Symbolic Interactionism In The Shawshank Redemption

As we have studied other perspectives concerning the relation between the Self and Society and their definitions of these terms according to them, we will focus and use Symbolic Interactionism to analyze the movie The Shawshank Redemption (1994). After introducing the the perspective’s paradigm, and explaining it’s three main authors George Meade, Charles H. Cooley and Erving Goffman, we focus on their application to the movie’s principal character, Andy Dusfrene. First by interesting ourselves on prison culture, then on Andy’s sense of Self and finally by comparing it to two of his fellow inmates, Red and Brooks. Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective focused on the meaning people associate to objects, events and†¦show more content†¦This explains why things have different meanings according to the situations. Finally, as meaning emerges trough interactions, it is also maintained trough them. As we acquire ways to feel, behave and think through our interactions culture is socially constructed. This explains why for symbolic interactionists, there is no Society, no greater body that controls and determines social norms, we are the ones who trough our interactions, create them. Since our responses to symbols, signs, events and situation are public, we are free to redefine to a certain extent meanings and as new things and objects emerge, we come up with new meanings. It is when we do not use a meaning associated with a symbol, for abstract ideas such as beliefs of values, that they disappear or are modified. This is how symbolic interactionists explain the change in â €˜â€™societies’’ mentalities over time. All of these choices and these interactions implicate a Self, a reflexive process that enables us to formulate, monitor, control and react to our own behaviour, which formation we’ll explain through Meade, Cooley and Goffman. Meade explain the Self-Formation trough role-taking, the process of assuming other’s perspectives, putting ourselves in their positions. He explains this process through three stages. The first one is the play stage, which is acquired through early childhood. Children learn significant symbols, the symbols that have a shared meaning, that will call for the same response for