Tuesday, May 28
Film: “My name is Khan” (2010)
Disability: Asperger Syndrome
In this film, the main actor is not disabled. It would be better that the real disabled person did to express accurate action. Like in the case of an Asian actor. However, it might be difficult.
Religion: Muslim and Hindoo
-Since 9.11 happened, Muslim American became a target of racism
-bullying, prejudice, obstruction of business
I thought that this film showed how beautiful the real religious spirts were. As one of the people who don’t have any religion, I thought that Khan’s strong and true spirit of religion was so beautiful. Prayer shouldn’t be upon the place and the people. And also, religion and clothes related to religion are a part of their identity. At the end of this film, Muslims such as Khan’s brother’s wife and the owner of a TV shop got proud of their religion and made an action. We shouldn’t judge people by religions or ethnicity.
“There are two kinds of people in the world. Good people and bad people. There’s no other difference.” I thought that Khan’s mother’s line was a key phrase of this film. There are people who do good things and people who do bad things. It reminds me of all important is the actions and deeds that people do, no matter they are. If a person is Muslim, it doesn’t mean to a bad person. Khan proofed it in this film. Plus, one thing I thought, as we are a part of society, we should study our history of this society. Why people hated/hate (which is sad) specific people. Why people celebrate various successes. What happened in the past… It connects to our ethnic studies and cultural studies.
Wednesday, May 29
D&R
Field trip
Friday, May 31
South Asia; India (Hinduism), Sri Lanka (Buddism), Bhutan (Buddism), Pakistan (Muslim), Nepal (Buddism), Maldives (Muslim), Bangladesh (Muslim), Afganistan (Muslim)
Final thoughts: South American
I learned the strong connection between South Asian and religion. I had the image of South Asia, which is Hinduism. I realized when I was thinking about South Asia, my image of it was just only about India. India and Hinduism were centric. In the presentation, I learned that other South Asian countries and other religions. In the film, because of the difference in religion, it was not easy to marry others. Also, after 9.11., many South Asian became a target of racism, which was sad. I don’t have religion. But, through that film, I felt the beauty of believing like Khan did. Religion is just one of the identities. I respect other religions because I thought that it’s beautiful. Even though, as Khan argued with one guy in the film, there might be a wrong way of believing, I believe that because of religion or skin color, we shouldn’t judge others by religion or skin color. And, we can be proud of our color and religion.