I watched the movie 'The Visitor' sometime ago. After this I read some of the review on this movie. They were all glowing tributes. I was impressed but puzzled by some premises in the movie.
My first question on watching it was if there was any political message in reality in the story. It was made in 2007 during the Bush administration, a period in which filmmakers of a liberal political bent created some very good movies. This one, which tells the story of how Tariq, an illegal immigrant from Syria, a political refugee, came to be deported, tugs at our heartstrings for what it means to him, his girlfriend, his mom and his new friend, widower Professor Walter Vale. It tells the story poignantly, but one is left wondering if there really is any strong admonishing for policymakers who tackle immigration, besides the fact that they (and everyone else in the US) need to show kindness to the alien and the refugee among them. Tariq is eventually deported due to existing immigration laws- the movie does signal the need for change in these, but I'm not sure if it is actually arguing for a relook at the policies with regard to political refugees only. Tariq is a political refugee but I think the movie wants to create a case for a relook at all refugees- economic, political and any other kind. I do not think it creates the case. USCIS officials are portrayed as they are in reality, employees who do their job and may not necessarily be aware of the circumstances of every person they deal with. I know this from experience- from trying to get the status updates on petitions for legal immigrants or people awaiting legal immigration status. I have lost money that I paid upfront to this agency and after they acknowledged the receipt of my petitions they simply lost the petitions and dropped the ball. This portrayal is accurate. The bureaucracy is stifling and long overdue for a radical revamp. Beyond this the movie takes no swipe at any administration or laws.
The movie does portray the sad state of those immigrants who are detained. It is almost as if civil liberties do not apply to them. This must engage our attention. Ultimately the thorn is America's side when we talked about our freedoms may be our failure to care for the marginalized, primarily those cannot afford to fight for basic rights. Laws cannot be different for them from those of us who are privileged.
My second question was, who is the 'Visitor' in the movie? Tariq and his girlfriend are illegal squatters in the professor's apartment in the movie. After his initial shock in finding them there (he returns to his New York City apartment after a long gap), he eventually lets them stay on, shows them more than hospitality, becoming their friend and helper, hiring them an attorney to help them in their plight. He too benefits from this relationship, learning how to play the djembe, finding a release from his bereavement from his wife's death. In a scene, the professor takes Tari's mom and girlfriend to Ellis Island. The mom asks him if he's been to the Statue of Liberty before and he says he hasn't. The girlfriend lets him know he and Tariq often went there, and in the boat Tariq liked to jump up and down on seeing the statue, pretending as if he were coming to America for the first time. This begs my question, who is the real visitor. Those who are born into liberty often tend to lose real freedom by keeping themselves from all that is implied by freedom. Tariq and the other refugees though are fully alive to this liberty and through their music, hard work, strong relationships, social intimacy and genuineness, keep its spirit alive. The professor seems to be a newcomer and therefore a visitor to this liberty. He is the one coming into his apartment after a long gap, like a long lost acquaintance. The squatters are about to leave, but the professor shows them kindness.
This may be the movie's lesson. In the end the professor (in a very understated and convincing performance) tries his best but there are limits to his powers of persuasion and influence. Though he fails he has won the hearts of his friends. As a Christian I think the movie encourages us to take a look at what the Bible has to say about this topic. Here are some verses:
Deuteronomy 10:18-19 – “For the Lord your God...loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Deuteronomy 24:17-18 – “Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt...”
Matthew 25:31-46 – “...I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
Ephesians 2:11-22 – “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”
There are reminders in both OT and NT that not only are we to show kindness to aliens, but we ourselves are aliens in this world or have been aliens in another country. There is a sense in which we need to seek liberty by being like aliens, because true liberty does not come from this world.
Showing posts with label Social Redemption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Redemption. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Film Review- Born Into Brothels
Last night we watched the 2003 Orscar winning HBO documentary 'Born Into Brothels' on Netflix Streaming. I had seen a similar documentary on an organization that did undercover sting operations to expose and bring to justice coerced prostitution in India and elsewhere. This one dealt with children of prostitutes living in Sona Gachi, one of Asia's largest red light districts.
The film focused in on a dozen kids who are introduced to us in a very personal way through the course of the movie. The filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman shot the movie through several months of living and working in Sona Gachi. Briski, a theology major from Cambridge, spent a few years living with the kids, teaching them photography and eventually staging an exhibit of their works in India and elsewhere.
The film traces how the kids lives are slowly changed as they move into schools after months of red tape, social ostracism and concerns about potential HIV infection (as it turned out, non-existent) kept the kids from decent schools. It then traces Avijit Halder (now in his senior year at NYU) is praised for his work in photography and is selected to go to Amsterdam where his work is exhibited among a select group of kids with outstanding skills.
The movie ends with notes about how the kids are faring. Except a couple of kids who mvoed back into the sex trade (primarily due to their family's reluctance to let them study further), the others all fared well and as of today are doing very well in India and the United States.
