I had the opportunity to go and see the showing of the movie The Anatomy of Hate. The movie was done to try to understand where certain groups of people hate other groups and ultimately why we as the human race hate people. The movie had some anthropology concepts that the director used to get a better understanding of what hate truly is and composed of. I did not have really any ideas going into the movie of what it was going to be about except that it was going to look at a few groups of people and their extreme hatred toward another group of people. Also at the end of the movie there was a small discussion between a Christian group on campus Life 180 and a group from the Birmingham Free Thought Society. The movie was very good at showing how awful it can be for one group to hate another group so much. One of the worst groups to me that hated another group was the church that hated the homosexuals and thus hating the USA. This group was the worst to me because I am a Christian and this just makes some people think that we are all like that and in fact this is just a small part and should not be how these people act. The Ku Klux Klan/ Nazis was also a very good display of how much people can disgustingly hate many other groups of people. The movie also showed the hate that exists between the Palestinians and the Israelis. It also showed that the American Army and the Iraqi Army at first did not like each other and even had killed some of each other, but after trying to put aside their differences they end up working together.
The movie was not anthropological because it did not take a holistic approach to learning about the reasons that these groups truly hate each other. It only looked at what is going on now and not really taking into account where the seeds of hatred started. Looking back at where this hatred started would help us to understand why these people hate each other. It did use the emic perspective or informant of each of the groups to let us know how that group of people feels about the other group of people at least at this point in time, but did not expound on past events. It did show that for many of the groups that the older people in the groups would teach or pass on their hatred to the younger generation. This shows that the culture of each group is passed on and not a genetically determined thing that someone will hate another person. This goes right along with what many psychologists and other intellectuals say that our culture is learned as a young child by watching our parents and what is going on around us and that it will most likely stay with us as we grow up. It is in fact as seen in the movie that we learn by watching and then doing what our parents and elders do. The movie showed that many people can get hurt both physically and emotional by the acts of the hate groups, and it was also shown that it does hurt people that are not involved but just innocent bystanders. The director also went into many situations that were obviously in direct opposition to what he believes, but to go into the situation to learn about it and not to impose your own beliefs. This approach of being there to learn about the culture and not to critique or impose your own beliefs is how an anthropologist would do to learn about a culture.
There was also a small discussion after the movie that was pretty good I thought. I thought many of the comments were respectful of the other party, but there were a few that did seem sort of disrespectful and they were from the audience. Overall I thought the discussion was good, but I thought that it should be longer and really give the chance for more of a debate which is what I thought was going to happen. I did like however that it was pointed out that no matter what we stand for that we all want some sort of peace in the world and that we should work together to make the world a better place. It does not mean to abandon our beliefs for others, but to do small things to make the world a better place and as an example from the discussion to recycle.
I agree with many of the statements about how hate is made and why it comes about. I do agree that it does come from a fear of another group and based on this you hate them and try to keep them down so it looks to both of you that you are superior. I do agree that we learn many of our hatreds of people and prejudices towards people come from what we were taught and brought up in as a young child. I think it is evident that most of the people in the world would agree that we should work together to make the world a better place no matter what our beliefs are. I feel that for myself I learned that even though I may not necessarily hate someone or a group of people or at least not as extreme as the groups on the video, that I should try harder to really look for a way to not hold prejudices against people or stereotype them and try to look at them as a person. I also learned that from this I should really try to in my life not be so judgmental of people in my life and not think or talk bad about people groups, but to think the best of groups and not look down on other people or place a strong dislike on the people I don't even know. Overall I thought the movie and discussion was good and that it helped to open my eyes to hatred around the world and ways to improve my life.
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