Sports Movie Analysis
Relating the movie “Creed 1” with sociological concepts
Visual arts are some of the most common platforms where different aspects of sociology addressed. Movies reflect the deep social problems ailing the society in a way that aims at entertaining the audience while updating the current decay and social inequalities that separate people into classes, races, and economic capabilities. Creed is one of the visual arts that try to highlight the sports world in-depth, revealing all the struggles that athletes have to go through due to dysfunctional social structures. Sports attract mass viewership, and through these different ideologies and discriminatory practices can be done in attempts to promote certain social believes and ethnic discrimination, which will be addressed as we analyze the movie creed in detail.
Creed 1 is a movie based on the boxing sport where the main character Adonis Johnson acts as a passionate young man who wants to make a career out the boxing sport. Adonis comes from a boxing background since his father, Apollo Creed, was a boxing champion who died during a boxing match. Adonis decided to follow his dead father’s legacy despite the fact that he didn’t have the privilege to see him since he died before Adonis was born. Adonis struggles with life moving from group home to group home since he was an illegitimate child; however, Apollo’s widow decides to take him and provide Adonis with a decent life. Despite being sheltered and offered with all the necessities, Adonis still wanted to pursue his boxing career. Adonis finally gets trained by another former boxing champion Rocky Balboa. With the appropriate trainer, Adonis struggles hard with all the challenges placed in front of him in the ring, and he manages to create a name out of his career. The film ends with Donnie (Adonis) and a frail but improving Rocky recognition in the Philadelphia Museum of arts.
Underrepresentation of black male athletes is one of the main themes that are evident in the movie. Sports inequalities and underrepresentation is one of the main tools that are used to maintain the dominance of specific ethnic groups in society(Trolan 2013)). In Creed, Adonis is one of the few black athletes that engage in the sport; most of his opponents are of western origin. This is a clear indication of media and sports inequalities addressed in this movie. Media is also the most excellent tool of racial stereotyping in that characters are groomed to portray a specific race in a certain way. Racial stereotyping can be achieved through portraying one race in an undesirable way or portraying a certain race as superior through grooming the characters. Characters are representing the races in the ways that the media wants its content consumers to believe(Ramasubramanian,2019). Media is the most used way of addressing sociological concepts that ail society and the media chooses what the audience should and should not see; this makes its tool of spreading inequality and racial dominance. In the movie, Creed Adonis can be seen to be representing the African American community, and he is groomed to a violent and stubborn person who is arrogant and doesn’t take advice from his superiors. The characterization of Adonis is one example where media and especially movies spread racial stereotyping where African American youth are portrayed as stubborn, arrogant, and selfish.
Functionalism theory is also one of the sociological concepts that are widely covered in the movie creed; factionalism basically explains the perspectives of which the constituents of society constitute of different but related parts where each part of the community specializes and performs a particular function. Through this theory, different social structures can be associated with a specific behavior of individuals in society. Family is the most significant social structure that natures an individual’s behavior and makes an individual behave in a certain way(Turner, 2017) . from the movie Adonis is portrayed as a victim of failure in social structures in that he is born from an illicit affair making his family background difficult he is then seen to be a violent person who is insensitive and has to live a violent life in order to make the society believe in his abilities. Different parts of the social structures come together to form the community in full, and lack of one ingredient social structure can affect members of the society in terms of character and quality of life as its seen in the movie.
An economy is also a tool that creates classes in that society has a tendency to group itself according to the economic abilities of its members, making individuals from one class find it difficult to fit the other(Manstead, 2018). Adonis background shows a lot of economic struggles where he is unable to find a permanent home due to the lack of parents who could cater for his needs this makes him create a street lifestyle which becomes difficult to abandon even after being adopted by his late father’s widow.existence of class structures makes it difficult for Adonis to have a free life he has to address his fathers legacy since it determined how people were going to perceive him during the boxing matches.
References
Manstead, A. S. (2018). The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behavior. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57(2), 267-291.
Ramasubramanian, S., & Sousa, A. (2019). Media and Ethnic Stereotyping. The International Encyclopedia of Media Literacy, 1-7.
Trolan, E. J. (2013). The impact of the media on gender inequality within the sport. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 91, 215-227.
Turner, J. H. (2017). Functionalism. The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 1-9.