SOC 110 - Essay - 1000-1500 words (Urgency!!Need help!!)

Day #5 of 20:

SOC110: Introduction to Sociology

June 4th, 2018

UIBE SUMMER SCHOOL

10

Norms and Values: The Power of Money

Indecent Proposal Indecent Proposal is a timeless movie that captures a fundamental problem of life: why we sometimes make decisions that go against our most basic logics of morality and the most basic logics of what society thinks of as a wrong decision. The movie chronicles how David and Diana, two high school sweethearts who married as adults, must decide on a very attractive offer: to take up an offer of $1 million dollars for Diana to have sex with a wealthy man for one night. While all logics of morality and about norms and values say that they should not, the couple must weigh out their poverty with the bright life they could gain from the money. Some questions one can derive from the movie that underpin basic sociological issues include: how do we make “immoral” decisions given the weight of our disadvantaged backgrounds? Are decisions made by individuals free from the conditions and contexts in which they live? More broadly, we should also consider what it means to think of money in the face of severe material deprivation, and under what conditions do economically fragile populations make decisions that go against what “society” thinks is right or wrong. Most of all, what is the difference between “agency” and “structure” in the movie?