The Emerald Forest - Essay Example

The Emerald Forest The Emerald Forest is an English movie made in 1985 by director John Boorman and writtenby Rospo Pallenberg (“The Emerald Forest”). The film was set out in the Brazilian rainforests as the main theme of the story revolves around the gap between the traditional societies living in the forests and modern western societies. The film screens out how the lives of the tribal people living in forests have been hampered by modern developments in the western society (“The Emerald Forest”). The movie starts when an American engineer named Markhem moves to Brazil to construct a huge dam which required the cutting of forests. This cleaning of forests angered the tribes living in the forests known as the Invisible people and The Fierce People (“The Emerald Forest”). The story gets its real essence when one day Markhem takes his family for a tour of the forest and his son Tommy gets abducted by the Invisible people (“The Emerald Forest”). The invisible people are environmental friendly people, who are very close to nature considering it as their friend and living happily in their forest in their own community unless Markhem comes to destroy their peace and take away their home (“The Emerald Forest”). They kidnap his son because they assume that westerners or termites as they call them are the destroyers of the world, but the child is innocent and so should not live with these murderers. Tommy is adopted by the chief of the tribe Wanadi who loves and brings him up as his son. Markhem searches a lot for Tommy but does not find him until after ten years when Tommy rescues him while fleeing for his life from the Fierce People (“The Emerald Forest”). Markhem asks Tommy to return to him and his world but Tommy refuses and says that now his world is this forest and his people are his tribe. Markhem even asks their chief Wanadi, who is the authority of the Invisible People to convince Tommy to return but Wanadi says that “If I tell a man to do what he does not want to do, I may no longer be the chief.” Meaning that even being the authority there he has no right to force people to do something they don’t want to do.” This showed the difference between the authority structure of tribe and the western world (“Proyect”). The chief does not give any command or order to his people, not even his son to follow, rather he understands that it is the basic right of every human being to follow his will and wish (“Proyect”). However in the modern western world, lives of humans are ruled by orders and commandments given sometimes by their parents, sometimes by teachers, later by their employees, and overall by the governments, policemen etc (“Proyect”). It was not just that there was a wide gap between the authority structures of these two societies but their entire life style, culture, norms, traditions etc all were opposite. The people of the traditional societies still use artillery, spears and arrows to fight and they walk to cover long distances (“The Emerald Forest”). The use of technology is very limited or almost nonexistent in their lives as they are closer to nature and lives together. In contrast to them, modern western society uses technology to a large extent (“The Emerald Forest”). There are modern methods of fighting like machine guns and bombs, aero planes, railways cars etc to travel to far away distances in just hours, large machines are used for construction and to cut off forests. This advancement in technology has both its benefits and costs (“The Emerald Forest”). With technology comes the easiness to do things and time gets saved in travelling. As Wanadi says to Markhem “When I was a boy, the edges of the world was very far away, but it comes closer each year.” However with benefits comes the cost too. As more vehicles are produced, so have the pollution from air, land and water increased as well (“The Emerald Forest”). This pollution is destroying our respiratory system by going inside us when we inhale this polluted oxygen and causing the rise of several diseases and illnesses in the people. Moreover, the use of modern machine guns and weapons results in the killing of many people and is thus destroying the mankind (“The Emerald Forest”). The modern machinery used in construction has affected the beauty and peace of the natural world and of the indigenous tribes. The invisible people are nature loving, innocent and real people who do not measure their progress like the westerners do; rather they keep to themselves in their own small world of forest as a community (“Proyect”). Spirituality is revealed in every core of their essence as they are deep, caring and beautiful people who are not selfish like the westerners and are not exhausting the natural resources for their own selfish reasons (“Proyect”). They respect and value the auspiciousness of nature and all its resources as is also depicted in a scene between Wanadi and Markhem, Werner: Can you smell it? The oxygen? 