Last night, I watched Crossing Over, a movie about immigrants and immigration process. On the whole, it was a rather disappointing movie. It attempted to tie together several different intersecting storylines through chance encounters, but just came off as unbelievable and exploitative.
Perhaps the most exploitative and unbelievable storyline was that of Claire Shepard, a struggling Australian actress who is attempting to get her green card. Through one of those proverbial twists of fate, Shepard gets into a car accident with Cole Frankel, who just happens to be an immigration judiciary official, one of the people who can approve people's green card applications. Frankel essentially blackmails Shepard into a sexual relationship, in small part for the car, but mostly for her green card. The agreement of the relationship is that she is to be available at his beck and call whenever he pleases for two months. Shepard obviously finds herself haunted and tormented by this agreement, but what makes it so exploitative is that after this agreement is made, nearly every time we see Shepard, she's completely naked. The use of nudity is gratuitous to the extreme, and the storyline fizzles out when Shepard "gives up" Frankel for voluntary deportation back to Australia.
Another exploitative storyline is the one surrounding the Kim family, Koreans who are days away from their naturalization. The focus is on the eldest son, Kim Yong, who becomes involved with Korean gang members (ggangpae). There is no given reason for this. This plot distinctly lacks depth. During a planned robbery where "no one was supposed to get hurt," Kim finds himself as the only surviving ggangpae, as the others are systematically killed by Hamid Baraheri, an immigration official who, by yet another twist of fate, finds himself in the liquor store during the robbery. The two share a completely unbelievable dialogue about immigration and naturalization, and Baraheri lets Kim go. There are very few scenes with Kim and the Kim family, and almost all of them involve some form of violence. The story and characters had promise, but the story fell flat with too much violence and not enough focus on character development.
There are, however, a few moments in the film that are heart-wrenching and slightly more believable. The Bangladeshi Jahangir family has a very interesting storyline, involving a daughter who tries to see the 9/11 attack from another perspective, and the whole family pays the price. I wondered the entire time about the accuracy of this story; is it imagined reactions, or real ones? Have they put together various true stories to make this one? I have not been able to find that answer, but I will continue looking. If the entire movie was about this family, it would have improved. There was enough in the family dynamics and the situation for an entire movie, without the useless big names stars, i.e. Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta. The exploration of this storyline would be interesting to see, especially due to the fact that the parents and oldest daughter were illegal immigrants, but the two younger siblings are American-born. This dynamic could have been further investigated, considering there must be plenty of US residents who find themselves in a similar place.
The final storyline I'd like to put down is the one concerning the Iranian family, the Baraheris. There was gratuitous sex, murder and a cover-up involving the young daughter, Zahra. Farid, her older brother, discovered she was in a relationship with an older man, who was married with two kids. He decided, under his father's orders, to "scare them a little" by killing the two of them, and subsequently asking Hamid, the immigrations official brother, to help him cover it up. This storyline was nothing but a complete mess, with an utterly unnecessary sex scene, full frontal nudity and murder. The family dynamics could have been better explored without the sex and murder, and it would still have been a revealing exercise between American vs. Iranian cultural expectations/differences.
I'm going to stop here before I discuss the entire movie. Crossing Over was purely for shock value, and did not explore immigration issues as one might have expected. Instead, Crossing Over focussed primarily on issues the white people in the movie bothered to concern themselves with, which gave us the longwinded and unrevealing storyline involving Mireya and her son. On the whole, not a worthwhile watch, but interesting to see what Hollywood considers important issues in immigration.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Presentation Research Journalling
Response
During my research for my pre-session presentation, I found myself encountering many unpleasant thoughts and feelings raised by the issue of immigration into Canada. I had never encountered this before, and the experience is an entirely new and uncomfortable one for me. I also find myself very ignorant and naive in relation to how I perceive Canada, and I am loath to admit to myself the extent of which Canada makes things purposefully difficult, immigration-wise, to come to Canada. I do not wish to believe such things are really true, despite having the evidence and accounts laid out before me. I find myself exhausted at the possibility - not the possibility, the truth - about Canadian immigration.
