I watch foreign films every Friday night.
Because I am taking MCJ 177T, otherwise known as CineCulture, I go to class at 5 p.m. on Friday nights. I leave class three hours later, usually starving because I didn’t eat before I went to class. Some weeks, I like the films we see. Other weeks, I just try to keep up with the subtitles. And other weeks, like last week, I can’t stop thinking about the film.
Last Friday, we watched an Indian film called “Earth.” It takes place during the 1940s, a decade that brings to mind victory gardening, food rations, blitzkrieg and Pearl Harbor (at least that’s what I remember from my high school history class). But the film spoke to much more than how the United States and Europe were affected during that era.
In 1940s India, the Partition of India was taking place. Until I watched “Earth,” I wasn’t familiar with the Partition at all. The film tells the story of a little girl who grows up in British-controlled India at the end of Britain’s centuries-long reign of the country. When the British pulled out, all the different factions in India competed for control of the new government, resulting in one of the biggest mass migrations in human history as more than 12 million people fled the mess into Pakistan.
The film, which was based on the book “Cracking Earth,” taught me more about Indian history than any history book I’ve ever read. After talking to friends of mine in the class, I realized that it wasn’t just me who, growing up, received a poor education in international affairs.
It’s no secret that much of the world doesn’t like Americans. We’re rich, fat, nosy, nationalistic, etc. After watching this film, I realized that maybe part of the reason why we’re not well liked by the international community is because we are nationalistic.
Most of us have no clue about international affairs. Even when it concerns the most populated countries in the world or the biggest displacement of a group of people in modern history, it doesn’t show up on our radar. But it’s not just the American educational system that has failed America. The media has also failed to provide Americans with the information we need in regards to what’s happening in other countries. I’ll give them that there’s plenty of news coverage on the Middle East. But how often do you hear about news in South America? Europe? What about Africa? It’s more common to hear about which celebrity got arrested or drunk on the nightly news.
As for issues like the Partition in India, it would serve us well as a nation to educate ourselves about the history of other countries. If we can understand the cultures of other parts of the world and how the people of these cultures ended up in the United States, then the possibility of becoming a less nationalistic country could become a reality.
Maybe we can start educating ourselves by watching foreign films.