After this both fun and academic exercise, one can draw that Fairfield County’s culture, as well as the culture of the US as a whole, is very unique to the rest of the world. The things we value and the ideas we surround ourselves with come to define who are as a group, and come to outline our own cultural boundaries. Some of the things are, without a doubt, representations of our flaws. However other things are a little better, they are things we can be proud of as a group of people.
Sadly while examining our culture, I found a couple of things to be disturbing. For example, the vast amount of ignorance that my foreign friends tend to associate with America is pretty true for the most part. A large part of our society plays upon our inability to take interest in the world outside our “cultural bounds”. As portrayed by my analyzation of the yahoo article, which pretty much catered to selfish Americans who would only read news articles if it only involved how much money was coming out of their pockets, many people were ignorant of the Arab Spring and Islam in general. They fail to see the meat of the religion (halal obviously) and focus on only the exterior stereotypes that the media chooses to broadcast. Americans do this about many issues happening around us, and it’s a practice that many should rethink indulging in.
The trait or character of being well rounded and knowledgeable about the world around us, or even our own backyard, is highly undervalued among the cultural group that is Fairfield County. What we value is for more irrelevant, as highlighted by batman, the materialistic bags of water that’s calls itself humans look toward shopping or television for interest. Men value money, women, cars, expensive suits. Women value shoes, shopping, Ellen or Pretty Little Liars. Only a small percentage of us value our own ideals or even bother studying and defining what we truly believe in.
The ideals of a terrorist, albeit a little crazy, is an ideal that is strongly held. Yet many people choose only to look on the surface rather than underneath the man in the turban to ask what he truly was thinking at the time he blew his brains out. Due to this, people wrongly judge an entire religion and group of people, without even looking at what they define themselves by.
However we do value things that should be held important. We value female empowerment, and ideal not valued in other parts of the world. We value our family, our relationships, and love. As proven through our shows and movies, we will go to great lengths to defend what we love most, whether if it’s our country, as in Homeland and Unthinkable, or our children like in Finding Nemo. What we as a culture should hold most proud, is our belief in ourselves and in our own abilities. It’s this sense on independence and perseverance that defines people of Fairfield County. No matter if there is racial divide or a physical obstacle in our path, the people of our cultural space, as evident by the values we choose to impose in our media, have the ability to get through any challenge that lies before us.
Every society has its flaws, it’s only after defining those flaws that we can truly target what we need to change so that we as a society can become better. As part of a society, every person has the responsibility of changing their society’s flaws bit by bit. No one has to devote their entire life to it; however small changes made by everyone can eventually form into something much bigger. I believe the flaws of our society lies entirely in the education. If we all, including me, took the time to observe other cultures and not just what’s happening on our favorite show, Fairfield County and America would be a far better place. I don’t believe there should be a single excuse why we should call Muslims, “Islams” (and neither should you). To a certain degree, we should all pledge to look into the world outside of our interests, or we will always be criticized just as “Americandude74 “was. In doing so, we will not only gain awareness of events happening around us, but we may even change what we value as well. With kids in Africa starving, what use is looking at cuff links all day? By becoming well-rounded as a group of people, we can surpass our simple materialistic values and even come to cherish our ideals.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Overall, I thought this final reflection and all of your blogs were very insightful. While doing my own project, I didn't even think about the role that foreign cultures and being sheltered places in shaping our own culture here in Fairfield County. You were absolutely dead on, in my opinion, with the superficial things that people here value. It was interesting how you chose to split that part up by gender because that reveals another layer of social expectations in Fairfield County. Reading your conclusion does make me want to go out and expand my knowledge on other places and people, and leave this "bubble" we call Fairfield County. Although you are pretty critical of our culture, you do point out some good things about it. This really boosts your ethos for this blog. I love how you said that Americans value love and would do anything to defend what we love. I never really thought about it that way, but it is so true, especially in terms of the military and defending the nation that we love. Good job Samiha, I found your project really interesting!
ReplyDeleteSamiha, your posts are thoughtful and I do agree with Nicole and Mirella's assessments. I do think, overall, you could lean more towards specificity (analyzing a trilogy or entire movie leads to general statements rather than super-specific analysis, which I'd like us to move towards), and I would be interested in how a bit of real-world observation of real people would play into your look into the media. You do very consciously connect each post back to Ffld Co., which I appreciate, and, as Nicole said, thinking about Ffld Co as a piece of the world, not just the US, is quite fitting.
ReplyDelete