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  • Essay / Analysis of "water" and "a family thing" in films in terms of kinship theories

    David Schneider used the analysis which became a known bodybuilding approach in which he examined this kinship as a cultural system based on shared values. symbols and meanings. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay In the film “Water,” the actors play the role of widows in the 1900s, in a highly patriarchal society in Varanasi, which after their husband's death are forced to abandon all worldly affairs and live an isolated life, where there are many things not to do for them, such as eating fried foods or sweets, not participating in rituals, not going out to work for money and for just to earn money by begging and finally cursing themselves for the misfortunes they brought and waiting for death to come to relieve them from this subhuman life. While shaving one's head, wearing only white sarees are just symbols identifying a widow. According to Schneider, these are norms that determine people's behavior so that they are accepted as a member of the community; these standards are what Goodenough declared as “rules of how to do it.” And when any member tries to break these norms or rules like Kalyani in the movie "Water", who was forced to become a prostitute and earn money for the house by her own members in the widow's ashram and when she finally wanted to remarry and stop this work, this led to refusal from both sides in the widow's ashram as well as the boy's house, which ultimately led to Kalyani's suicide. Both examples prove Schneider's point that cultural and normative systems overlap in everyday life. So, because this film highlights the harsh traditions and affects the fundamentalist sentiments of the Hindu majority, it faced opposition during its filming and its sets were destroyed in Varanasi and the UP government decided to intervene and to stop the filming of the film, after which the court intervened and ordered the government to provide complete security to the film crew during filming and protection to every viewer of the film during its premiere. Schneider also considered that blood was the primary symbol of kinship in the United States and gave the two terms "order of law", as in the relationships between husband and wife, and "order of nature", as that between an unrecognized illegitimate child and his mother, while relationships between “blood relatives” may derive from a combination of the two. This division between the order of nature and the law is exactly what is depicted in the film "A Family Thing" in which Earl Pilcher's mother-father relationship existed only in the legal order, while the Earl's relationship with his mother existed only in the order of nature, and after her death, a letter made a shocking revelation that she was only his social mother while his biological mother was a woman American darkroom girl named Willa Mae, who was raped by Earl's (white) father and died giving birth to Earl. His adoptive mother's final wish is for him to go to Chicago to meet his half-brother, Raymond Murdock and thus embark on a journey to meet his blood relative or half-brother. He finally meets him at Ray's house, and eventually Aunt T reveals that she knows who Earl really is and tells him "I know both of your mothers". Although Schneider did his fieldwork in Chicago, he failed to observe the division by racism in that part of the state, which.