Foreign cultures in American films

This week’s Journalism 154 assignment is about different cultures as depicted in American movies. For the purpose of this assignment, I will be looking at several movies I have seen recently, which are:

Hot Tub Time Machine
How to Train Your Dragon
Twilight
New Moon
Eclipse
You Again
The Last Song
Going the Distance
Letters to Juliet

Just looking at this list of movies, the only movie that even is remotely about a foreign culture is Letters to Julie, so that is the one I will focus on. Of course, only one of nine movies in my list has anything to do with a different culture, which says a lot about American movies in and of itself. While this is just a random sampling of films, of course, I do believe that it is a fairly accurate portrayal. Most American made movies are about Americans. There are exceptions, as Letters to Juliet shows, but for the most part there are just not a lot of American made movies that deal with foreign nationalities.

On to Letters to Juliet! First of all, let me just say that I loved this movie. It is one of my favorites. The basic plot of the movie is a couple go on a pre-honeymoon to Italy but end up on different paths while there. The girl (Sophie) meets a group of Italian ladies that take letters written to Juliet by heartbroken women and answers them. Sophie answers the letter, which causes its author and her grandson fly to Italy to search for her long lost love. Of course, as many romantic comedies go, the original couple breaks up, and Sophie ends up with the grandson, whom she fell in love with during their adventures together. It is a wonderful movie, and I highly recommend it!

Though I’ve never been to Italy, I think this movie presents it and its people in a very favorable light. The country itself is shown as very beautiful, classic and interesting, while the citizens were portrayed to have great senses of humor, loyalty, and kindness.

In Letters to Juliet, both the foreign location and foreign people were treated as friendly and fellow humans. I know this is certainly not the case in other movies. Though How to Train Your Dragon does not pit Americans against a different culture, it does have humans (Vikings in particular) against a being they actually know nothing about but hate, the dragons. The main character of the movie, Hiccup, bridges the gap between human and dragon and finds out they are not as bad as they are made out to be. The dragons are actually great creatures and during the movie Hiccup attempts to prove this to his people. Though this isn’t a literal culture versus culture film, in my opinion the dragons can easily represent any misunderstood culture.

In general, foreign cultures can be represented in many different ways in films, and the characteristics of the people from these cultures have a lot to do with their portrayal. For most American viewers, foreign characters that speak English are looked at more favorably than those that don’t. Americans love an accent, and I’m definitely no exception. I could listen to Hugh Grant talk all day! Another characteristic that might affect our view of foreign characters is skin color. In my opinion, people find it easier to relate to others that look like them. For example, a white audience might find it easier to relate to the cast of Love Actually (set in England) than they would a movie set it Kenya or Ethiopia, while it might be the opposite for an African American audience. As far as gender is concerned, I don’t really think gender makes a huge difference.

Overall, I think that statistically most American made movies do not have foreign characters or cultures in starring roles. However, when that does happen (such as in Letters to Juliet or Under the Tuscan Sun, another of my favorite movies), I think international characters and places are interpreted through an “American” gaze. People can only make movies from perspectives that they know. Most American writers/producers/directors are not foreign people from different cultures, so they couldn’t really portray foreign people as they might see themselves, and I think that’s a big reason that few American movies showcase foreign characters and locations.