Whale Rider

Whale Rider is a magnificently empowering movie that inspires females to have courage to fight against gender stereotypes and gender role about female. It reveals the fact that many females are being treated differently and they have to fight harder for what they want as compared to their male counterparts. It also shows that how a belief results in the issues of gender inequality in a community. In the movie, the Maori chief Koro believes that the first-born males are the descendants of Paikea (whale rider), who will also become the chief of the tribe inherently. Thus, the birth of Paikea Apirana is unfavorable to Koro because Pai’s twin brother was stillborn during delivery but she did not. 

Patriarchy is strongly embedded in the social system of Maori tribe in which males hold primary power and authority over females. The dominant ideology of patriarchy includes the class system of male domination and female oppression in which females are expected to follow the demands requested by males and are unlikely to possess formal power and representation. The society of Maori is patrilineal wherein the leadership is inherited by the male lineage, so Pai is undoubtedly not eligible to become the chief of the tribe simply because of her gender. Koro is deeply disappointed when he realizes that there will be no male heir to succeed him as chief. 

Such an androcentric (male-centered) tradition has somehow brought about detrimental effect on women’s role and self-understanding. Like Pai in the movie, the androcentric tradition has prevented her from being treated as capable as her male counterparts. Her grandfather refuses to acknowledge her capability and leadership potential, and even claims Pai is useless to him. When Pai tries to sit in front during the meeting with boys who are the candidates of next chief, Koro says to her “Paikea you are a girl, go to the back”. When Koro finds out Pai fixes the broken pull cord on his boat and wins her Taiaha fight against Hemi, he is furious at her attempt to break the tradition. In fact, Koro is being in the state of cognitive dissonance because he loves Pai and see her ability to accomplish tasks expected of males; however, he refuses to acknowledge her potential as a leader because she is a girl. 

As a girl, Pai has to fight so hard to get recognition from Koro. She tries to show Koro her interest in leadership and ability to assume the role of chief that her deceased twin brother was destined to be. Even Koro has warned her not to learn anything that is deserved for males, she decided to challenge gender role expectation by not obeying Koro. She secretly learns chant at the outside of the classroom and practice Taiaha fighting with her uncle. She demonstrates her ability in several scenes, such as she defeats Hemi in Taiaha fighting and take the whale tooth necklace Reiputa back from the bottom of the sea that all the boys in Koro’s class fail in their attempts. She is also not afraid to risk her life to save the whale when she is riding on the top of the whale and trying to coax it back to ocean. 

From this scene, we can interpret the dying whales wash up to shore as the dying patriarchal tradition, and Pai who rides on the back of the whale like her ancestors as the rise of female leader.

Pai’s courage and determination have led her to break the gender stereotype and the gender role expectation in her tribe. She is not afraid to stand up to her own belief and confront her tribe’s belief system that males are superior than females. In a scene when Pai is giving her speech, she says that “…if the knowledge is given to everyone, we can have lots of leaders and soon everyone will be strong, not just the ones that have been chosen.”  

It demonstrates that Pai believes that her gender should not dictate who she is as a person and both males and females should be given equal chance to succeed. Oftentimes the assigned tasks for males and females are unjust and discriminatory. Taking Pai as a great exemplar, she has proved that female is as capable as male or even more capable than male of accomplishing many tasks expected of male. The film Whale Rider has projected the fact that our society tends to favor male to succeed and female to fail. Instead of casting female protagonist in a sexually submissive and stereotypically traditional role, Whale Rider has portrayed females in a counter-stereotypical way in which female is depicted as intelligent and capable leader. The film itself has also serve as an inspiring tool for females in patriarchal society to stand up for what they truly want for and not to look down their ability to accomplish something.

