Hsu 1

Lili Hsu

Soc 001/ 33128

Prof. Ortega

19 Mar 17

Project 1: Video/DVD Analysis

The clip, "Mother Knows Best" from Tangled is the video that I chose.

This video is talking about the baby Princess Rapunzel was kidnapped from

the palace in the middle of the night by Mother Gothel. She knows that the

Rapunzel's magical powers are now growing within the golden hair of her,

and for to stay young; Mother Gothel must lock Rapunzel in her hidden

tower. Rapunzel is now a teenager, and she has been in the tower her entire

life, and she is just curious of the outside world.

In Auguste Comtes Positivism Theory, he mentioned human society

is united. The Sensibilities of human are the motivations of developing the

social process; and the ability and wisdom are the tool for developing the

society. Human will not know everything when they born. Human will learn

things from the experiences of the environments. Then, the truths must be

the peoples experiences from the observations or the sensibilities. People

are learning knowledges from different situations, and their experiences will

help people to infer the new knowledges which have not been experiences

before. Also, he believes the knowledges which cannot be observations or

experiences are not the real knowledges. In the clip, Rapunzel wants to go

for exploring the outside world because every year on her birthday, the
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kingdom will release the flying lanterns which make her to have the curious

about outside. According to Comtes Positivism Theory, her curiosity is

making sense because she saw the flying lanterns every year on her

birthday, so she is observing the lanterns which become her experiences.

Thats why that she wants to know the truths about outside world. Her

sensibility guided her to learn the new experiences.

In Karl Marxs Conflict Theory, the Conflict Perspective is focused on

the socio- cultural changes. The changes will come with the conflicts because

they have different power. In the clip, when Rapunzel had the idea about

leaving the tower and exploring this world, Gothel wanted to stop her idea,

and told her the reasons that why she does not allow her to leave the tower.

They have different ideas about the outside world. The mother is superior

that based on her age, experiences, knowledges, and magic power. On the

other hand, Rapunzel is inferior; she does not have any excuses that can

refute her mother Gothel back. Their thinkings have the conflict, and Gothel

wins in that moment, but Rapunzel finds her way to escape away from the

tower which is like the inferiors will fight to the superior when they disagree

with them.

In mile Durkheim's Structural functionalism, all the people have

their own responsibility for making this society become more stable and

balanced. All of the social appearances, no matter it should or should not be

exist in this society. As long as the appearances are in this society, they are

related with the society and they are playing roles to this society with their
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effective function. Therefore, even though mother Gothel stole baby

Rapunzel from her birth parents, this action is acceptable in theory because

this action plays role in this society. If the unbalance shows up in the society

such as Gothel wants to lock Rapunzel in the tower, different kinds of power

will make this unbalance become balance like the prince helps her to leave

the tower or her birth parents are always finding her in the kingdom.

The conflict theory is the most represented in this video because

Mother Gothel wants Rapunzel to stay in the tower, and try to reduce her

curiosity of outside world. On the other hand, Rapunzel cannot control her

heart of adventure and curiosity to the world outside.