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 assimilated into the Guarani’s way of life, defends their culture, as he knows the truth about the Guarani’s behaviour:
Father Gabriel: [The Guarani] are naturally spiritual.
Spanish Judge: Spiritual? They kill their own young!
Father Gabriel: That is true. May I answer that? Every man and woman is allowed one child. If a third is born, it is immediately killed. But this is not some animal rite. It’s a necessity for survival. They can only run with one child apiece. And what do they run from? They run from us. That is they run from slavery.
This sequence demonstrates that to an out-group member, some behaviour might be seen as being “animalistic” – thus inferior to the Spanish settlers who failed to notice that this behaviour is attributed to their intrusion in the natives’ lives. Thus ethnocentrism hinders our understanding of other cultures and at the same time keeps us from understanding our own.
Anna and the King develops on the portrayal of two different cultures as equals, through Anna, an Englishwoman, and the King of Siam, King Mongkut. However in the beginning of the film, when Anna arrived in Bangkok for the first time in 1860, she still had to discover equalities between her culture and the host-culture. As she stumbles her way through the foreign and “frightening” marketplace near the docks, she further confirmed her belief that “the ways of England are the ways of the world”. She looked at the local people in the same way they looked at her – a foreigner who is culturally different. During her first days at the palace grounds, and without having even met him, Anna discriminately thought of the King as:
Anna: A monarch [the King] who refuses to keep his word is uncivilised, unenlightened, and frankly, ungrateful. There are no principles at stake here.
Definitely she was talking about her first impression of Siam and its people’s way of life and verifying even more her belief in the ‘civilized’ English ways. However, as the film develops, we see how Anna starts changing these early beliefs, as she acquaints herself with the customs of the Siam people and starts to be accepted into the community by the king and his subordinates. When Mr. Kincaid and Lady Bradley, two respectable English people, uttered nearly her same words regarding the ways of England, she defended the Siam people because her idea of this culture has now changed.
Mr. Kincaid: There’s no arguing the superiority of the English. […]
Anna: Superiority, Mr. Kincaid? I do not recall anyone being given the right to judge whose cultural customs are superior.
~
Lady Bradley: The ways of England are the ways of the world, my dear.
Anna: They are the ways of one world, Lady Bradley. One that I am ashamed to call my own.
Anna, later in the movie, consciously puts aside her ethnocentric ideas that England’s ways are superior to all cultures, when she remember how she looked strangely at the people and place when first arrived at Bangkok and how she managed to fight back the initial culture shock:
Anna: As alarming as it may sound, I’m feeling rather at home here now. What charming people, hmm? You remember when this marketplace used to terrify us?
This movie is based on an even match between Anna and the King. She has as much to learn from him as he from her, as well as England has as much to learn from Thailand as the other way round. Only this frame of mind together with good knowledge of the each other’s culture helps to fight away ethnocentrism and therefore having successful intercultural communication exchanges.
In the movie A Lesson Before Dying, Grant Wiggins is a coloured teacher, tired of seeing his ethnic group being victim of racism. He is fully aware that ethnocentrism led upper-class white people prejudice against the coloured people:
Grant: Do you want to know what a myth is Jefferson? A myth is an old lie people believe. White people believe they are better than anybody else on earth. The last thing they want to see is coloured people stand strong and destroy that myth. Because if that happened, they’d loose all their justification for making us slaves and keeping things the way they are.
On the other hand, in Walt Disney’s Pocahontas, racism from the part of the English settlers is seen at its best when the native Indians were discriminately referred to as “savages” due to the difference in skin colour, as Ratcliffe, the head of the English settlers, stressed in this song:
Ratcliffe: What can you expect
From filthy little heathens?
Their whole disgusting race is like a curse
Their skin's a hellish red
They're only good when dead
They're vermin, as I said
And worse
English Settlers: They're savages! Savages!
Ratcliffe: Barely even human
English Settlers: Savages! Savages!
Ratcliffe: Drive them from our shore!
They're not like you and me
Which means they must be evil.
Ever since the first explorers settled in this land, as seen in Pocahontas, racism has a long and well-known history in the United States, as observed in 1948-Louisiana portrayed in A Lesson Before Dying. Racism led white people (represented in the following excerpt by Miss Edna) to think that coloured people (represented by Miss Emma) where inferior to them, to such an extent that they did not require everyday needs. This resulted in discrimination:
Miss Emma: Miss Edna, I want you to ask the sheriff if we can see Jefferson in a dayroom not in that cell no more. That cell ain’t no good. No.
Miss Edna: What’s wrong with the cell?
Miss Emma: We ain’t go no place to sit down.
Miss Edna: [Flabbergasted] Do you need to? Could you take it in turns to sit down?
This discrimination due to racism is experienced by Grant Wiggins, the coloured teacher, in the same movie. He had to wait for hours after he was summoned by the white sheriff to call at his house:
Grant: I had to stand up there in [the sheriff’s] kitchen for hours while [the white guests] sat in that room eating, drinking and socialising. […] [The white people] want to humiliate me. That’s what they want.
