After viewing this documentary, I realized there are still so many things wrong in the world today. This documentary was about China's economy changing due to the Three Gorges Dam. To the government, the dam acts as a symbol to how their country is growing and developing, to the people who live there, it acts as a barrier to them living their normal lives.
The characters in this film are struggling and there is not much they can do about it. These people are struggling with its new consumer capitalism. Throughout the film we get to see how this change affects millions of other people. The film does an excellent job at giving the audience an insight into these people's lives and really made the film more emotional to the viewers. Not many of these families decision, were truly in their control. They did not have much say in where they could afford to live or what to do in these situations.
Another thing I realized during this documentary was the issue of identification. I felt as if these people weren't able to identify with their true roots. The manager on the ship, for example, was trying to make these people something they weren't and I think this confused many of the natives that just wanted to be themselves. These poor people had to be, and live, and work as different people then being able to enjoy themselves at times. Self- identification seemed to be a big issue throughout this film. Also, I think that post colonialism was shown throughout this film as well as diaspora. People were being displaced and uprooted.
This film was able to shine a new light on how I live my life and how thankful I should be for the country that I live in. I really do feel bad for the way that these people had to live their life and had to be ordered around just because the country wanted to "make things better". The people who run these projects and these countries do not care about the lives of others, only themselves.
Samantha, I could not agree more that watching the film made me feel terrible for the people in China and gave me a deep sense of appreciation for the life I live. I really like how you noted the problem of identification within the Chinese people and their lack of "true roots." One of the big problems in the film was personal goals versus the goals of society. As one of the farmers said, he thought the damn was good for the country but not for him and his family. I think this exemplifies the identification problem. The people are able to identity themselves as Chinese but not as individuals. This is probably due to the structure of their government and its oppression, but there is clearly a lack of "true roots." Its seems the traditional idea of Chinese robes that the tourists see is being promoted as true roots but in reality the people are still searching for them.
ReplyDeleteThis film was a really great cap to the end of our course I realize because so many of the concepts we’ve discussed are evidenced by the documentary. These concepts are so much more tangible when we can see them at work. I had discussed the terms privilege and representation in my post today, it escaped me how identification functioned within the film. The film can also be seen through a Marxist and/or Postcolonial lens as well. I lightly touched upon identity when I considered how the people along the Yangtze are been forced to move as a sort of diaspora. You unpack how this affects the self-identification of these people. Not only is identity complicated for them but also for the director himself possibly, he is ethnically Chinese but was born in Canada. I think this represented for him via the roaming shots of the river juxtaposed against the singing of his grandfather about the river and its beauty, the documentary itself may also be a manifestation of this. It's interesting how he's visited the river of the years to see it change so much, so quickly. I found the scene with the boat manager to be quite jarring because of its implications, the erasure of self and culture. Yes, they were training for their job but the speech he gave, insisting that the dominating culture of the West was superior was quite disconcerting. I don’t blame the man himself but I blame society for creating a world that places particular cultures as more significant or important. That society has created stratification for itself that relies on subjugating people who lack privilege.
ReplyDelete