Strange Relations and Anthropology Essay - 758 Words

As a beginning of this film, a myth is told by the Nyinba people of Nepal: a story of fearsome spirits thought to kill children and the weak. Their crime was adulterous passionate love and it was this that had condemned them to live eternally between life and death. In this film, we learn about and explore marriages in tribal societies. We can clearly identify the differences that challenge both side’s ideas and sensibilities about marriage bonds. As we enter the Wodaabe of Niger, we begin to hear the story of Fajima and her feelings of neglect by being trapped in her arranged marriage. She thinks of herself as a â€Å"given wife† and because she has no children, she wants to leave and become a â€Å"love wife†. The Wodaabe are pastoral,†¦show more content†¦Believing in the polyandrous system of her culture, Zumkhet has her first child with Sonam’s older brother, Ghoka. This system is a way of acquiring and keeping land in the family name. A jeal ous Sonam, off for school, leaves Zumkhet in wonder about which is better: education and change or the old ways. As a comparison between tribal and western communities, a brief story is shown about a marriage in Canada. This marriage is the man’s second but the woman’s first, although she already has two children. This part of the film shows the man and woman getting ready for their wedding and talking of how they knew it was the right time to get married. Their wedding marks a right of passage separating them from the dating world and bringing them into the married world. Like the Nyinba tribe, a gift is given in the wedding ceremony to show this but instead of coins they exchange rings. David Maybury-Lewis gives us viewers some insight on romantic love, being in love and just plain old love. He says that being in love is a need for possession because we feel incomplete and this is usually why we marry. The problem we have is that feeling fades. He also says that romantic love threatens the family. Societies need people who will live for their children, not those who will die for love. This film showed the many different aspects of marriage and family in which we learned about in class. It gave examples of some types of marriages such as polygyny practiced inShow MoreRelated Cultural Relativism vs. Ethnocentism - which is more objective?1042 Words   |  5 Pagesour own culture. An ethnocentric approach stems from judging an alternate culture in relation to one’s own pre-conceived cultural values, held to be superior; the parallax phenomenon, the inability to escape our own biases, prevents objective analysis of different cultures. 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