The Spare Parts Movie Review

The spare part is an American film released in 2015. The development of the movie is based on a true story which brings together four Mexican immigrants in the quest for education. The four were enrolled in Carl Hayden Community High School in Phoenix, where more than half of the students population were undocumented immigrants. The immigration theme has dominated the inspirational film, where the four children join hands to conquer in an incredible project with the guidance of a substitute teacher.

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Plot

The plot of the movie starts with Oscar Vazquez who visits American Forces Career Center to register as United States Army, which was his long term dream. While waiting for an interview, he saw an advertisement about the Marine Underwater Robotics Competition sponsored by the United States Armed Forces. Subsequently, due to lack of some relevant documents, he is forbidden to join the Army force and was advised to stay away from any government official to avoid deportation by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies. Vazquez leaves the center but continues to look for more information on the competition as one of the ways to create an outlet for progression in life.

Fredi Cameron, a substitute teacher and head of an engineering club in the school, meets Vazquez and offers to help him to build a remote-operated underwater robot. In the course of looking for more students to join the club, one of Vazquez teachers recommends Christian Arcega for his technical ability. Arcega design an early design of the potential robot, which marks the start to developing a prototype for their project. The engineering clubs later changed its name to Robotics Academic Club. While in the parking lot Cameron found Santillan stealing from the principals car and forced him to join the team in mechanical design and prototype building. Later, they enrolled Luis Aranda as he was strong enough to lift the robot in and out of the pool (McNamara, 2015).

However, the project faced several hitches. Among them was a lack of funding as compared to their competitors from financially stable institutions. Consequently, this forced them to scale down the expenses in the project as the funds they had collected from local businesses and the contribution by Cameron was not sufficient. With a smaller budget, they constructed the robot and named it Stinky because of its smell after gluing it together. Also, their dreams were almost shattered as they could not move from Phoenix to Santa Barbara due to lack of migration documents. Despite, the hardships, in the presence of highly funded college teams in the first round they emerged fourth after scoring seventy-five points in the competition. Still to the surprise of many after technical evaluation of the judges and interviews the emerged champions in the final results

The Tenets of Sociocultural Theory in the Film Spare Parts

The sociocultural theory outlines the significance of society and culture in shaping and developing an individual. The theory highlights the importance of sociocultural beliefs and values in developing individuals sociocultural, cognitive and learning functions. From the film `Spare Parts`, the following tenets are evident

Socio-cognitive theory

The socio-cognitive theory explicates personality regarding the manner people think and respond to the social environment. For instance, Vazquez had the drive to succeed in life based on the achievement and the conduct of military in the society (McNamara, 2015). For this reason, he held on his dreams even after the officer at the American Forces Career Center warned him to stay away from government officials. Similarly, everyone in the Marine Underwater Robotics competition including the judges looked down upon the crew from Carl Hayden High School as they had developed a believe that they were dominant groups such as MIT who were favorites. Therefore, cognitive theory mainly focuses on core phenomena and effective action. Hence people could recognize the MIT group rather than the crew from Carl Hayden.

The procedural facilitators and tools

The procedural facilitates a guideline in the use of available services to scaffold performances. Tools, on the other hand, include linguistics, amenities, and mental abilities. The procedural facilitators and instruments support cognitive performances by helping individuals in converting elements of activities into the visible and attainable function. Based on the movie `Spare Parts`, the four students used their teacher as an instructor and other available resources to come up with their robot which they were to represent in the competition. Similarly, the completion is also a tool they used to conquer and succeed in life.

Mental representation

Lastly, mental representation plays a determinant role in merging and executing actions. In the Spare Parts, the entire project development starts with Vazquez. He joins with Cameron to bring in other three students to form the required taskforce to deliver their project. In the long run, they represent their school and emerge victories despite the hardships they had to face. In the mental representation, it has to start with conceptualizing and then align other factors towards the achievement.

References

McNamara, S. 2015. Spare Parts. Film. Arizona.