Yanwen Wang

Sociology 01
11/17/15
Project 1: Video/DVD Analysis
The movie I decided to use for this project is titled Elysium. It is a science fiction
action thriller that shows the social inequality in life. The film takes place in the year of 2154, in
which the Earth is overpopulated, polluted and poverty in rampant amongst the citizens of Earth.
The whole planet Earth is filled with poverty, starvation, famine and lack of medical technology.
The rich and powerful live on a space habituated named Elysium, in which poverty, war and
disease are absent due to the technological advances the rich have. The protagonist of the story,
Max Da Costa is an ex con and works at a robot building factory when he is hit with a full dose
of radiation. He is then given five days to live and goes to an underground lord named Spider
who agrees to help Max reach Elysium in return for helping Spider get critical data he wants
from a man named Carlyle. After stealing the information, the president of Elysium Miss
Delacourt is alerted and sends a blood thirsty secret agent named Kruger to retrieve the stolen
data from Max and Spider. After breaking the encryption on the files, Spider learns that the
information stolen from Carlyle can be used to make all Earth inhabitants into Elysium residents,
thus granting them the same rights that the rich and powerful have. Max then saves his childhood
friend Fay and her daughter Matilda and also defeats Kruger. Max then sacrifices himself to
ensure that all Earth citizens are able to become Elysium residents, which is what occurs and
everyone on Earth is cured of their disease by health bays dispatched from Elysium.

Comte would look at Elysium and derive that society is the way it is because that is how
it is meant to be. He would interpret that poverty and rich and powerful through the positivist
lens and determine everyone knows the situation they are in and accept it. Marx on the other
hand would cite how the events in Elysium are a byproduct of capitalism. Marx would argue that
the only reason the world is so broken is due to the effects of capitalism. He would point out that
the pollution and destruction was caused by the owners of the means of production and that they
have now abandoned the Earth and created an exclusive community for themselves. He would
also say that social inequality only exists because the rich have all the necessary tools due to
their wealth and that poor have nothing due to the fact that they have been oppressed for a long
time. Durkheim would have taken the functionalist perspective of saying that social inequality
and conflict is good because it reinforces the norms of the society.
The paradigm that is presented the most in this movie is conflict. The whole movie
centers around the conflict between the poor on Earth and the rich on Elysium. The poor feel
abandoned and left for dead because they have no means of changing their situations as Earth is
basically tapped out of resources. The rich on the other hand, decide to build their own paradise
in space and forget their fellow humans down on Earth. While women, children and men have to
fight to survive, the people of Elysium are able to have access to all kinds of foods and drink.
Furthermore, there is a struggle for resources as the poor have no access to medical care,
however, the rich have medical bays that can cure anything from cancer, the flu to brain
damage.They are also protected by the robot policemen who arrest and deport people from Earth.
The movie is interesting to watch because the rich on Elysium truly do not like the poor and see
them as being second class citizens. The discrimination is different though in that it not down to

a race issue but down to a socioeconomic and status. The rich truly think lowly of the poor and
this was interesting to see. The rich also remind me of the