What Happens when Two Very Different Cultures Crash into One Another?

9-11, the relocation of the Native Americans, the Holocaust, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Dr. Martin Luther King’s protests were all effects of cultures clashing. At the same time, cultures colliding can also lead to people living, teaching, and working towards mutual gain. A culture is the sum of all the ideas, beliefs, morals, and behavioral restrictions set by a society or group of people. Though there are rare cases where cultures cooperate; most of the time, when two cultures clash with one another, they become violent towards each other due to ethnocentrism and, usually, the modern culture takes dominance over the ancient one.

All cultures are different. They have unique morals, values, and practices depending on the experiences and challenges their people have encountered. What seems to be unusual or “weird” to one set of people, may be a daily, ordinary tradition that the followers of another culture have been accustomed to for many generations. In The Gods Must Be Crazy, when Xi travels to the end of the world to dispose of the coke bottle, he encounters “civilization” but is perplexed as to why these people lead such busy lives with deadlines, schedules, and rules just–informal to complicate their lives even further. Xi believes that these people are unusual and odd, even though these activities are just–informal part of their regular lives.

One issue that clashing cultures may run into is communication. Members of different cultures often speak completely different languages. This variance of language adds complications when trying to work together or solve misconceptions. Xi walks past a farm, and, being hungry as well as being unaware of the concept of ownership, he shoots one of the goats with a tranquilizing arrow. To his astonishment, he is chased down by a group of villagers who think he stole one of their goats, even though he was willing to cook and share it with them. Since he couldn’t communicate with them, Xi ends up being arrested and jailed for 11 weeks for stealing livestock.

When people of different cultures don’t accept each other’s morals, values, and practices, violence occurs. When people don’t agree with a culture, they start to make assumptions, and then, no matter what, their anger builds up. Eventually, protests and riots will occur due to this stage of anger and distress. In the movie, the Guerrillas did not agree with the decisions the government was making. Due to this, they are being chased by government troops after a failed attempt to massacre the cabinet of Burani.

The last example of cultures clashing is when biologist Andrew Steyn is in love with Kate Thompson, a village schoolteacher. His shyness and nervousness leads to him to say silly things and make silly actions when he is in front of Kate. Andrew Steyn is an outdoors biologist who studies animals and is therefore very used to the outdoors, while Kate Thompson, being a schoolteacher, is extremely sophisticated and can’t handle any “dirtiness.” Their differences in culture add obstacles in the way of their developing relationship since he always catches Kate off guard, causing her to grow more and more angry with him.

In conclusion, the individuals in each of the provided examples were from different cultures. The problems they faced when dealing with one another were evident and derived from their difference in cultures. In most of the examples provided, the clash of cultures led to some type of struggle and the more technologically advanced society had advantage in the arguments.

Bibliography

The Gods Must Be Crazy. Dir. James Uys. Perf. N! Xau, Marius Weyers, Sandra Prinsloo. New Realm, 1980. DVD.

Internet Movie Database. “The Gods Must Be Crazy (1981) – IMDb.” The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Internet Movie Database. Web. 13 Sept. 2011. .


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