways.

Undergraduate Students of Sociology

Few undergraduates in college movies are committed to their academic work, because filmmakers regard this aspect of campus life as less entertaining?and hence less profitable?than romance, sports, and parties. Students of sociology are no

exception to the usual depiction of undergraduates as intellectually indifferent and

academically deficient. Released at the height of the Vietnam War, Summertree (1971) opens with a

disaffected Jerry McAdams (Michael Douglas) unexpectedly arriving home in mid week. Over dinner, his father remarks, "I knew it was a mistake, majoring in

sociology." Jerry replies, "I didn't say it was a mistake," and claims his malaise has

nothing to do with his major or even with school, suggesting instead, "It may just be me." When his mother proposes that he might be studying too hard, Jerry replies, "I

hardly study at all." Later, he says he understands the concepts and theories he has been learning but complains they have no personal relevance and do not make him

happy. For a time, he finds meaning in mentoring a boy through a Big Brother

program, prompting a nurse to call him a "do-gooder." When his plan to transfer to a

conservatory to study guitar is thwarted, he is drafted and sent to Vietnam. Jerry's predicament was shared by many students during this era, but the specific failure of

sociology to engage him casts the discipline in a poor light. Several movies foster the idea that sociology does not attract the brightest or most

motivated of undergraduates. In April is My Religion (2001), when a man learns that a dorm director has suggested that his son is taking his studies too seriously and needs to have more fun, he quips, "I wonder what her degree was in, probably sociology." A professor in A Change of Seasons (1980) points out that one of the

college's best basketball players is failing sociology. A freshman basketball recruit

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tells his tutor in One on One (1977), "When it comes to books, I'm not really that

smart," an opinion underscored by a course load that includes Synergistic

Techniques in Prepubescent Kinetic Development, or How to Coach Peewee

Basketball, and Introduction to Sociology. When he mentions the sociology course, he and his tutor smile and nod approvingly, indicating it is an appropriate choice for a weak student.

In Splatter University (1984), a low-budget slasher movie, one student sleeps during the first class in introductory sociology and another reads a newspaper. Later in the semester, a student writes the answers to an upcoming exam on his wrist.

None of the students has a term paper topic ready to hand in on the assigned date. A few weeks later, when the instructor announces that a member of the class has been

murdered, a student asks, "Are you going to postpone the papers, or are they due

today?" In Young Warriors (1983), Professor Hoover (Dick Shawn) contrasts the

psychoanalyst's view that crime is purely a psychological problem with the

sociologist's position that crime is the result of a bad social environment, concluding that the psychoanalyst's solution to the crime problem is to analyze everyone and the

sociologist's is to give people better jobs. Kevin (James Van Patten), one of his

students, rejects both solutions as "pie in the sky" and says there will never be

enough money for mass analysis or enough good jobs. He proposes that more police officers are needed to catch criminals so they can be exterminated. Hoover advises him to speak to someone at the psychiatric clinic, but Kevin instead joins with several fraternity brothers to form a vigilante gang that beats and kills criminals. He

did engage in serious discussion with his professor, but then he devised his own

solution to the crime problem. Undergraduates also engage in thoughtful discussion in Little Sister (1992). When

Bobby (Jonathan Silverman) discovers that the sociology course in which he is

enrolled is about the historical impact of women and that everyone else in the class is a female, he announces that he is going to drop the course, but he changes his

mind when Diana (Alyssa Milano) enters the room. In a later class, he argues that

presenting historically important women as equal to outstanding men is good, but that doing so ignores what sets women apart from men. Diana replies that women do not want to be set apart, because purported differences have long been used to hold them back. Citing several influential women, Bobby counters that it was their differences that allowed them to accomplish what no man could.

Another movie that shows undergraduates engaged with sociology is New Best Friend (2002). After Alicia (Mia Kirshner), a diligent working-class student, tells

Hadley (Meredith Monroe), a rich party girl, to stop talking during their sociology class, the two are assigned to be partners in a fieldwork project. At first uninterested in the videotape they are making, titled "A Sociological Examination of Poor Kids Placed in a Privileged Educational Environment," Hadley comes to enjoy her interaction with the socially disadvantaged children and understand what they need to do to get ahead.