I liked the fact that the movie stresses the significance of social change as a result of commitment and consensus. The parents of some of these kids earned some money out of the film project but one of them did not want her daughter to move out of the trade. In a recent interview she says, "'At this age, I have a flat, a laptop, costly phones and plenty of money. What do I lack?"
One wonders why these parents did not see far enough to understand the opportunities these kids had before them. They got some cash from the proceeds of the movie, and they had a good reason to keep their kids off the trade. Another kid whose aunt was raising her after her mother's death was pressurizing her to go into prostitution. While she wanted to go to school and learn, she wasn't allowed to; and moved back into the flesh trade.
Of course, cash isn't the issue- but perhaps in Sona Gachi the abilty to understand that life outside of the familiar if hellish street life is something desirable may be limited. Years ago as a summer intern in my second year of MBA I lived in Bombay for 2 months at the YMCA on Lamington Road near the Opera House. Although it is nothing to compare with Sona Gachi, it is a semi-red light area. You turn the corner from a nice-looking street and come up on this crowded area with tired yellow buildings built at the turn of the last century. Many evanglists came to preach at the YMCA, and several good friends who were committed followers of Christ lived there, but everyone (including me) turned our faces away from the griding poverty and the nightly circus that went on on the sidewalks, the women pacing up and down amongst the crowds, shifty-eyed, druken men moving in and out of their tenements. One day in the early hours of dawn we were woken by angry shouts from the streets below. We were on the 5th floor of the building. I looked down and a number of prostitutes were fighiting, presumably over money, screaming at each other, mouthing profanities, pulling each others' hair.
The HBO movie shows us a similar scene inside the brothel (a squalid, dark place which most of us would never see). It is remarkable how these women, all in the same tragic plight, would accuse each other of being filthy and immoral. The film shows us the faces of the listening kids, their expressions showing numbness and distress at the same time. Sometimes a picture like that takes you back to Lamington Road in an instant, shocking you without warning.
Margaret Mead once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." The more I live the more I see the truth of this. As I read the book Mountains Beyond Mountains on Dr. Paul Farmer, and understand how the battle over high drug prices in poverty-stricken Lima, Port-au-Prince and Russian prisons were fought, by a committed minority, and won decisively, and I see the pain and heartbreak that accompanies such commitment, the more I realize that a bunch of people promising huge amounts of money in aid through Government programs may not truly realize the insignificance of their actions. You can spend a fortune on the Third World and see the cash disappearing down a black hole without making the slightest difference to anyone's life- unless you know that at the other end are committed people with the ability to connect with people.
This movie was made on a shoestring budget. The kids went to school based on the creative energy unleashed by the filmmaker's commitment in teaching the kids the skills they knew. Who can deny that their lives were changes by the commitment of a few?
Postscript:
I had ended my post with te above paragraph, but I need to end with a nod to the music. Composer John McDowell weaves both Indian melodies, some from Bollywood and others from India's religious tradition, into the movie. The result is outstanding. One of the hooks, Gopala, doesn't leave my mind. As an aside I can appreciate why they chose this song. Gopala is a devotional to Krsna, his childhood as a precocious happy little charmer has captured Indian's imagination and affection for centuries.
You can see a vide of a live performance of this song here:
The film focused in on a dozen kids who are introduced to us in a very personal way through the course of the movie. The filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman shot the movie through several months of living and working in Sona Gachi. Briski, a theology major from Cambridge, spent a few years living with the kids, teaching them photography and eventually staging an exhibit of their works in India and elsewhere.
The film traces how the kids lives are slowly changed as they move into schools after months of red tape, social ostracism and concerns about potential HIV infection (as it turned out, non-existent) kept the kids from decent schools. It then traces Avijit Halder (now in his senior year at NYU) is praised for his work in photography and is selected to go to Amsterdam where his work is exhibited among a select group of kids with outstanding skills.
The movie ends with notes about how the kids are faring. Except a couple of kids who mvoed back into the sex trade (primarily due to their family's reluctance to let them study further), the others all fared well and as of today are doing very well in India and the United States.
I liked the fact that the movie stresses the significance of social change as a result of commitment and consensus. The parents of some of these kids earned some money out of the film project but one of them did not want her daughter to move out of the trade. In a recent interview she says, "'At this age, I have a flat, a laptop, costly phones and plenty of money. What do I lack?"
One wonders why these parents did not see far enough to understand the opportunities these kids had before them. They got some cash from the proceeds of the movie, and they had a good reason to keep their kids off the trade. Another kid whose aunt was raising her after her mother's death was pressurizing her to go into prostitution. While she wanted to go to school and learn, she wasn't allowed to; and moved back into the flesh trade.