Such discrimination sets off from stereotyping; and in the case of A Lesson Before Dying, stereotyping is based on racial differences. Stereotypes are fixed perceptions one has of a specific group. This happens due to the fact that a person is first identified as a member of the group and not as an individual, and therefore their personal identity would be ignored. Walt Disney’s movie, The Other Side of Heaven, is a story of a young missionary’s struggle to adapt and thrive in a completely foreign island (Tonga), as he deals with homesickness and initial culture shock as he tries to learn the language and preach to the inhabitants. Stereotyping is seen from the Tongan people’s point of view. When they meet the missionary, John Groeberg, for the first time, they call him “soft and white”. However stereotyping creates problems when you apply to the individual all the traits you hold of his or her group without getting to know the person.
The same stereotyping happens in The Mission. The Guarani, being hunted down by mercenaries so as to be sold as slaves to white people, prepared to kill anyone who walked in the vicinity of their land, being mercenaries or priests. Due to this, they considered all white people as a threat to their lives and as a result, every white person was seen as a member of this ‘dangerous’ group. Surely this perception was effective whenever they came across the mercenaries. However when they met the white priest playing his oboe, the Guarani examined him and noticed that he was definitely harmless. Stereotyping put aside, they welcomed him in their community and allowed him to start his mission in their lands. Only when one gets to know the individual the barrier caused by stereotyping could be overcome and therefore being able to engage in intercultural communication.
All of the above movie excerpts prove that ethnocentrism, racism, discrimination and ethnic stereotyping obstruct intercultural communication. Now, other instances from the same movies will show that when certain intercultural communication facilitators are considered, such as the process of acculturation, will result in effective intercultural communication. Acculturation is the process by which people from another culture learn to integrate themselves into the host culture. This has to be practised in an intercultural environment and is achieved by acquiring certain knowledge and understanding of the new way of life. Apart from learning competences such as rites, customs, patterns of behaviours and getting acquainted with the new values, an immediate barrier to intercultural communication is language. In The Other Side of Heaven, we see how John Groeberg’s learning of the Tongan language and his work of preaching improve in proportion to each other, as he explains in the letters he writes to his girlfriend back home:
John: The few who would listen to us already belong to another church. Their minister has warned them not to listen to me, which is kind of pathetic since I can’t speak their language anyway.
~
John: Dear Jean, I made progress with the language and the work is going much better. [At this stage people started to listen to him – he is slowly being accepted and integrated into the Tongan society].
~
John: Dear Jean, […] I have a feeling that we are going to be more accepted now. […] Besides the language, you’ll be happy to know, I’m working on my burping. It’s good manners here to belch after someone feeds you a meal.
In the last excerpt, John shows how learning the language is not enough. Customs and values as well as anything that is considered as being part of the host culture has to be learned in order to blend easily into the new culture. However, initially, certain problems might arise as the foremost phase of acculturation for the visitor or immigrant is cultural shock – the frustration people go through when they find themselves in a culture very different from the one they used to. Such happened to John Groeberg in the movie The Other Side of Heaven. Everything was new to him and until he started to integrate himself into the Tongan culture he went through many mishaps. After three years of living with these people on this island, he had to go back home, and he experienced reverse cultural shock. He found it difficult to readjust immediately. In fact he forgot that he had to wear shoes and slept on the floor instead in the beds of the hotel on his way back home.
John: Dear Jean, it’s finally happened. I’m coming home. Funny enough, it feels like I’m leaving home.
Learning the language of the host culture is by no means the only element that leads to an understanding of a culture. The more cultural knowledge one acquires, the more easily one can adapt, as the intercultural communication are facilitated. Successful intercultural communication is, in part, the result of overcoming barriers such as ethnocentrism, racism, discrimination and stereotyping and engaging in positive approaches such as acculturation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Publications:
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Ember & Ember, The Concept of Culture.
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Kim, Y. Y., On Theorizing Intercultural Communication.
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Lewis, G. and Slade, C. (1994), Critical Communication. Prentice Hall Australia, Sydney.
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Lippmann, W. (1922). Public Opinion. London: George Allen and Unwin.
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Devito, J.A. (2003). Human Communication: The Basic Course. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Movies:
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Anna and the King. Dir. Andy Tennant. Perfs. Jodie Foster, Yun-Fat Chow. DVD. Twentieth Century Fox Home Video, 1999.
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A Lesson Before Dying. Dir. Joseph Sargent. Perfs. Don Cheadle, Cicley Tyson, Mekhi Phifer. DVD. Hbo Studios, 1999.
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The Mission. Dir. Roland Joffé. Perfs. Robert de Niro, Jeremy Irons. DVD. Warner Home Video, 1986.
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The Other Side of Heaven. Dir. Mitch Davis. Perfs. Christopher Gorham, Anne Hathaway. DVD. Walt Disney Home Video, 2002.
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Pocahontas. Dirs. Mike Gabriel, Eric Goldberg. Perfs. Irene Bedard, Judhy Kuhn, Mel Gibson. DVD. Walt Disney Home Video, 1995.