I hate to make this blog all about mass media, but I find it can be so much more than a source of entertainment that is forgotten almost immediately, as it can really make me think about life (I talked about this in my previous entry about Beautiful Kate. I apologise in advance, as this post will cover some similar topics). Before I get to the main point of today’s post, I have a side story.
I used to be averse to go to the cinema alone, and thought I’d feel like a total loser doing so. Since starting university and my Australian Film Project, I’ve discovered a cinema near uni that has $6AUD tickets on Mondays. It’s been mentioned in the comments before, so I may as well tell you that it’s Cinema Nova in Carlton). Anyway, I’m only at uni for an hour from 11-12 on Mondays, so I’ve recently gone to the cinema afterwards. If it was a big Hollywood production, I’d go with a friend, but low-budget Australian films on selected release will usually be seen solo by me.
Onto the main point of this post! Today, I saw Samson and Delilah, directed by Warwick Thornton. It is about young Australian Aborigines who leave their “tribe” (for want of a better word) and basically explore and live closer to main civilisation. It was terrific, and the reason I wanted to blog about it, was because I thought that their culture was so fascinating.
I seem to live in a culture where talking for the sake of talking is highly valued, but small talk is something I loathe. I can understand its purpose with acquaintances and people you don’t know well, but I just don’t always see a reason for it between close friends and family. Anyway, this film had an extremely minimal amount of speech (in fact, the Samson character was quite unable to articulate words), and I found it fascinating watching characters from a culture where speaking is obviously not so highly valued, and where thoughts and emotions (such as love), can be communicated through actions and gestures instead.
One of my majors at university is likely to be anthropology. In my “About” page, I only list psychology, as that’s what I’m planning to pursue after my undergraduate degree as a career; anthropology is more out of interest, or learning for the sake of learning it. My fascination with the film reinforced that anthropology may indeed be something I’ll love, and there’s so much more I’d like to learn about different cultures, such as in Samson and Delilah. For example, I’m interested in knowing whether cultures that don’t rely so heavily on spoken language are actually better at understanding non-spoken language, such as gestures and facial expressions.
Sometimes, I don’t realise immediately just how good a movie I’ve viewed, or a book I’ve read, actually is. There is some mass media that I’ll greatly enjoy throughout its duration, but don’t find to be though provoking, and promptly forget about it afterwards. The media that stays on my mind for days, or even weeks later, is the media that is the finest. One example, a novel, is The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler, which really left an impression on me.
