Film Analysis: "New York “of the show “Meet the Natives

The episode “New York “of the show “Meet the Natives” was based on the first visit of five tribesmen from the island of Tanna, Vanuatu to New York City. It had many examples of clashing, and coinciding cultural differences. The means of travel in New York, via taxi, was one of the first surprises that the Tanner travelers had. We found it interesting that based on their background knowledge of an small community, they figure out that if you find yourself lost in the big city, you could get in a taxi and say where you wanna go and they would take you there. However, they also believed that if don’t know the name of the building you are going to, you can simple tell the taxi driver who you are staying with and he would take you there. And not only did they express their pleasure at the convenient and new way of traveling, but also they saw straight away that this service was great for those who had money, but for the poor it was useless.

The woman who was hosting the natives while in New York City, took them to her art studio so they all could do some art pieces together with different techniques. The paintings that the natives created were inspiring and all expressing their home land. Through those paints, they could explain a little bit of themselves and also homesickness. Back home, the Tanna visitors had no social class difference in their tribe society and while in New York they noticed a homeless that living in the Center Park all by himself, with no family or anyone to care for him. That was a big surprise to them because they did not understand how could be someone living in the streets if there is so many buildings to live in and so many people to help around. They them realized that the reason why was because our society is capitalist, based on money – which was different from their society where everyone work hard and help each other with almost no necessity of money to live. They continued to be impressed with nearly all they saw among their visit experience in New York City.

The food, beer, buildings, people and so on, were met with enthusiasm, amazement, and a startling acceptance. Even though they were amazed with almost all what they saw and experienced, as they left, they reflected that they all preferred their own simple, happy, and fair life style. One of the tribe men said “A lot of things we know, they don’t know. This is because they are all running after money”. With this statement then, we can see that money is not the most important thing for them, they have different values based on the general welfare of their society instead of the personal welfare as we experience in the US and many other capitalistic societies. Which also tell us how different backgrounds interfere on the way people see things.

Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM6jNI-QAxM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaljMVkRlmY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upvc4QQq79k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATBP_N4FFSo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz_7FqbAH3U