Taylor Kwan

Professor Lookholder

Sociology 001

19 March 2017

Project 1: Video/DVD Analysis

For this project, I chose an episode from the television series, What Would You Do?

(WWYD). This hidden camera television show, hosted by John Quinones, presents real world

situations in the public and catch how unsuspecting bystanders react and respond to the issue.

These situations range from racism to many other cultural issues. The episode I chose was on

the issue of racism. It was about how a white woman was introducing her newly engaged Asian

fiancee to her disapproving parents. The show took place at a local diner in which cameras

were hidden. The actors would go into the diner and act out the situation and see how the

customers in the diner would react and if they would stand up for the biracial couple. The young

woman, Madison first told her parents of the happy news that she was engaged. This was her

parents first time meeting the fiance, Eric so they had no assumptions about him and were

excited to meet the young Asian man. Upon meeting Eric, the parents attitude of the new

marriage changed. They seem to disapprove of the marriage because of Erics ethnicity. As the

parents leave the restaurant for a bit to discuss the marriage, this gives time for the bystanders

to talk to the new couple and help them handle the situation. In the first scene, a man sitting

near their table calls the couple over once the parents leave and tell them to follow their hearts

and the parents should not be treating Eric this way. Once the parents come back into the

scene, the man politely tells them that they need to accept the marriage and should be happy

for the new couple. The video continues with several more scenes in which other bystanders

intervene in the situation to comfort the couple. The video ends with John Quinones interviewing

the bystanders who intervened and see how they felt about the situation presented.
 From the viewpoint of Durkheim, Marx, and Comte, each would view the video

differently. Emile Durkheim supports that society works as a whole to function and create

balance. If he were to watch this video, he would mention that the society is not functioning

together since Madisons parents had different values about the biracial marriage than the

bystanders in the video. Madisons parents were disapproving while the bystanders supported

the couple. While from Marxs perspective, he asserts that societys structure depends on the

base (economy) of his hierarchy. Marx would comment that in this video, the Caucasian people

are the more superior race since the parents, who are Caucasian disapproved of their

daughter's marriage to an Asian man. He would agree that this video depicted his theory of the

whites being powerful while all other races were subordinate. Lastly, Comte theorized that a

stable society was governed by establishing laws and social orders. Comte would suggest that

racism still exists in society because there are not enough laws to deter people from being

racist. The paradigm that is represented in this video is structural functionalist. This portrays

how the individual parts of society functions to benefit the whole. This was shown how the

parents disapproved of the Asian fianc, then bystanders intervened in the situation to comfort

the new couple. This demonstrated how people of different races are treated and how several

bystanders had the same consensus that the couple should not be discriminated against. So

these bystanders attempted to make the situation better for the good of the social environment.

If more people are able to intervene in situations like the one presented in the video, then

society will become better as a whole.