HOW ETHNOCENTRISM, RACISM, DISCRIMINATION, STEREOTYPING AND THE ACCULTURATION PROCESS ARE REPRESENTED IN MOVIES THAT PORTRAY INTERCULTURAL INTERACTIONS

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HOW ETHNOCENTRISM, RACISM, DISCRIMINATION, STEREOTYPING

AND THE ACCULTURATION PROCESS ARE REPRESENTED IN MOVIES

THAT PORTRAY INTERCULTURAL INTERACTIONS.

Intercultural communications is concerned with face-to-face communications between people from different cultural backgrounds.  Ethnocentrism, racism, discrimination, stereotyping and acculturation are some of the phenomena that arise when intercultural communication takes place, each of which is further explained with sequences from the movies.  

Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s culture is the centre of the world and thus considering all other cultures as being inferior.  This natural phenomenon can be expected to arise where a contact is established between different ethnic, racial or linguistic groups.  This is what happened when Europeans and other explorers started to move to faraway places and explore new worlds.  They were directly confronted with cultural variations. People commonly feel that their own customary behaviour and attitudes are the correct ones; therefore, people who do not share such patterns are immoral or inferior.  An example is seen from the movie The Mission where a Spanish Don is trying to convince the Cardinal, who is inspecting the work of missionaries with the Guarani people, how inferior and dangerous the Guarani are to the Spanish settlers, just because they are different.  They are considered as ‘animals’ and not humans:

Cardinal:        Don Cabeza, how can you possibly refer to this child as an animal?

Don Cabeza:         A parrot can be thought to sing, Your Eminence.

Cardinal:        Yes, but how does one teach it to sing as melodiously as this?

Don Cabeza:        Your Eminence, this is a child of the jungle, [pulls him down] an animal with a human voice.  If it were human, an animal would cringe at its vices.  These creatures [he points at the Guarani] are lethal and lecherous. 

However it can be that our own customs and ideas may appear strange or barbaric to an observer from other society.  In Walt Disney’s Pocahontas, Pocahontas herself could not understand the lack of concern the settlers had for Mother Nature, to which the native Indians are spiritually connected.  And this is shown in this song she sings to the captain of the English settlers:  

        Pocahontas:        You think I'm just an ignorant savage

                        And you've been so many places; I guess it must be so

                        But still I cannot see, if the savage one is me

                        How can there be so much that you don't know?

                        You don't know...

                        You think you own whatever land you land on

                        The earth is just a dead thing you can claim

                        But I know every rock and tree and creature

                        Has a life, has a spirit, has a name.

                        You think the only people who are people

                        Are the people who look and think like you

Join now!

                        But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger

                        You'll learn things you never knew you never knew.

In this song, as a member of the host-culture, Pocahontas explains her view of the English settlers.  The observer must try to locate the reasons why people with different cultures do what they do, and not judge according to first appearances.  Looking at other cultures from a distance and not trying to integrate one’s self into the host culture, leads to misunderstandings of certain behaviours.  In this sequence from The Mission, we see how Father Gabriel, a missionary who has been ...

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