Forget Paris

It is always easy to start a relationship, but it is never easy to maintain a relationship. “Forget Paris” has demonstrated the relationship stages that most couples go though, starting from how the two fall in love, confront each other over conflicts, and lastly how they overcome challenges and reconcile. Some people choose a partner because they think they find the right match; whereas, some people enter a relationship out of loneliness or because of the pressure to settle. Whether it is better to be alone or to settle, as a human being, we need the balancing between “we” and “me”. Being single is never a bad choice or misfortune, because it is all about how we choose to live our life. If one doesn’t feel happy to be in a relationship, I would say it is wiser to stay single rather than entering a bad relationship. 

Newly joined lovers are always so immersed in their intense feelings for one another, however as time passes, those romantic times and intense feelings will gradually fade and be replaced by tons of challenges that one might never think of at the beginning. According to a study of hundreds of couples by Dr. Susan Campbell, she identified five stages that every intimate relationship tends to go through. 

1. The Romance Stage 

Every intimate relationship start off with this stage. This is a time full of red roses when reality can only be seen through rose colored glasses. Like the two main characters in “Forget Paris”, Mickey and Ellen who are madly in love find everything is so wonderful, beautiful and exciting when they are in Paris. As they are so crazy for each other, they can only see the similarity between them. The love hormones make their brain occupied with only what they feel good about each other but ignore each other’s flaws. Couples at this stage don’t see much differences between them and oftentimes they don’t discuss much details and specifies. Thus, it is not wonder why Ellen turns out to be so late to tell Mickey that she has married. Romance can make people deny part of themselves and believe that they find someone who complete them. The “honeymoon period” will only come to an end when couples see the illusion of romance and its reality. For example, Mickey and Ellen realize their dreams and visions are not going as how they have expected and they are tired of trying to be the same. Some couples end up breakup at this point, however some couples move on to the next stage.

2. The Power Struggle Stage

Unlike the romance stage, couples at this stage start realize and focus on partner’s flaws and differences. They do not understand why their partners are different after the romance stage and why they change. The problem here is that the time in romance stage was so special, so dazzling that the time after romance stage seems so dim by comparison. So, chances are couples get to work trying to change their partners to the way they think should be, or make them keep promise for not being that way. Throughout the movie, we heard the phrase “forget Paris” which means live in the real world quite many times. Mickey and Ellen don’t live in the real world, they live in the time they were together in Paris that was magical and special. However, they begin to see the reality after they get married. Thus, they attempt to persuade each other to change to the way they think should be. For example, Mickey lets Ellen quit her job in France and follow him back to his hometown. Whereas, Ellen also asks Mickey to quit his job so he can accompany her, she also asks him to move to Dallas when she get the offer from the airline. It is necessary for every couples, including Ellen and Mickey, learn how to fight fairly with both winning and to declare one’s own individuality. This is the stage where couples learn to communicate and resolve the differences, so they will not get stuck in the recurring cycle of this stage. Communication is important in every relationship because people don’t know what we want, what we think, and how we feel if we don’t tell them. Sometimes we tend to make assumption that our partner understands us; whereas, this is the most common relationship mistake that most couples are probably not aware of. 

3. The Stability Stage

When couples come to this stage, they realize there is no way going to meet all needs of two persons and they become clear that attempt to reshape their partner is not the best way to resolve the differences. At the end of the movie, we can see Mickey and Ellen have their thrill of being love returns after they learn that each other’s path in life may be different. Couples at this stage have clear mutual respect and feel good to agree to stop changing each other; however, the danger at this stage is when couples begin to move apart and feel a sense of having nothing in common.

4. The Commitment Stage
This is the stage where couples fully realize the reality that there is neither ideal partner nor ideal relationship. Couples make choice about themselves and their partner based both on individual differences and things they have in common. At this stage, they choose to stay with each other by knowing all good and bad.

5. The Co-Creation / Bliss Stage
In this stage the two have decided to travel through life together; whereas, the relationship still needs to be nurtured along the way. 

The last two stages of relationship are not shown in the movie “Forget Paris”, so it leaves a room for audiences to think whether the relationship of Mickey and Ellen will move on to the bliss stage, remain at the stability stage or go back to the previous stage. 

