Bias Influences The Audience

Bias Influences the Audience

Chinua Achebe and Ridley Scott reflect different cultural eras and use bias to influence their audience onto their side. Chinua Achebe uses bias towards the Ibo culture that loses in history and that we never saw as being important using biographical and historical stylistic devices. Ridley Scott shows bias towards the American soldiers using historical stylistic devices leaving out how the Somalia's felt during this time. Authors and directors have big influences on people's lives. What they show us and tell us can influence us to like the characters that they portray in their work. This can change the way we think about certain people, cultures, and races. They can make a bad guy in history seem good and a good guy in history seems bad just by telling certain things about them.

The Ibo tribes are interesting and have had a good history outside the fact that they were taken over by the British. The Ibo people were very religious and believed in many gods. They also believed in a thing called chi. "At the most one could say that his chi or personal god was good."(29). The Ibo people believe your chi was like your spirit and could determine whether you had good or bad fortune. Some people may see chi as luck or karma. The Ibo people also viewed masculinity very highly. The men would wrestle each other for respect within the tribe and the males were considered superior to the females in the fact that the males were stronger and tougher. Males in the tribes may also take more than one wife. This is known as bigamy. "There is no civil ordinance law against anyone who takes more than one wife (bigamy) as long as the person can maintain them." This was looked down upon once Christianity came into their culture from the British missionaries. The Ibo have good hospitality and manners. When visitors arrive they present them with a Kola nut to eat and palm wine to drink. An overall view of these people would say that they are good natured people. They had their own language, religion, and ideas on how things worked in life.

Chinua Achebe had a relation to these people in the fact that he had been brought up according to some of the Ibo traditions. His upbringing was multicultural. He was the child of a Christian missionary raised in a tribe that practiced Ibo traditions. Having background in both the missionaries and the tribes helped him write his book about the Ibo people and their struggles with the missionaries. Chinua wrote "Things Fall Apart" to show that the African tribes were actual people and not savage tribesman. He was tired of having to read the white mans view on how primitive and unimportant the people of Africa were. Since he wrote this book, Chinua is known around the world as the father of African Literature and portrays the people of Africa in a more human way compared to most history books.

According to history the first contact with the Ibo people was in the 1500's from the Portuguese. Later on the Dutch and English arrived and used the Niger coast for trade between Europe and African traders. At first missionaries arrived to help civilize the cultures and as their duties as Christians they also brought the tribes into their faith. They also traded palm products, timber, elephant tusks and spices. Later on the biggest trade was African tribesman as slaves. At this time the British started to force unsympathetic trading of slaves with imperialism of the Ibo land. The British became greedy and wanted more land other than just the coast they were using. When the British came to the Ibo land they considered it theirs for the taking. In 1928-1929 the Ibo's land was considered a colony that was taken through imperialism. The tribes were required to pay taxes just like any British colony would. There was a brief native religious movement which did not cause much trouble. In the end the Ibo culture would never be the same after the British colonization.

Imagery and tone is used differently with the Ibo people than it is with the missionaries. Through out the book "Things Fall Apart" you become bonded with the people in the tribe because of the ways they are portrayed. The tone towards the Ibo people is very respectful and they come across as normal people trying to get along in life. Okonkwo is a misunderstood father that wishes to work his way up to become more important in his community. His son Nwoye is trying to find his place in life and his family. His wives take care of the children and cook the food Okonkwo harvests. The white people in the book come across as very arrogant, deceptive, and mean.

"Does the white man understand our custom about land?" "How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart."(162)

This quote shows how the Ibo people feel towards the missionaries and how the missionaries are totally uncaring towards the Ibo people. This quote also makes the reader feel sorry for the Ibo people and despise the white people for even having contact with a civilization that was getting along perfectly without outside help.

The history and culture of the Somali people influence how we think about them in this movie and in real life. The Somali people are considered nomadic desert dwellers. They live in hot and dry weather. They usually take care of many livestock and crops. The Somalia people split themselves up into clans and are known for being very hostile towards other clans. The will fight over religion, trade, water, and livestock. They also are not very considerate of outsiders. Most of them resent white people because of the days when Europe had colonial rule over some of parts of Africa. Somalia is not a popular place to go on vacation mostly because of the distrust between the Somalis and foreigners coming into their land. Most have mixed feelings to U.S. soldiers coming to their country. The cities of Somalia are nothing spectacular. The main city Mogadishu is in ruins in most parts from the effects of civil war.

The movie Black Hawk Down portrays what it was like for the common soldiers in Somalia in 1993. A group of American Rangers and Delta Force Soldiers are sent to Somalia to take out warlord named Mohamed Farah Aidid, which is starving and murdering the Somalia people. The mission was only supposed to take thirty minutes. It ends