Johnny Eager (1942) also features two sociology students who are doing fieldwork. Visiting a parole officer who is helping them with their research on crime,

Judy (Diana Lewis) is surprised that the handsome Johnny Eager (Robert Taylor) could be an ex-convict. She asks, "Mr. Verne, when those poor old men come in and

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report every month, can you believe what they tell you?" Verne (Henry O'Neill) replies, "We want to, naturally," but he goes on to describe their random inspections of the parolees' homes. The other student, the fashionably attired Liz (Lana Turner), comments that Eager looks too ambitious to settle for being a cab driver. Verne believes he has become a solid citizen since his release from prison. Liz proves to be correct and gets entangled in a disastrous relationship with the still-active gangster.

Hollywood movies present undergraduates in sociology courses in a mixed light. Some films suggest they lack academic ability and care little about learning. Others

depict them as engaged with sociological material and capable of doing interesting fieldwork.

Graduate Students of Sociology

Because graduate students commit themselves to a field of study to a greater degree than undergraduates, the three movies featuring candidates for a master's or doctoral

degree in sociology might be expected to deal with the discipline in more depth than films about undergraduate students of sociology.

In R.P.M. (Revolutions per Minute) (1970), Rhoda Green (Ann Margret), a

25-year-old graduate student, is having an affair with Paco Perez, a professor in her

department she calls a "50-year-old fanny pincher." Before beginning a 20-page paper on technological pressures on personality development, she asks him what she should read. When he recommends Talcott Parsons's The Social System and Structure and Process, she asks, "Can you give me the gist?" He replies, "Listen, do I have to do your homework for you?" She responds, "Listen, do I have to do your housework for you?" In fact, she does his housework, though she cooks badly, and she is always available for sex. Her scholarly pursuits get almost no attention in the film.

Boys* Night Out (1962) cleverly introduces a consideration of sociological research methods into a standard romantic comedy. Doubting the validity of the

survey data she has gathered for her thesis on suburban males' sexual fantasies, Cathy (Kim Novak) turns to observation, audio-taping her four male roommates and

taking notes on their behavior. She and Fred (James Garner), a divorce who is the

apartment's lone bachelor, become infatuated with one another, a failure on her part to maintain the detachment necessary to good research. Each of her roommates

mistakenly thinks she is a prostitute who is engaging in sex with the other three. When the three married men learn this is not the case, they search the apartment and find her typewriter, tape recorder, and notes. They confront her with their suspicion that she is a blackmailer, and she confesses to being a graduate student collecting data for her thesis in sociology. The married men laugh, but Fred responds as follows: "It's one thing for a girl to be...to go wrong. A guy'd have to be pretty narrow-minded not to overlook a thing like that. But to make me a miserable guinea pig, to use a guy for...for an experiment, to be a dirty, contemptible...sociologist. That's about as low as you can get." Fred's skeptical attitude toward snooping sociologists does not keep him from reconciling with Cathy, who says that what she

really wants is to get married and live in the suburbs, implying she will abandon her

plan to become a sociologist.

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In The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), Herbie Platt (Daniel Stern) gets off a bus in a New Mexico town with a tape recorder hanging from his neck and announces to the mayor that he has a grant to do his thesis research and will be there for 6 months.

Herbie is ill-prepared for his fieldwork, lacking fluency in Spanish and being ignorant of local religious practices. When violence nearly erupts between the locals and a land developer, he openly sides with the locals. No mention is made of how his lack of detachment might influence his research.

These films present graduate students of sociology in an unflattering light. The two women are more interested in romance than their careers. Neither student who is

gathering data is able to maintain the detachment required to do research uncontaminated by personal bias.

