Just a picture i thought was moving and had lots of meaning that ties in with the power of communicating. What does this picture mean to you and how does it tie in with Babel?
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Misconceptions of people
This week we watched the film Babel and read part of the book Social Death by Lisa Cacho. The film Babel has a much deeper meaning than the plot that is trying to convey. The meaning behind the films name is the story of Babel in Genesis recounting a man's effort to become equal with God and build a tower that reached to the heavens. So God angry at man's arrogance, confounded man's communication with different languages. This film however suggests that it is not that the barrier of languages that creates problem it is the barrier of not listening to one another. Each story line has characters that are behaving well in a sense however are given obstacles by the misconceptions that others have towards a race. Let us consider the Moroccan boy who was overcome by a higher power (the rifle) and in a game with his brother he accidentally shoots and american tourist and the act is AUTOMATICALLY seen as a terrorist act because of the culture, if it had been in another country like France per-say terrorism would more than likely would have never been brought up. Then there is Amelia who nannies the children of the women who was shot. Amelia wanting to attend he sons wedding is left with no option but to take the children with her because of the incident that has happened with the mother. On the way back home from Mexico, crossing the border she is questioned heavily and again AUTOMATICALLY seen as doing something wrong because of her race and the fact that she has two white children with her. No matter how much we wish this wasn't true our world is divided by race, language, culture and tradition leading to stereotypes among everyone. Stereotypes are degrading because they link race to other categories of devaluation (Cacho 3). This film however is able to bring everyone together despite their culture, the country they are from, religion, age, social class and ties them together with their inability to express themselves. The film made the audience view this characters as people not as Moroccans, Mexicans, or Americans because we all sympathized them and wanted to somehow help. The term Racial Realism that Cacho speaks of in Social Death is moving and how we begin battles we have already lost, that we acknowledge and accept that everything we do may not ever result in social change (32). Pertains to these characters in Babel because no matter how hard they try to get their message across if does not matter because they have basically already lost according to society due to the stereotypes that come along with their race and nothing can change that. All it takes is to listen which results in understanding and a deeper connection.
Just a picture i thought was moving and had lots of meaning that ties in with the power of communicating. What does this picture mean to you and how does it tie in with Babel?
Just a picture i thought was moving and had lots of meaning that ties in with the power of communicating. What does this picture mean to you and how does it tie in with Babel?
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Interesting post Priscilla! Watching Babel this week really helped illustrate the ideas expressed in Lisa Cacho’s Social Death. Specifically, the film really exposed how individuals can become automatically criminalized and stripped of their right to “personhood” under the law. Like the graphic in this post, the lives of the characters in Babel are closely related, but immensely different in terms of penalty and privilege. Cacho argues that in some cases (those of de facto status crimes) often means no one has to do anything wrong in order to be considered a criminal (43). This idea really comes through in Babel because while there are countless, serious unfortunate events in the main characters’ lives with many of them criminalized in the process, there essentially is no “bad guy” at the root of their misfortune. In fact, all of the conflicts within the plot are only a product of the circumstances that are consequences of the way they have been positioned within society and the legal system. These ideas illustrate another one of Cacho’s claims that criminalized populations are often “excluded from the law’s protection… they are not excluded from the law’s discipline” (5). In the end, the only really identifiable “bad guy” is the state/ the legal system itself, personified by the law enforcement officials who in the name of justice, beat Hassan Ibrahim, deport Amelia, and kill Ahmed, an innocent young boy. Illustrated by the many languages on the globe in the picture, the characters in Babel, fall victim to the system that creates difference between them leading to miscommunication and prejudice.
ReplyDeleteI also thought this post was very interesting Priscilla, when taking a first look at this picture I thought about how everyone in the world are connected in some way. Babel was a great example of explaining how much the world is connected and how one race or country can impact the whole world in some way. This week discussion about misconception of people really hit home when I read Social Death. The section in the book that discussed the two adolescent boys killing elderly Mexican decent workers based of stereotypes was very disturbing to me. One section that stood out to me stated " The adolescent attackers might have believed they would not be punished for their actions because the encampment where the elderly Mexican workers set up their temporary homes did not discriminate by legal status. Perhaps because misty Mexican men lived in the camp where little English was spoken, the space seemed to be an "illegal," Un-American place," (pg. 36) . This section of the book was so disturbing to me because I thought about how wrong the adolescent children were but because they were brought up on social injustice morals they committed a crime and thought it was ok to do. This section of the book also ties to the movie Babel and this picture. For example, in the movie Babel there was discrimination in the scene were Amelia, her nephew and children that she as babysitting were trying to cross the border to get back to the United States by the Border Patrol Police. This too was a stereotype and discrimination towards others races. As I analyze this photo again I see HELLO big, bold, in english and in the middle. Around the American way of saying hello I see all the other languages "hello," this picture made me think about how the United States believe they are above every other country and want to control every country power. However, I still see that no matter how bod that "hello" is, it is still connected to everyone and everyone is equal. Stereotype should really not exist but in todays society it does. :/
ReplyDeleteThat picture is very simple but it says a lot. What that picture means to me is that we are a world of great differences but the one thing that connects us together is that we live on one planet earth. Although we are from different countries and we speak different languages, we are still connected in a global network. That picture can pertain to the movie "Babel" because there were many different story lines but all roads lead up to one thing, the gun. This movie emphasized the concept of space because all of these people were in different spaces but all affected equally by a gun.
ReplyDelete"Babel" also opened my eyes to many things about American culture and what we presume others do. It was very interesting to see how the Moroccan community reacted to what was going on. Many times, through different mediums, we think that Arabic culture is undemocratic and cold-hearted, but this movie debunked those stereotypes. The villagers cared about her recovery and they wanted to help, they were genuinely concerned. None of the villagers backed down from doing anything they could; from looking and being concerned to offering herbal remedies. It was also interesting to see how the American couple was betrayed by their own Western people, but it took a community of "terroristic" people to help save a life.
This movie further exemplified how bodies of color are criminalized before there is a proper investigation, they are not innocent before proven guilty. In the movie, there was not an investigation done to figure out the reason of the shooting but the media was quick to call the shooter a terrorist when that wasn’t even the case.