Of course, cash isn't the issue- but perhaps in Sona Gachi the abilty to understand that life outside of the familiar if hellish street life is something desirable may be limited. Years ago as a summer intern in my second year of MBA I lived in Bombay for 2 months at the YMCA on Lamington Road near the Opera House. Although it is nothing to compare with Sona Gachi, it is a semi-red light area. You turn the corner from a nice-looking street and come up on this crowded area with tired yellow buildings built at the turn of the last century. Many evanglists came to preach at the YMCA, and several good friends who were committed followers of Christ lived there, but everyone (including me) turned our faces away from the griding poverty and the nightly circus that went on on the sidewalks, the women pacing up and down amongst the crowds, shifty-eyed, druken men moving in and out of their tenements. One day in the early hours of dawn we were woken by angry shouts from the streets below. We were on the 5th floor of the building. I looked down and a number of prostitutes were fighiting, presumably over money, screaming at each other, mouthing profanities, pulling each others' hair.
The HBO movie shows us a similar scene inside the brothel (a squalid, dark place which most of us would never see). It is remarkable how these women, all in the same tragic plight, would accuse each other of being filthy and immoral. The film shows us the faces of the listening kids, their expressions showing numbness and distress at the same time. Sometimes a picture like that takes you back to Lamington Road in an instant, shocking you without warning.
Margaret Mead once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." The more I live the more I see the truth of this. As I read the book Mountains Beyond Mountains on Dr. Paul Farmer, and understand how the battle over high drug prices in poverty-stricken Lima, Port-au-Prince and Russian prisons were fought, by a committed minority, and won decisively, and I see the pain and heartbreak that accompanies such commitment, the more I realize that a bunch of people promising huge amounts of money in aid through Government programs may not truly realize the insignificance of their actions. You can spend a fortune on the Third World and see the cash disappearing down a black hole without making the slightest difference to anyone's life- unless you know that at the other end are committed people with the ability to connect with people.
This movie was made on a shoestring budget. The kids went to school based on the creative energy unleashed by the filmmaker's commitment in teaching the kids the skills they knew. Who can deny that their lives were changes by the commitment of a few?
Postscript:
I had ended my post with te above paragraph, but I need to end with a nod to the music. Composer John McDowell weaves both Indian melodies, some from Bollywood and others from India's religious tradition, into the movie. The result is outstanding. One of the hooks, Gopala, doesn't leave my mind. As an aside I can appreciate why they chose this song. Gopala is a devotional to Krsna, his childhood as a precocious happy little charmer has captured Indian's imagination and affection for centuries.
You can see a vide of a live performance of this song here:
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
People, Not Money
My parents always tried to tell me that money doesn't work always in making the most significant changes. I didn't understand this except as a truism that 'money isn't everything'- it was perhaps the way they meant it. But I'm convinced of this truth every day.
I'm convinced that human commitment working in a community is the single biggest conduit to any kind of significant event- economic progress, social redemption, witness to faith, education, reduction in crime and so on. There are too many proofs out there, the latest of which is in a story carried by yesterday's New York Times, titled 'City Will Stop Paying the Poor for Good Behavior.'
Excerpt:
Clearly this did not work. Of course, this is not to say that private or public money should not work for social redemption, but perhaps the way to progress is by educating those who have rather than pushing money into those who have not. In a Sara Groves interview, accessible here, she mentions that IJM does precisely this.
Excerpt:
Again in the case of artists like Bono who by his own admission, uses his celebrity as a currency to enable himself to do what he does in Africa for HIV/AIDS, the key to his appeal is getting through to more and more people. The best things in life truly are free, but certainly not cheap.
I'm convinced that human commitment working in a community is the single biggest conduit to any kind of significant event- economic progress, social redemption, witness to faith, education, reduction in crime and so on. There are too many proofs out there, the latest of which is in a story carried by yesterday's New York Times, titled 'City Will Stop Paying the Poor for Good Behavior.'
Excerpt:
The three-year-old pilot project, the first of its kind in the country, gave parents payments for things like going to the dentist ($100) or holding down a full-time job ($150 per month). Children were rewarded for attending school regularly ($25 to $50 per month) or passing a high school Regents exam ($600).
When the mayor announced the program, he said it would begin with private money and, if it worked, could be transformed into an ambitious permanent government program.
Clearly this did not work. Of course, this is not to say that private or public money should not work for social redemption, but perhaps the way to progress is by educating those who have rather than pushing money into those who have not. In a Sara Groves interview, accessible here, she mentions that IJM does precisely this.
Excerpt:
So, for me, as a stay at home mom - a mobile stay at home mom ... a bus bound stay at home mom (laugh), IJM doesn't just want my money. They say, "You, stay at home mom, you are an abolitionist. Your kids are student abolitionists." And to me, that's empowering. They don't just want my money, they want to educate me about justice - about advocacy, and about worldview - about God's heart for the poor. So, I am fired up! I feel like I have found my place in this world when I met IJM - as far as something I can get behind with all my heart, support. It's just an incredible organization and move of God.
Again in the case of artists like Bono who by his own admission, uses his celebrity as a currency to enable himself to do what he does in Africa for HIV/AIDS, the key to his appeal is getting through to more and more people. The best things in life truly are free, but certainly not cheap.
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