Sociologists as Researchers

With the exception of The Hoodlum (1919), the first film to deal with research by a

professional sociologist is The Beautiful Cheat (1945). When his publisher asks Dr. Haven to write a book about wayward children, the straight-laced sociologist realizes he has no youthful experiences of his own on which to draw. The publisher proposes that Haven take into his home an underprivileged child in order to learn first-hand about delinquency. The sociologist worries about profiting from the plight of unfortunate youngsters, but he agrees to the project when the publisher suggests he donate his royalties to a fund to help them. Why this renowned scholar would follow a publisher's advice to write a book on a topic he knows nothing about is not

explained, nor is the assumption that he could learn something important from a

"sociological experiment" with a single subject. Sociological research is presented more realistically in College Confidential

(1960), which was marketed as "a Kinsey Report on the college campus." The movie opens with undergraduate Sally Burke (Mamie Van D?ren) returning home hours after curfew and lying to her angry father that she was with Professor Steve Macinter (Steve Allen) in his bungalow by the lake. When an angry Mr. Burke

(Elisha Cook, Jr.) confronts Macinter in his office the next day, the sociologist denies

Sally was at his cabin but says she has been helping him with his research project. Burke replies, "So that's what you call it nowadays." Macinter describes his study as a survey of college students' responses to modern culture, but he admits to being most interested in their sexual behavior. He points out that the college knows about his research. Macinter's fiancee (Theona Bryant) demands that he stop his research after she hears rumors of his sexual involvement with students. She breaks their

engagement when he refuses to do so, explaining that his project took him a year to

prepare and months to collect data and has to be finished so he can get the results

published. Unlike the two female graduate students, Macinter values his career as a

sociologist over his romantic relationship. Throughout the film, he is presented as a

thoughtful but pedantic intellectual who is committed to the search for knowledge. An odd reference in Dead Man on Campus (1998) to one of the founders of

sociology suggests both the importance of his work and a reluctance to attribute it to a sociologist. When two students get into academic trouble, they plan to take

advantage of their college's policy of awarding a 4.00 grade point average for the

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semester to any student whose roommate commits suicide. While searching for a

way to find a new roommate who is suicidal, they come across Emile Durkheim's Suicide. One of them then approaches Professor D?rkheim (Paul Collins) of the

college's Department of Psychology to get more information about suicide. The error that Durkheim's Suicide, published in 1897, was written a century later will be

missed by most viewers who are not sociologists; those who are may be offended that one of their discipline's seminal works is attributed to a psychologist.

Another reference to a classic sociological work appears in The Skulls (2000). An instructor (Rob Cohen) begins a seminar as follows: "Okay, C. Wright Mills, The

Power Elite. The main thesis is what? That at certain institutions elite groups are formed that'll network the rest of their lives. Well, then that brings us to the

question: Is America really a class society, or is it the meritocracy we're taught it is since we were in kindergarten? Mr. McNamara?" Luke McNamara (Joshua Jackson), a working-class student distracted by the $45,000 bursar's bill he has just opened, replies, "Uh, well, actually I believe that it's both, sir." The instructor asks, "How can it be both?" and Luke replies, "Well, it's been my experience that merit is rewarded with wealth, and with wealth comes class." The instructor responds, "Nice

recovery, Mr. McNamara."

Even though they acknowledge that sociologists are experts, Hollywood movies sometimes imply a lack of respect for them and their discipline. In Take Her, She's

Mine (1963), the father of a student who has protested against the bomb, the Berlin

Wall, segregation, and fluoridation observes that she has arrived at what

"sociologists call the social consciousness or the don't-wash-your-hair stage." Another father in Superdad (1974) responds to a televised discussion about why fathers should become more involved in their children's lives by spending time on the beach with his daughter and her friends. After the venture proves a disaster, he comments that teenagers are "nuts, and so are those sociologists thinking I could get along with them."

On-screen sociologists are often depicted as researchers who should be respected for their expertise; but sometimes they are shown to reach incorrect conclusions, snoop into behavior that should remain private, and fail to maintain appropriate distance from their research subjects.

Sociologists as Teachers

Hollywood films often portray sociologists as teachers and advisers, but overall they do not give proper weight to the importance of these roles in the lives of most academic sociologists.

In Boys' Night Out (1962), the sociologist Dr. Prokosch (Oscar Homulka), whose most recent research was strangely a study of chimpanzees, responds to his graduate student Cathy's concern that the questionnaire data she has gathered do not get at the truth about men's sexual fantasies by asking how she will gather data if not with a

survey instrument. He worries about her safety when she replies that she will do observational research on her four male roommates, but she assures him that the men are tame. She says that men forget that sex is but a small part of life, and Prokosch

remarks, "2.6%," a rare use of a statistic by a sociologist in the movies. When he

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asks if she can entice the men by pretending to offer them sex but not actually become intimate with them, she answers that every nice girl learns to do that. His solicitude could be criticized as sexist, but his attention to the risks of field research can also be seen as appropriate to his role as thesis adviser.

