Assignment: Analyzing World Cultures

Media play a very large role in both the development and the perpetuation of cultural elements. You may never have watched a foreign movie or even clips evaluating other cultures. In this assignment, you will explore online videos or movies from a culture of your choice and analyze how cultural elements are presented, compared to your own culture.

Complete the following:

• Choose a world culture you are not familiar with.

• Identify two-three online videos or movies representative of this culture. These could be examples of cultural expressions such as a Bollywood movie from India or Anime videos from Japan. Evaluate two hours of such a video.

• Select a scholarly article that analyzes the same culture presented in the videos you have observed.

• Write a paper describing the cultural differences you have observed in the video. How are these observations supported by the research article?

Be sure to include the following:

• Describe the videos you have watched.
• Explain the main points of the videos.
• Examine what stood out about the culture.
• Compare and contrast the similarities and differences of this culture with your own.
• Examine the ways of this culture. Is it one you would want to visit or live in?
• Would you experience culture shock if you immersed yourself in this culture? Why or why not?

Support your statements with examples and scholarly references.