Week 5 – Life And The Movies

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! 

In the past week, I have continued conducting interviews, but transcribing has been taking a lot more time than I anticipated. While I haven’t finished, I have found some commonalities in my interviewee’s responses. This was definitely surprising to me just because of how diverse my participants and their experiences have been. For one, most, if not all, of my interviewees have seen the divide between North and South India, at least by culture and language, very isolating. This is because although there is the common factor of being from the same country, many still feel like the fundamental differences between Indians make it difficult to truly bond with them. Thus, they feel like they can only truly relate to people exactly the same as them in terms of language or culture.  

Additionally, I was able to learn a lot more about stereotypes that have been impacting Indian American youth in the Bay Area, a lot of which I hadn’t heard of before. For example, South Indians are apparently known to be very hard-working and diligent, which can be seen by the discipline involved in the dance Bharatanatyam. In America, North Indians are typically seen to celebrate their culture and traditions more publicly, or in group settings, but South Indians have a strong familial connection to tradition. Although youth may have grown up with internalized or subconscious negative stereotypes, it was something that they had quickly overcome or unlearned as they grew up.  

By next week, I will have finished all of my interviews and fixed transcriptions to analyze. Additionally, I will begin the movie analysis portion of my project. Using cultural analysis, I will be dissecting the North and South India divide in movies like Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981) and Chennai Express (2013).  

Thank you so much for reading my blog, and see you next week!