Fear of Travel
177 wordsA couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I felt that more people should broaden their minds through travel.
This week the film Turistas opened in the USA, in which a group of young holidaymakers in Brazil find themselves victims to some kind of murderous plot because, you know, that’s what happens when you go to dangerous lawless countries.
This has strong echoes of the recent Hostel, in which much the same happens, except this time when American tourists in Amsterdam (the Netherlands is just about safe, apparently) take their life into their hands by straying into Slovakia.
Hostel is good nasty fun, but two films on this theme is approaching a trend, and impressionable people watch these films. The message seems to be “stay at home — the wider world is too dangerous”. I hate that idea.
This is the kind of thought that dehumanises other cultures, and as I mentioned before, it’s far easier to sanction your government dropping bombs on cultures you’ve dehumanised than it is to think of them as people not so different from yourself.
December 12th, 2006 at 13:02
Hi,
I am Brazilian and just would like to register my annoyance with the film Turistas. Tipycal american trash! Full of stereotypes, and really xenophobic! Absolutelly terrible, and all the media in Brazil is talking about it and how it is denigrating my country’s image. It just show the lack of respect americans have for the rest of the world. Or they use other countries to their advantage in one way or another, or they try to take over… killing people and destroying nations! To be honest… F**K all of them!