Media Studies - Cultural Difference In Film

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Compare & Contrast The Representation Of Cultural Difference In Lost In Translation & Crash Crash, directed by Paul Haggis, is a movie that explores bigotry and racial stereotypes. It is set in Los Angeles, a city renowned for its cultural mix of almost every nationality. Lost In Translation, directed by Sofia Coppola, is a movie about an unlikely friendship formed in Japan between an aged movie star with a sense of emptiness in his life and a neglected newlywed, and how they come to terms with their own feelings for each other and the vastly different Japanese culture. Both of these highly acclaimed and highly successful films portray cultural difference in interesting and different ways. I will explore the ways in which they do this. In the opening scenes of each of the films, both subtly portray different ideas about cultural difference. In Crash, the opening sequence shows many red and white lights, travelling their separate ways, as if they are many cars’ headlights and brake lights on a motorway. This symbolises two different cultures, and how they congregate together and keep themselves separate from other, different cultures. As the opening sequence advances these separate lights (or cultures) start to cross paths; this symbolises how, although vastly different, in some occurrences, these cultures, like the lights, cross paths; it cannot be avoided. This is significant to the film, as the recurring theme is how no-matter how much these different cultures wish to keep themselves to themselves, at some point, their paths in life will cross. The movie itself is about the events that occur when they do. Lost In Translation takes a different approach in enforcing the idea of cultural difference in the opening scene. Bob Harris is inside a taxi cab on the way to his hotel in Japan. There is a medium close up of him, in which he is clearly in

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