Social Evils Essay, Research Paper
December 15, 1998 Social Evils Because I was brought up in a protected environment, it wasn’t until I was seventeen or eighteen when I learned of the evil prejudices that are in our world. Today isn’t as bad as yesterday, and hopefully tomorrow will be even better, but we must be reminded of our wrongdoings, so that they do not happen again. One way of doing this is through art; more specifically the movies. Movies have been captivating the imagination of man for almost a century. When one watches a movie, for a brief period of time, they become a part of that life, and feel what the characters are feeling. This is the perfect opportunity for a writer to teach us about evils, such as prejudice. If a character is being treated unfairly, then the audience will see and feel what that character is feeling. An excellent example of this is the 1992 movie, School Ties. This movie’s sole existence is to portray how people of the Jewish religion were persecuted during the 1950’s. We are presented with a young man who is faced with a decision that everyone must make sooner or latter. Should David Green stand up for what he believed in or hide his faith so that he can fit into the “crowd”. It shows how the upper class people of America saw Jews as greedy people. Ironically, it was these same upper class Christians that had all of the money.
Prejudice ideas and bigots ruined the lives of many people and continue today. David lost a girl that he deeply cared about because he was Jewish. She, because of the way that she was raised, could not bring herself to date a Jew, even though it was evident that she cared for him. School Ties also unveils the double standard that was in place. When David’s friends find out about him being Jewish they seem to be more upset just because he didn’t tell them. However, when he says that he never asked them their religion and they never told him that that was okay. With the many social problems that we have overcome, there are still many to fight. Unfortunately prejudice is still one of them. It is movies such as School Ties that help to combat these evils.