This stages model is conceptualized as spiral, instead of a liner process. The second stage is considered as the hardest part of a relationship that many couples cannot get through. However, the Power Struggle Stage can actually be overcome by acknowledging that everyone is different, and knowing how to reach a win-win situation where both parties compromise. We grow up at every stage, and every lesson we learned at each stage can lead us to have a healthy relationship and a better future that is filled with a lot of love and happiness.

Strictly Ballrom

          The title “Strictly Ballroom” itself provides a clue to what message the movie is trying to convey to audiences. From the title, it is not difficult to have a good guess that the movie centers around the background of ballroom dancing where a series of strict dancing rules and steps are highly encouraged and promoted. The main theme of the film emerges when the main character, Scoot Hastings begins his journey to dance his own steps in the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship despite great social influence, where winning the championship is impossible if the conventional dance steps are not followed.

Follow Your Heart

One of my friends always like to tell me “follow your heart”, which actually means have courage to become the person you want to be and do what you want. However, as we all know that saying is so much easier than doing. There are a lot of factors, especially social factors, pull us from listening to our inner voices and push us into fulfilling someone else’ desires and wishes. Strictly Ballroom has illustrated a real social phenomenon, where people are easy to be affected by the social pressures that community brings to us. Social influence has its strong power to affect and manipulate a person’s thinking, behaviors and emotions. We might not see these powerful forces, but we should at least know that we are vulnerable to these unwanted manipulations. 

  One of these subtle forces is conformity, which is defined as a change of belief or behavior to accord with others (Myers, 2014). When everyone else is dancing the steps favored by Pan-Pacific competition to be the champion, would you dance the same steps to win? More than likely people would say “yes” if they want to win the competition, and the people say “yes” are conforming to the norm of ballroom dancing. Why people tend to conform? I guess the key is whether a person is afraid of being different, being judged and of bearing its consequence. 

Is conformity good or bad?

          As for what consequence might occur, conformity will not necessarily lead to bad consequences and conformity could be good or inconsequential. At times conformity could be beneficial for cultural evolution and survival because by being conformist, people imitate the things that are good and useful even they may not know why. Moreover, conformity could be useful when we are not familiar with something or in unfamiliar environment. Dancing is a great example. If you are a beginner and don’t know how to dance, you will mimic how others dance so you will not get embarrassed and in the meanwhile you can learn from others. Similar example can be found in the movie as well – the beginners in the dance studio learn ballroom dancing by following how others dance so that they can be a better ballroom dancer. Thus, conformity could be handy yet useful in such situation where we are not familiar with. 

From the movie, we also learn of the disadvantages of conformity, such as the lack of creativity and innovation, the difficulty to go beyond comfort zone, and the loss of individuality. Many people tend to follow what other people do, not because they genuinely like or want to do it, but simply because of everyone else is doing it. When those dance steps are so popular and mainstream, the dancers follow the steps more than likely not because it was their own idea to begin with and they genuinely like to dance like that, but because everyone else is following the steps to win the championship and they don’t want to be the special outlier and lose the chance of winning. A bigger pool of people can mean more diversity of opinion and behavior, more uncertainty, and more likely the majority will take lead in the group. There are times when the fear of what may happen is about to hold us back from persuading what we truly want for, and to fight for the things we want our heart needs to be filled with determination. Like the main character, Scoot in the movie, he fights against the strict competition rules and his aggressive mother to dance his own way in Pan-Pacific competition because he does not want to be bound by the conventional steps. Fran and her family have also become Scoot’s greatest support who always encourage him to dance from his heart. 

         I guess the reason why dancing was used as the story background in this movie is that dancing symbolizes freedom of expression where dancers can express their emotions through different dance styles and steps. Even there may be obstacles hinder us from expressing ourselves, we can still find the ways to our heart and let our inner voices to be heard if we pluck up courage.