Claire has been known as daddy’s little girl. She’s popular and can be perceived as being conceited and rude, but deep down Claire is kind and sweet and just trying to make a name for herself without her parents or her friends constantly pressuring her to be somebody they want her to be rather then who SHE wants to be. *Bender also known as the schools “bad boy”, has been known to be the criminal the guy that doesn’t care about anything and anyone.
But what many people wouldn’t really know about Bender is that he comes from a broken home where he is constantly being abused and his parents are always drinking. Bender is just a guy trying to find his way and just wants to be socially accepted. Based on the behaviour and attitudes that both Claire and Bender exhibit in the movie it wasn’t hard to tell what the different agents of socialization had the biggest impact on them. For Bender it was his family,During the movies he shares the many family occurances that he’s experienced.Both of Bender’s parents are abusive not only physically towards him but also verbally and are constantly calling crude words such as “stupid” “worthless” and “retarded”, when Bender accidently spilt paint on the garage floor his dad burned him with his cigar.
All of these factors has impacted Bender very negatively and beacuse of all the hurt that he bottles up he tends to act out by destroying the library books and taking the screw out of the door.For Claire she had more than one agent of socialization that impacted her, the biggest agent that impacted her was her peers because she felt that because she is the most popular girl at school that she has to act a certain way around her friends, and because of that she belives that she is above everybody else and near the end of the movie Claire admits that come Monday morning she is going to continue acting the same way she did before she met them and just pretend that they don’t exist at school.Throughout the movie both Bender and Claire demonstrated different theories such as Claire demonstrating Karl Marx’ theory on social class. His theory was basically that the higher up on the social scale you are the more you get, and Claire exhibited that until the end.
Claire acted like just because she has money and she is the most popluar girl at her school that it gives her permission to treat people that aren’t wealthy or popular like they don’t matter, it wasn’t until the very end of the movie when she was confessing that she wouldn’t acknowledge them come Monday morning that she was pressured because she was so popular.Bender on the other hand demonstrated a different kind of theory and that was margaret Mead’s theory on nature vs nurture. Growing up Bender was abused both physically and verbally and that has caused him to be angry and emotional and lash out and destroy public property and have a tendency to be very angry at people. Bender’s biological tendency is to not be able to talk about his feelings and be able to express himself towards people instead just hiding his feelings.
