Shock!

In class this week, we watched the movie "God Grew Tired of Us". The movie follows a group of African born men, into their new life in the U.S. It is clear from the moment they step foot in America, that they were out of their element. You can really see the effects of culture shock on them, as we watch their reactions to things like light switches, popular TV, Santa Claus, and escalators. The men have never had to deal with these types of things before. For weeks after, the men try to adjust to their new lives. Throughout the movie, I started to feel really bad for the lost boys. They viewed our culture as something that they seemed to think of, as materialistic, busy, unfriendly, and all around rude. I think that the men were being a little ethnocentric. They kept saying that everything that we did here was wrong. To a certain extent though, I agreed with them. What they said about our culture being too busy and not having a sense of community, really impacted me. It made me think twice about what I did everyday and the way I did things. My daily activities all seemed to be normal to me, but after watching the movie, its obvious that's not the case for the boys. For example, whenever I go to the supermarket, I don't think twice about it. It seems natural to me to go up and down the aisle and to find what I need or what I want to eat and leave. But for the boys, it was strange. They had probably never even been inside of a grocery store before, much less, having to choose from all the different kinds of fruit that we have.