Indeed, such issues are raised in Bannerji's The Dark Side of the Nation, a narrative which shocked me in many ways. Her treatment upon coming into Canada, the way officials talk to her as if she stole her way "in" Canada, is insulting and dehumanizing.
Self Critique
The reason I am so uncomfortable encountering this vitriol towards Canada is due to a numbers of things. First and foremost, I consider myself a patriot of Canada, and while I certainly do not consider Canada a perfect place or utopia, I am astonished at the preconceptions about immigration that I held, when such conceptions about the ease of immigrating into Canada is so completely and wholly untrue.
I am unsure about my own shock. Am I shocked at her treatment because she is a human being, and Bannerji has the same right to treatment that I have? Or is it my white privilege, my secret belief that Canada cannot be so bad because I have never been treated as such, for I have not? Is my awareness of skin colour - my own, and others - the beginning of my othering of people?
Cultural Critique
How the culture I find myself in is obvious, and greatly influences my reactions. I am part of a culture in Canada that is largely unaware of what is happening around it. I am part of the dominant white culture, whose concerns largely do not encompass those of immigrants, and are very out of touch with the Real Canada vs. White Canada. While this concept is personally offensive to me, I realize and recognize why it is; the culture accepts and embraces the false nature of multiculturalism in Canada. In reality, Canada strives more to categorize and define people from a racialized perspective so hard that it stops multiculturalism and functions as racism.
The term racism within this culture defines itself as a person, or group of people, who practically foam at the mouth with hate, slinging racist and derogatory terms left and right like mud. Canadian racism is subtle, and digs itself into its purported "multiculturalism." This is a direct contradiction towards how Canada endeavors to present itself to the world.
During my research for my pre-session presentation, I found myself encountering many unpleasant thoughts and feelings raised by the issue of immigration into Canada. I had never encountered this before, and the experience is an entirely new and uncomfortable one for me. I also find myself very ignorant and naive in relation to how I perceive Canada, and I am loath to admit to myself the extent of which Canada makes things purposefully difficult, immigration-wise, to come to Canada. I do not wish to believe such things are really true, despite having the evidence and accounts laid out before me. I find myself exhausted at the possibility - not the possibility, the truth - about Canadian immigration.
Indeed, such issues are raised in Bannerji's The Dark Side of the Nation, a narrative which shocked me in many ways. Her treatment upon coming into Canada, the way officials talk to her as if she stole her way "in" Canada, is insulting and dehumanizing.
Self Critique
The reason I am so uncomfortable encountering this vitriol towards Canada is due to a numbers of things. First and foremost, I consider myself a patriot of Canada, and while I certainly do not consider Canada a perfect place or utopia, I am astonished at the preconceptions about immigration that I held, when such conceptions about the ease of immigrating into Canada is so completely and wholly untrue.
I am unsure about my own shock. Am I shocked at her treatment because she is a human being, and Bannerji has the same right to treatment that I have? Or is it my white privilege, my secret belief that Canada cannot be so bad because I have never been treated as such, for I have not? Is my awareness of skin colour - my own, and others - the beginning of my othering of people?
Cultural Critique
How the culture I find myself in is obvious, and greatly influences my reactions. I am part of a culture in Canada that is largely unaware of what is happening around it. I am part of the dominant white culture, whose concerns largely do not encompass those of immigrants, and are very out of touch with the Real Canada vs. White Canada. While this concept is personally offensive to me, I realize and recognize why it is; the culture accepts and embraces the false nature of multiculturalism in Canada. In reality, Canada strives more to categorize and define people from a racialized perspective so hard that it stops multiculturalism and functions as racism.
The term racism within this culture defines itself as a person, or group of people, who practically foam at the mouth with hate, slinging racist and derogatory terms left and right like mud. Canadian racism is subtle, and digs itself into its purported "multiculturalism." This is a direct contradiction towards how Canada endeavors to present itself to the world.
Introduction
This is my personal journal component for ENGL 513: Theorizing Diaspora. I will be responding, self-critiquing and culturally critiquing my responses to texts/ideas/issues raised in class or via research I have done for the course.
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