40% of the world's oxygen is produced here in the Amazon. Bill Markham: Come on, Uwe, oxygen doesn't smell. It's... the rot, the decay. Werner: Also the blossoms. In my opinion, the traditional society is far better than the western society. The main reason is the satisfaction of the people of traditional societies. The culture of the traditional people gives them satisfaction and happiness by fully satisfying all their physiological, safety, emotional, self esteem and self actualization needs. Their home is the forest where they live in which provides them their basic needs off healthy food, clean water, a shelter for their families and sex to fulfill their bodily needs. The feeling of having their own land gives them a sense of safety, protection and a healthy environment. Their culture satisfies their emotional needs of love, care and attention by giving them a family, a community of people to depend upon in times of need and support and a chief to guide and show them direction in times of difficulty. This culture fulfills their self esteem needs by giving them the confidence of fighting for their community and people and teaches them to respect their elders, nature and cherish the young ones. Furthermore the culture of the invisible people satisfies their most important need of self actualization by teaching how to deal with problems and morality, making them selfless and not destructing nature’s resources for their own personal benefits or motives. Though even modern culture has its benefits in where people have access to a wider scope of choices and there is a wider array of resources for their lifestyle, but the problem with this culture is their dissatisfaction with their lives and their greed to get more and more. My view is further supported by sociologists such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Emily Durkheim who all agree that western culture is dominated by a less happy and less contented population who are dissatisfied with their lives because of their never ending desires to achieve more and more. Even though they all have same conclusions, they have different reasons supporting it. According to Karl Marx this dissatisfaction is the result of capitalism which divides the society into two broad categories that are the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. The Bourgeoisie are the rich, property owners who dominate the industrial world belonging to upper class while the Proletariat are the property less owners working for these industrialists. The difference between these two categories creates classes such as lower, middle and upper class in society. The lower class is trapped in the vicious struggle to push them to the upper class while the upper class is stuck on maintaining their power and authority over that of the Proletariat. This keeps both the lower and upper class unhappy. On a somewhat different note, Freud suggests that this dissatisfaction arises from an individual’s cultural super ego which creates such high goals for the society to achieve that it becomes impossible to achieve them and thus results in the society getting unhappy when it is unable to achieve them. This cultural super ego is the creation of socialization of an individual in the society and reflects the society’s morals and values. Now the society has developed its morals and values from the culture. So all in all the culture passes its values to society which passes it to individuals and thus yield to the creation of this cultural super ego. The super ego is basically derived from the impressions of great leaders and personalities present inside family or in society. Durkheim further carries the theory if Freud in which she says that people stay unhappy because they are not able to put a limit to their unlimited needs and wants. Their entire lives get wasted in commercial worlds working in industries and in the struggle to get economically better pushing themselves to the upper class, as was discussed by Karl Marx too. They don’t get any time or have no energies left to further involve them in other institutions such as religion, military etc. People have no respect left for these other social institutions making up their society and thus this deviation leads in an unhappy life as there is no pursuit of happiness and peace in these institutions. If I get to choose a society or culture to live in then I would prefer that of the Invisible people as they have found a peace in their worlds. They are happy, contented and satisfied with whatever, little or more they have. Their contentedness puts their lives at an ease, and makes them capable of loving other humans, their nature, the resources provided by this nature and overall their life. they are not full of complaints about their lives or are not struggling and fighting to achieve their so high goals like the westerners are. Western society is so full of competition and greed that their world is derived by their selfish reasons to accomplish and success. They have got in a race in where they must win, and for winning they must push others back. There is no sense of community as no one is willing to support another without something in return, a system of give and take entails in society rather than love, care or respect of others. In this desire for more and more, westerners have got away from religion too which makes us even more selfish, unhealthy and evil. Traditional culture is beautiful and lovelier to live in with no competitions, races to win or tensions and stresses. Works Cited The Emerald Forest. Dir. John Boorman. Writ. Pallenberg. 1985. Film. Proyect, Louis. Emerald Forest. N.p.. Web. 16 Jun 2013. . Read More