When Cathy plays the audiotapes of her subjects for Prokosch, he tells her she cannot prove anything with a sample of only four. Her response that the patterns she has found for her subjects are the same for all men raises doubts about her

competence as a researcher, unless she is referring to consistency between her

observational data and the survey data she gathered earlier. Prokosch advises her to learn more about her subjects' home lives by interviewing their wives, so she travels to the suburbs and tells the women she is doing a sociological study of sexual behavior something like the Kinsey Report. Here Prokosch's supervision fails, for by not instructing Cathy to tell the wives that she is interviewing them only because their husbands are her research subjects, she engages in deception similar to that of Laud Humphreys (1975), who observed men having homosexual sex in public restrooms, wrote down their cars' license plate numbers, and conducted in-home interviews after telling them they had been randomly selected as subjects in a social health survey.

Classroom instruction rather than thesis advising is the focus of Splatter University (1984). In the initial meeting of her introductory sociology class, a nervous Julie Parker (Francine Forbes), who has just taken her first teaching position, discovers that none of the students has the required registration card to hand in, so she tells everyone to bring it the next time. Claiming that she will be lenient on choices of paper topics, though they should somehow relate to the course, she conveys her low expectations to the students. No one has a paper topic to turn in on the due-date, and the class has conspired to tell her that she failed to notify them when their topics were due. By accepting this excuse, the inexperienced Parker is

shown to be a well-meaning but minimally competent instructor who cannot contend with students who have little or no interest in their academic work. She does show concern for their well-being, but sometimes in inappropriate ways, as when she offers to recommend an inexpensive abortionist to one young woman.

Questionable behavior by a sociology instructor also occurs in Little Sister

(1992). In the semester's first class on the historical impact of women, Ms. Roffman

(Christine Healy) addresses her students as follows: "Good afternoon, ladies. How

interesting, and gentleman." Already uncomfortable at being the only male in the

room, Bobby nearly drops the course. In a later session, he and another student, Diana, get into a lively discussion about whether women are intrinsically different from men. In her office after class, Roffman says to Bobby, "I thought your comments today were insightful. Do you think she liked them?" When he asks who she means, Roffman replies, "Diana. Surely that speech wasn't meant for me or the class?" He responds, "No, but it is how I feel." After he tells her of his trickery in

trying to win over Diana, Roffman asks what would happen if he ended his

deception, advice to the lovelorn that seems nearly as inappropriate as Parker's offer to recommend an abortionist.

Another sociology professor is presented unflatteringly in New Best Friend

(2002). The man announces that the eight words "Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the

Way" will be "the focus of our last semester together, and how they affect behavior

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patterns in the modern American society, not only macrocosmically in the so-called real world, you know, but in the microcosm of the classroom and the university, you know." The inarticulate instructor goes on to say that students will work in pairs on fieldwork projects, prompting one student to suggest that the title of the project implies they should work in teams of three rather than two. He rejects her proposal.

Because most classroom scenes are brief and contain little of substance, the

teaching function of sociologists in the movies gets less attention than might be

expected from the importance of this role in the lives of their real-life counterparts. Some on-screen sociologists fulfill their advising role well, but others behave

contrary to the way their universities expect them to act.

Sociologists as Administrators

Hollywood movies give the administrative duties of sociology professors nearly as much attention as their teaching and advising. This is surprising, because filmmakers who attended college undoubtedly had more experience with their professors as teachers and advisers than as administrators, and because classroom interactions seem to offer better material for drama or comedy than running a department or a

university. Dr. Pauline Swenson (Ellen McRae [Burstyn]) in For Those Who Think Young

(1964) is a sociologist and a college trustee who offers to gather evidence to support the board's decision to curb students' alcohol consumption and general moral laxity by making a local dive off-limits. Modestly attired, she enters "Surfs Up" and orders fruit juice, but when the owner sees her taking notes, he serves her a large alcoholic drink. She likes the taste, orders more, gets drunk, and passes out. The next

day, Woody (Woody Woodbury), the club's comedian, tells her that nearly half of her students are old enough to vote, marry, join the armed forces, and order alcohol. She expresses concern about underage drinkers, but he shows her a stamp the club uses to keep them from ordering alcohol. Convinced that the club is reputable, Swenson declares her investigation closed and apologizes for her behavior. Later, she is fired by the college for writing a favorable report on the club.

