Lost in cultural Babel

I'd like to share this idea with you: It's very difficult to step back from our cultural conditioning and look at our own culture with fresh eyes, clarity and impartiality.


And what I mean by this is that if a foreigner says something we don't appreciate about our country/culture, immediately either we take it personally and badly or we deny it or, as a last resort, we try to find a reason or justification. We are seldom able to say: "Wow! Thank you. You just opened my eyes on something I could have never seen by myself." Or: "Yes. It's true, we do this and I now understand it can be weird, or totally non sense, or misleading for a foreigner."


We stick to our culture as if it was the only part of our identity and we miss the opportunity to broaden our mind. Why do we feel this necessity to "defend" something? If someone says something about our culture, why can't we just say: "You're right. That's true."  And that's all. No judgement, no denial, no attempt to camouflage. 


That's something that stirs my curiosity.


On the other side, I experienced how you feel when someone else looks at your culture from the outside and things you had always taken for granted start to become sort of "unconfortable". That's always the same point: we don't want to feel unconfortable. May I suggest this post? Stepping out of our comfort zone: That's one of the most exciting experiences. Feeling lost. Lost in translation.


So, that short experience I was talking about. Here it is: I was watching an Italian movie with British friends, when suddenly I realized that I was not watching that movie as an Italian, but as a British myself, or somehow as a foreigner. Scenes that would have felt right to me at other times, felt weird at that point, because I was watching the movie with them. The family relationships depicted in the movie, the way the two brothers interacted, the way the parents interacted, as well as all the values that that movie was conveying started to be weird to me. "This is not good", I thought, "if they see this, they are going to think that the Italians are this and this and that". And than I thought: "But the Italians ARE this, and this and that." And I felt a little ashamed. But than I thought: "You know what? Let's stop with fake movies for export market, this is REAL, it might sound ridiculous, it might sound weird, it might sound too Italian, but this is just the way we are! I didn't dare to ask my friends what they thought about the movie. Of course they told me it was great, but which British person would really tell you what she/he thinks, since in Britain it's not polite to say something negative?


I'd love to really, really (with no understatements and two-way meanings) know what the British think of that movie. 


E.