Batman(Task Oriented) Vs Bruce Wayne(People Oriented)

With less than 3 months for the release of the most awaited movie of the year “The Dark Knight Rises”, I shall dig into its prequels “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” to understand the difference in personalities of Bruce Wayne, the rich orphan and Batman, the Caped Crusader.

In “Batman Begins”, in one of the scenes, Bruce Wayne is advised by Rachel, his childhood friend, saying that “It’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you”. In the climax of the film, when Rachel asks Batman who he is, Batman replies “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me”. Bruce Wayne is perceived as having a People Oriented personality and is perceived to be concerned about who one is. Batman has a Task Oriented personality, believing that a person is defined by his/her acts. In the movie “The Dark Knight”, Batman again displays his Task Oriented personality, by trying to save Harvey Dent, the District Attorney, instead of saving Rachel.

Analysis of these 2 personalities indicates the conflict in the mind of Bruce Wayne and his inability to act according to his wishes. However is able to become his original self using the Batman mask and act with Task Orientation, rather than with People Orientation.

This difference in characters was analyzed based on the Guest Lecture by Mr. Alen, A Cross-Cultural Trainer at Cognizant Technology Solutions.

Crash – A film that deals with stereotypes

A stereotype is a popular belief about specific types of individuals. The concepts of “stereotype” and “prejudice” are often confused with many other different meanings. Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of people based on some prior assumptions.

Crash is a 2004 American drama film co-written, produced, and directed by Paul Haggis. The film is about social tensions in Los Angeles, California. Crash was inspired by a real life incident in which his Porsche was carjacked outside a video store on Wilshire Boulevard in 1991.

The American society has some kinds of hatred towards Arabs after the 9/11 event. They have formed some stereotypes about Arabs. It seems to them that every Arab has some potential ability to become a terrorist, who are fiercely tough and exceedingly extreme.

In effect, Americans know a little about Arabs and even the world outside USA. Hence, in their minds, Persians are Arabs. Thai and Cambodians are so-called Chinamen. In the second scene, In the ammunition store, when the Persian father talking with his daughter Dorri in their mother tongue, the ammunition store owner shouted to them,  “Yo, Osama! Plan a jihad on your own time.”, “You’re liberating my country. And I’m flying into your mud huts and incinerating your friends?” His insulting words enraged the customers. Such anti-Arab atmosphere really makes many Arab-Americans feel uncomfortable. Albert Mokhiber laments: “If there’s problem in Libya we’re all Libyans. If the problem is in Lebanon we’re all Lebanese. If it happens to be Iran, which is not an Arab country, we are all Iranians. Conversely, Iranians were picked on during the Gulf War as being Arabs. This includes one fellow who called in who was a Polynesian Jew. But he looked like what an Arab should look like, and he felt the wrath of anti-Arab discrimination. Nobody’s really free from this. The old civil rights adage says that as long as the rights of one are in danger, we are all in danger. I think we need to break out of our ethnic ghetto mentality, all of us, from various backgrounds, and realize that we’re in this stew together. ”

All the words above reveal one kind of truth that stereotypes also affect the way we process information. In this case, Americans remember more favorable information about their in-groups and more unfavorable information about out-groups. They dislike Arabs in a sense but they pretend that they know all about Arabs by unconscious stereotyping that most of Arabs fit their one single stereotype. They overestimate the degree of association of attributes between Arab group members and the extremist or terrorists. As a matter of fact, they know a little about the Arab nations.

Some tips to overcome stereotypes are:

• Begin by examining the basis of the stereotype and why it is widely held
• Evaluate the reasons for the power of the stereotype
• Encourage acceptance of differences rather than demonizing differences.
• The cornerstone of a free society is its willingness to look at things from multiple perspectives. By doing so, we redefine and debunk stereotypes.

Outsourced – A film that deals with inter-cultural differences

Released in the United States in 2006 and directed by John Jeffcoat, Outsourced is a comedy about a Seattle call center manager named Todd Anderson whose job, along with that of his staff, is outsourced to India. To add insult to injury, Todd is sent to India to train his replacement. The film revolves around Todd’s culture shock in India, the friendships and romance that develop, and the way he adjusts and is ultimately changed by his experience in India.

Todd acts in an ethnocentric manner at the beginning. In one scene, he chastises his Indian employees, saying: “The center’s numbers are nowhere near what they should be, and based on the customer complaints we’ve been having, it’s a culture thing. Basically, you people need to learn about America.” Ignoring the fact that the workers are native English speakers, albeit with a different accent, Todd admonishes them: “Basically you people need to learn about America. . . . Things go faster if the customer feels they are talking to a native English speaker.” Concluding the session, Todd reminds the workers once again: “Learn about America. You want to sound American.”

Todd’s transformation in becoming more comfortable with Indian culture and open to discovery about the culture provides a potentially interesting case study to examine specific ways in which a person can ease adjustment to a new culture. The turning point for Todd’s transformation apparently begins when a compatriot he meets at the quasi-McDonald’s indicates that he too felt frustrated when he first arrived: “I was resisting India. Once I gave in, I did much better.” Some time after that conversation, Todd admits to his staff that he has made a mistake in trying to run the Indian call center like an American office. He asks for, and implements, suggestions for improving the work environment. In a subsequent fun-filled work session at the call center, Todd good-naturedly obliges a request from a worker to do a dance from an Indian movie.

Hence, while working in different cultures, it is important to have 3 things in mind:

• AWARENESS about others’ cultures
• KNOWLEDGE about others’ practices and customs
• SKILLS to accustom oneself while working in a multi-cultured environment

American History X – A film on Racism

American History X is a 1998 American drama film directed by Tony Kaye and starring Edward Norton and Edward Furlong.

The film tells the story of two brothers, Derek Vinyard (Norton) and Daniel “Danny” Vinyard (Furlong) of Venice Beach in Los Angeles, California. Both are intelligent and charismatic students. Their father, a firefighter, is murdered by a black drug dealer while trying to extinguish a fire in a South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles, and Derek is drawn into the neo-Nazi movement. Derek brutally kills two black gang members whom he catches in the act of breaking into the truck left to him by his father, and is sentenced to three years in prison for voluntary manslaughter. The story shows how Danny is influenced by his older brother’s actions and ideology and how Derek, now radically changed by his experience in incarceration, which includes violent rape by white inmates, tries to prevent his brother from going down the same path as he did.

From the Course and the movie, I have understood that the following actions can be taken to reduce racial discrimination:

• Emphasis should be laid on how different groups are similar rather than distinct from each other
• The social, political and dynamic context in which an awareness program is to take place must be understood before initiatives are implemented
• Each message should highlight only one minority ethnic group at a time

Introduction

This blog is aimed at understanding some of the concepts in Cross-Cultural Management. One can better appreciate the concepts taught in the class room, if these concepts can be applied. Since most of us like to entertain ourselves with movies, I thought of presenting my understanding of some of the concepts I have learned in this course, with reference to a set of  movies. I have named the blog “filmysanskriti”, since it is an attempt from my side to understand various Cultures (Culture = Sanskriti in Sanskrit) through films. I would like to thank my Professor Mrs. V. Vijayalakshmi for helping me in learning about Cross-Cultural Management and for giving me this opportunity to express my learnings of the same. I would like to thank my class mates, for making the class room sessions more interactive, there by helping me in understanding the course contents in a much better way.