In Weird Woman (1944), Professor Norman Reed (Lon Chaney, Jr.), a member of a department of sociology who is apparently an anthropologist, has just had a book

published. When Professor Millard Sawtelle (Ralph Morgan), another member of the

department who also seems to be an anthropologist, praises Reed's book, Sawtelle's wife Evelyn (Elizabeth Russell) notes that he, too, will soon have a book published. She worries he will not be appointed new chair of the department but says he has the inside track, because the job is usually awarded according to seniority. A dean points out that brains also count. When Reed's book wins a major prize and sells briskly, he seems the most likely candidate to head the department. Evelyn complains about

department politics to Reed's ex-girlfriend Ilona (Evelyn Ankers), who observes that he is the "favorite boy around here" and claims that his new wife Paula (Anne Gwynne) is using magic to advance his career and might keep Sawtelle from

becoming chair. Ilona tells Sawtelle that Reed knows he used a student's

unpublished thesis as the basis for his book and would use his plagiarism to force him to withdraw his candidacy for the chair position. When Paula tells Reed she

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used magic to ensure the success of his book and has nearly managed to secure the chair position for him, he dismisses her claim as superstition and asserts that he has earned everything he has achieved. He destroys her ritual objects, and she says he has broken the "circle of immunity" that protected him. Soon after, the board of trustees hires a professor from another college to head the department, and Reed

gracefully accepts his failure to win the position. In contrast to this avid pursuit of an administrative post, a sociologist in R.P.M.

(Revolutions per Minute) (1970) only reluctantly becomes the acting president of his

university. A leftist author of four books on social action, Paco Perez is described as "a very noted scholar" but also "a very noted oddball and a radical" who has affairs with his students and rides a motorcycle. At a late-night emergency meeting of the board of trustees, he jokingly offers a jargon-laden statement, commenting that they must be seeking his analysis of the student takeover of the administration building, because "paper liberals" always turn to a Keniston, Riesman, or Perez to tell them where they went wrong. The trustees tell him the president has just resigned because of the stress of the situation, and they want him to become acting president, because he is the only realistic candidate acceptable to the student protesters. A trustee says that if Perez turns down the job, they will have to call in the police. Everyone agrees this should be avoided. The trustee tries to persuade Perez to assume the presidency by saying, "Surely even a sociologist feels some obligation to the university." Perez

replies, "Sir, my obligation is to teach," but when members of the board point out that he will be listened to by the protesters because he knows their leader, he accepts the appointment.

Perez meets with the student protesters and relays their demands to the trustees, who refuse to turn over the university to "a bunch of adolescent troublemakers." Perez tells the students he can deliver on only nine of their 12 demands, and their leader rejects the offer and asks him how it feels to be part of the Establishment. Later, Perez gets agitated when the protesters tell him that writing books is not the same as knowing and criticize his work as outdated. When the protesters threaten to destroy the university's computer if their demands are not met, Perez believes his only option is to summon the police to

prevent the destruction of the institution he has believed in his whole life. Students throw computer tapes out the windows, and the police launch tear gas canisters and storm the building, clubbing fleeing protesters and bystanders alike. After the violence has ended, a distraught Perez says he feels old and regrets not staying in the building to

help the protesters get what they wanted. That Perez is a sociologist is important in several ways. He personifies the

popular conception of sociology as a liberal, sometimes radical, discipline, one whose professors and students are inclined to antiwar activism and other challenges to the status quo. The film also questions the usefulness of sociology; despite Perez's

many publications on conflict resolution, he cannot get the protesters out of the

building without resorting to the brute force he deplores.

