Here’s a Thought
Something for those of us who struggle to understand what it’s like growing up in a foreign culture, or who ought to be struggling with it. Something that seems always to be topical. Something that has me holding my breath for Syriana to come out next Friday, not only because I like Matt Damon spy movies, but because maybe Hollywood can sell something approaching informative. Something to remind you that the world is bigger than Oregon, or Claremont, or St. Louis.
The other films on Ms. Salloum’s site are also excellent.
from my hometown, by way of berky:
This needs to be addressed, and I don’t want to make it a political thing. But I grew up in U. City, which is diverse, and I thought the world would be more like U. City. What I realized is the world is not like that at all. The world is still a racist place.
— Jeremy Davenport (jazz trumpet player)
December 14th, 2005 at 11:12 AM
I didn’t watch the Planet of the Arabs link, but I read the statistics under it, which gets the point across. I’d have expected them to be bad, but they’re even worse than I would have guessed.
And it’s very instructive to think about, because we’ve probably all experienced anger due to negative portrayals of some facet of “our” tribe in the media. For our social circles, it might be when some news outlet rags on “gamers” or “radical activists” or geeks or violent cartoons or whatever. It’s aggravating and frustrating, and then we generally move on because there are more important things going on. But then you can just attempt to imagine being in a social situation where that kind of thing happens all the damn time. That surely would suck. And suddenly various media biases that look inconsequential from one perspective seem obviously horribly oppressive and demoralizing from another.