Films Invade our Minds

Today, I’m going to be talking about how the Cinema and Society course really made me to believe in the fact that films and the media do actually play a huge factor in shaping our way of thinking and behaving. It’s so true that movies are a powerful agent of socialization. Movies definitely have an influence on our minds. The reason for making this statement is because after reading the Race and Ethnicity chapter, I realized why I made a certain decision in the past that was pretty much influenced by the movies I used to watch as I was growing up. In 2002, my father and my older sister made the decision of pursuing their education in the United States, so the whole family went together with them to make their dream come true. I was 13 years old at that time. I went to Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado. The first day of school was a terrifying experience. When entering the school I realized how much it looked like the American movies I had once watched. Boys were twice as big as me, and I wasn’t used to the co-educational system. There were a lot of students from different ethic and national groups. Students were from various countries in Asia, Africa and Europe. Another thing that I noticed was that there were a lot of African American students in the school. My older brother attended the same school, and we used to walk back to the house together. It was also another horrific moment for me because a lot of boys would walk together in groups and if their eyes were pointed at me, I used to get scared and walk faster. I thought they would just decide to attack or shoot me. I used to get scared of black and Mexican boys, the most. Thinking about it now, these misconceptions that I had were formalized based on the negative portrayal of black and Mexican people in movies. Usually the black and Mexican people were depicted as violent using guns to shoot others or knives to stab people and even using their hands for punching. The Cinematic Sociology book explains, “the origins of contemporary black screen violence are located in Hollywood’s blaxploitation period, which consists of about 60 cheaply made black-focused action-adventure flicks released between 1969 and 1974.” These negative portrayals stayed in my unconscious mind, and when I went to an American high school, my fear of people from different ethnicities that I inherited from the movies were reflected on my reaction. I also decided to go back to Doha because I couldn’t handle being scared of going to school. But, I managed to go back after a year to the same school and got over my fear. In addition, I got my high school diploma from Overland High School (OHS), which is something I’m very proud of.

Thinking about it now, people were staring at me probably because I was wearing the hijab. There were also Arab students at OHS and only a few Muslim girls wore the hijab. To end this blog, I’d like you to listen and watch the video below as it gives some moral messages to kids and young adults to not get influenced by things around them.