Kerri Dudley
Humanities 1100
Reflection
This class overall made me more aware of all the different aspects of life that I had heard of but I had never really looked into. It helped me to broaden my views and outlooks on life. I learned a lot more about religion, politics and etc. Watching the foreign film was a good experience. It showed me how different foreign countries views are or how their lifestyles are different from ours. There was also a lot of things that were alike. In the film there was a woman that showed her struggle in the society of being a woman. There was men that would beat her and try to rape her. She stood up for herself though. She showed that she was a strong, intelligent women. This film assignment helped me realize how strong women in our society today have to be. There is a lot more independent, strong, self-motivated women today than there use to be. We as women have come to realize that we don’t need a man to make ourselves seem to have a sense of worth. We can get that feeling of worth-ness on our own. Being a woman and the things you are aloud to do as a woman, also has a lot to do with culture. I learned so much about the different cultures and how they view the ways they treat men or women. For example, in the muslim culture their women are taught to cover your whole body and to wear loose fitting clothing. They pray regularly throughout the day. Muslims believe that the men are in charge. You hear that a lot today. Women are supposed to be the weaker and men are the ones who excel and exceed in life. Women are not abiding by this, though. I believe our society with men and women is pretty even, today. There are still a few things that we may consider to not be fair, but I think we have come along way. We are all learning from one another.
I think this class has helped my college experience because I have learned to be a lot more open-minded. Before the class, I guess you could say I wasn’t very aware of all the things around me. I noticed them but I wasn’t engaging in them. I think I was just very fast paced and that made me tend to stay in my own little world. I have learned to slow down, recognize all the amazing things around me and grow from them. Life is about learning and experiencing. We need to respect everyone and work together to form a society the recognizes everyone for who they are and where they have been. If we didn’t have other cultures we wouldn’t get the opportunities to learn and broaden our minds.
Kerri Dudley
Humanities 1100
Title of Film: The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo
Year of release: 2009
Language of original film: Swedish
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
Actors: Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace
International Film Critique
This film is about a journalist Mikael Blomkvist that gets set up and gets sentenced to prison. After losing his job and only having around 6 months before he would get his sentencing, a man that knew him as a child asks him to come to his town and try to solve the mystery of a woman that had been missing for 40 years. The woman that was missing use to babysit Mikael as a child. While Mikael was in the beginning of his search he got an email that related to some numbers and names he found in the missing woman’s journal, that he could not figure it out. He realized his computer was being hacked by a girl named Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth’s information was very helpful, so he asked if she would help him in the search. We find out later, that she is the reason he is still alive at the end of the movie.
I think the film would be in 3rd person point of view. It shared the past, current and future of Lisbeth Salander’s life as someone saw it happening. Her life showed us a lot of social and philosophical issues there. This movie was for adults. Particularly, it was targeting women. The men in this movie were rude towards women. The movie shows her taking a train and as soon as she gets off men bump into her, call her names, pour beer on her, and try to beat her up. She had terrible things happen to her as a child. There was a scene that showed her as a young child setting a man in a car on fire. In the movie it referred to her remembering that scene, more than once. I believe it had to do with her being sexually abused. Throughout the movie she was always a victim to men that abused her. A man who was in charge of her money made her give him sexual favors if she wanted some money. He took it to far and tied her up and raped her. They find the woman that had been missing for 40 years and find out the reason why she left was because she was being physically abused by her father and other male members of her family. This movie showed us a lot of ways women were abused or killed; how men think of women shows by the way they treat their women. Lisbeth was a strong woman who fought for herself when men were or tried to abuse her. She always fought back and showed that she wasn’t going to be a victim to men. Such as the missing women, she killed her father and got out of the abusive situation she was in.
This film shows that women need to know what’s out there and need to be aware that men are abusive to women. I have never personally been in an abusive situation and so after watching this movie it has made me a lot more conscious of what could happen. This movie shows all the different kinds of abuse; sexual, emotional, physical. Seeing how men get a joy out of doing things to women scares me a little. When one man in the movie was explaining that he liked to see the hope on the women’s faces that they were going to survive, every time before he killed them. That really got to me and made me realize that there are crazy, disgusting people like that out there. Abuse against women may never be stopped but as a woman, I think we all need to be more like Lisbeth. Stand up for yourself and fight back. Don’t be afraid to show them that you are strong. Don’t take abuse of any kind because women don’t deserve it. If you don’t do something when it first starts you may never get a chance to do something because abuse often leads to death. The film didn’t change the way I view the subject, it just made me a lot more conscious of the subject. You don’t really think about things like that happening to you, if they have never happened to you before. After watching the film though, it makes me aware and will probably have an affect on some of the decisions I make in my life now. I never want to put myself or be put in a situation like that.
A cultural difference is the way people in Sweden treat each other. They weren’t very friendly. They were very careless in the way they were with each other. I still have a lot of hope for our country because we still have people that are friendly and open doors and treat each other with respect. It didn’t seem like they had any respect for one another. Even family members there were distant from each other. Families lived close to each other but never really talked or made contact. I think people lived their lives alone, distant from everyone. The town that they went to was far off from the city and the only thing that kept it connected to the rest of the world was a big bridge. Even at the train station there wasn’t a lot of people out like you would see here. People wore dull colors such as blacks, whites, browns, grays. There just wasn’t much color, like you see here.
The filmmaker made the movie very dark. He made the movie by the subject of the movie. Abuse is very sad and scary at times and that’s the way he made the lighting and atmosphere. Lisbeth was always in black and she had black hair and piercings. Lisbeth was a mystery, she was guarded and didn’t open up to people. She portrayed herself the way someone who had been through abuse might. This made you feel more connected and bad when the abuse was taking places. There was no bright colors. Everything was simple and dull. Yet, he kept everything at a suspense mystery. You were always curious of what was next to come. Since it was always darker you never knew what to expect. He was consistent with the settings and atmospheres. Things he filmed seemed to be calm. Even when it was a thrilling part it seemed to have some relaxed essence, which made it easy to watch because it wasn’t to intense.
All the deaths and murders in this film relates a lot to religion, which is what we are talking about in class. The missing women has biblical verses and names written down in her journal. They discover that women were killed by what was quoted in the verses that were next to their names. These verses were from the book of Leviticus and the sacrifices that the Levitical priesthood are to preform. No matter what the religion is I think everyone believes it is not right to kill. The ten commandments states, “thou shalt not kill”, the 8 fold path, which is Buddhism, states “the right action”, here are two religions that agree that killing is not right. I think the Levitical priests believe that killing is not right also and that is why they call them “sacrifices”. They are killing someone to protect themselves, which in some cases is what people have to do. If I was being attacked and I killing someone because I was protecting myself, it is kind of the same concept. They believe that if people they have to do these killings to protect their beliefs.
I think you assign an international film to help us broaden our knowledge of other countries. We see things as they are in this country but we never really see how good, bad and/or different it is in another country. Watching an international film shows other points of views and may change the ways we view things here, once we see how it is somewhere else.
