Thursday, October 13, 2011
week 6
In Monday's class we watched the movie Earth, directed by Deepa Metha. It revealed the tension, violence, and rioting that erupted in response to the partition of India in 1947. It was a very powerful movie with many important undertones, but what stood out most to me was the ability that religion had to transcend one’s own consciousness and divide a group of friends. In the film, a group of friends – which contained Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs – is split because of the religiously based controversy and violence that is going on around them. Religious difference had the power to make friends, who had no direct conflict or problem between them, hate and kill one another. I think this is important to note because, although disturbing, it shows how conflict with religious undertones can be escalated to extreme levels. Especially when we consider religious conflict as a cosmic war, which puts contemporary controversy in the context of thousands of years of struggle and competition, a whole new dimension is added. It provides such a powerful motive to hate the other that reason and consciousness can be overlooked. Although the particular religious conflict in Earth happened decades ago and has since calmed down, it is important to realize and understand that religion and the religious separation that created the controversy still exist today, making religious violence an ever-present possibility.
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Great movie with a great message. In class the idea of complex identity between friends does not lead to hatred or violence because each individual is known in such a complex way. When identity is simplified to only a religion, then the violence and hatred flows easily. The labels we place upon people to simplify them could result in a new view of them (sometimes not a positive view).
ReplyDeleteEarth was a really compelling movie. After watching it I briefly thought back about each character, and tried to identify some areas of symbolism- specifically,the ways in which each character represented a particular element of the conflict. This could be a bit of stretch, but I think that Lenny Baby represents the innocence and naivete of the Pakistani/Indian population during this period of segregation, who were fine until the British implemented the split and thus fueled the tension. She fails to understand why all of these people who had once loved and cared for each other in spite of their religious differences, are now at each others throats. The truth is, the people themselves didn't really know why..although they clearly were clashing now because of the religious controversy that was promoted by the colonial powers, this never came between them in the past. They were fighting but they had no reason to fight. They were friends first and that is what should have mattered. Unfortunately, their naivete allowed the colonial segregation to turn them against each other.
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