Conclusion

Hollywood movies sometimes cast the discipline of sociology as a useless, even

emasculating, field of study that dwells on the trivial and the obscure. However,

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sociologists and students of sociology are often presented in a more balanced way. Some undergraduates are weakly motivated and academically deficient, but others are involved in creative projects and thoughtful discussions. Graduate students are

usually more interested in romance than in completing their degrees and too

involved with their subjects to do good research. None of the 12 movies featuring a sociologist fits what Berger describes as the

common pre-1963 stereotypes of sociologists as social reformers, theoreticians for

social work, and people who like to work with others. The conclusion of Berger,

Bjorklund, and Kimmel that popular culture represents sociologists as statistics

obsessed and jargon-dependent "pseudo-scientists" and "perverse voyeurs" also gets little support from the 12 films. Sociologists are teachers rather than researchers in

five of them?20,000 Men a Year (1939), Splatter University (1984), Little Sister

(1992), The Skulls (2000), and New Best Friend (2002)?and a thesis adviser in a

sixth, Boys'Night Out (1962). Sociologists in three of the 12 movies?Weird Woman

(1944), For Those Who Think Young (1964), and R.P.M. (Revolutions per Minute)

(1970)?also do not conform to Berger, Bjorklund, and Kimmers stereotype, each

of them being immersed in administrative duties or the pursuit of an administrative post rather than research. The sociologists who do research in the other three films?The

Hoodlum (1919), The Beautiful Cheat (1945), and College Confidential (I960)? cannot fairly be described as obsessed with statistics, dependent on jargon, pseudo scientific, or perversely voyeuristic.

Hollywood's portrayal of sociology, sociologists, and students of sociology raises two important questions that cannot be answered here: Where do filmmakers get their ideas about sociology, and what impact do their movies have on attitudes toward the discipline? Screenwriters might write their stories and directors might shape their films in ways that conform to and reinforce popular stereotypes of

sociology. The ways that sociology is depicted by novelists, news reporters, and

political leaders?President Ronald Reagan's negative comments come to mind? could be a source of Hollywood's ideas about the discipline. Filmmakers might also use material from earlier movies, with cinematic portrayals of sociology being recycled over the years to become entrenched in popular culture. Some screenwriters and directors might also be influenced by their own collegiate experiences with

sociology, using a professor or a fellow student as a model for what eventually appears on the screen. More likely, those who make films have little knowledge of

what sociology entails or what sociologists actually do, which would explain why

sociologists in the movies sometimes do research that seems more appropriate to

anthropologists, psychologists, and biologists. A second question is what impact cinematic depictions of sociology have on audiences. If negative portrayals influence

attitudes, they could harm the discipline by causing students to avoid enrolling in

sociology courses, by reducing administrators' support for departments of sociology, and by limiting government and foundation support for research.

Primary References

20,000 Men a Year. (1939). A Change of Seasons. (1980).

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A Raisin in the Sun. (1961).

April is My Religion. (2001). Blue Chips. (1994). Boys'Night Out. (1962).

College Confidential. (1960). Dead Man on Campus. (1998).

Dirty Harry. (1971). For Those Who Think Young. (1964).

Johnny Eager. (1942). Little Sister. (1992). New Best Friend. (2002). One on One. (1977).

Preppies. (1982). /?.?M (Revolutions per Minute). (1970). Senior Prom. (1958).

Sp/atter University. (1984).

Sp/z?r. (1984). Summertree. (1971).

Superdad. (1974). fate //er, Me fr Mne. (1963). 77ie Beautiful Cheat. (1945). 7%e Cave Man. (1915). The Hoodlum. (1919). 7fce M/agro Beanfield War. (1988). 7%e Owe W O/i/y. (1978). 7%e /W/gy. (1999). 77ie S*u//.s. (2000). Jffeirc/ Vornan. (1944).

fowig Warriors. (1983). Zabriskie Point. (1970).

Secondary References

American Film Institute. (1971-1999). The American film institute catalog of motion pictures produced in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Berger, P. L. (1963). Invitation to sociology: A humanistic perspective. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Bjorklund, D. (2001). Sociologists as characters in twentieth-century novels. The American Sociologist, 32, 23-41.

Conklin, J. E. (2008). Campus life in the movies: A critical survey from the silent era to the present. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Humphreys, L. (1975). Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places, enlarged ed. New York: Aldine

Transaction.

Kimmel, M. (2008). Good sociology makes lousy TV. Contexts, 7, 62-64.

Turner, S. P., & Turner, J. H. (1990). The impossible science: An institutional analysis of American

sociology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

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Sociology in Hollywood Films

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