Friday, March 18, 2016
You Say Tomaito, I Say Tomahto
In the opening episode Paisan set in Sicily, the American soldier Jersey Joe attempts to communicate with Carmela, an Italian peasant recruited to guide them. He goes so far as to pantomime a cow and drinking milk in an impromtu English lesson, even showing his family photos (which causes his being shot by German sniper). Yet at the end of the episode the other American soldiers mistakenly believe that it was Carmela who killed him What does this episdoe and other episodes in this flim tells us about the possibility of communication? How is it hampered -- or made more urgent -- by violence and war? What divides us, what unites us?
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In wartime, the need for communication increases tenfold. However, the risk and consequences of miscommunication only increases as well. Additionally, this scene examines the fact that there are different types of communication, verbal and emotional. This scene is a perfect example to support this argument. Generally, it is impossible to win a war with no communication. Communication is needed on a local basis to check in with fellow soldiers, but also to relay information back to a base in order to formulate strategy and then implement these strategies. Communication is a cornerstone necessity of success in wartime. However, the increased pressure on communication also means that miscommunication will have greater consequences. We can see the American soldier trying extremely hard to communicate with Carmela before the German soldiers come. This communication is aimed to establish trust, to have Carmela be able to place her faith in the American soldiers. Ultimately, the mission of this communication succeeds. While Carmela doesn’t understand the English language word for word, she understands that he has good intentions as a result of an emotional communication. When we fast-forward to the end of the scene, we can then see that the situation was completely misinterpreted, leading to the increased consequences. When the rest of the Americans saw the soldier’s body, they believed that Carmela killed him. Not only was there no communication to support that this was not the case, but there was no communication to say that the Germans had been there either. As such, it only made sense that Carmela killed the American soldier. Since their communication succeeded not necessarily with words, but with emotions, it is reasonable to assume that the truth of what happened in that abandoned lookout post will never come to light. From this situation, we can gather that not only is communication vital to understand the truth, but that it is difficult to achieve perfect communication, and only increasingly so during wartime when multiple languages constrict verbal communication. When people have to rely on emotional communication, like Carmela and the soldier, it can foster a deeper understanding. However it creates a communication so unique that it can prohibit anyone else from understanding it, resulting in the consequence that the truth may never come to pass.
ReplyDeleteThe episodes in Paisan where Joe tries to communicate with Carmela along with the episode where the African American soldier tries to communicate with the little Italian boy illustrate that war and violence cause miscommunication and confusion. War and violence create a sense of urgency and stress in people; they no longer think clearly and they misread situations because they do not have to process what they see or hear. The fear and need for survival cloud people’s judgment, undermine their trust in others and causes them to assume the worst without trying to get all the information. Joe and Carmela take the time to try to communicate and learn about each other. They use hand movements and sounds to illustrate their words with the language barrier. However, when the American soldiers come back and find Joe killed they immediately assume Carmela killed him because they do not take the time to look around the area; if they had, they would have found her body and possibly have come to a different conclusion about Joe’s death. Since they could not find Carmela right away, they assume that she is the enemy instead of a victim as well. They do not even consider that she could have been killed or captured by the Germans. The American soldiers do not take the time to investigate Joe’s death because they know they are in danger and must keep moving.
ReplyDeleteThen, in the episode where the African American soldier wakes up without his shoes and finds the little Italian boy who took them, he demands his shoes back. The soldier asks the boy questions which he tries to answer. However, with the language barrier the soldier cannot understand the boy’s answers and when the soldier finally does understand the little boy’s situation, he is in the slums. It is not until the soldier stops yelling at the boy does he notice where he is and how the boy is living. He finally understands that the boy is just trying to survive the war which is why he took his shoes. The soldier’s attitude changes and he runs out of the slums. This episode shows that war and violence cause people to immediately react without thinking. They cannot see the full picture until it is too late. The soldier feels badly about his behavior towards the boy afterward because he did not understand the boy’s life and realizes that getting his shoes back is not important; he can always get another pair from the military. If the soldier had calmly tried to talk to the boy to get his shoes back, to actually understand what the boy tried to tell him, then the soldier would not have gotten so angry and the outcome could have been better. The soldier still may have let the boy have his shoes but perhaps the soldier could have been able to give him food or other supplies instead of running away embarrassed. People could help those in need more if they took the time to understand their situations and did not think only of their own survival. War and violence cause people to not be able to communicate because they are so concerned about their own survival that they do not think, understand, see or hear things clearly.
War is messy. And communication between two foreign parties follows the same truth. Carmela and Joe both seem displeased when they are stuck together initially, however they grow to converse. Though the pair do not speak the same language, they enjoy a conversation about family and life prior to the war. Joe reveals a silver locket containing pictures of his sisters. In doing this, however, the reflection of light off his locket reveals their location to enemy soldiers. Joe’s death results from his attempted communication with Carmela. Joe seems to be a good, honest man, so this abrupt ending is not fitting for his character. Italian Neo-Realism does not aim to achieve a happy ending, so it is by intention that Joe dies not the death of a war hero, rather he is just another casualty. He leaves with no dramatic last breaths or dying monologue, because real death in war is sudden and ugly. The tragedy continues when the American solders return and think Carmela has killed Joe. Carmela is unable to communicate that this is not true and she jumps off the cliff side to avoid being shot. It first seems by Carmela and Joe’s story that communication is possible, but the end result shows that warring sides do not make the effort to properly communicate and instead make rash decisions that result on death. In a situation where communication between Carmela and the American soldiers is urgent, the primal instinct of violence is triumphant. The effort of communication brings people together, as demonstrated by the connection between Joe and Carmela, but lack of communication brings division. Of course it is not a simple task for people of different tongues to communicate without the aid of a translator, but the message of Paisan is that communication is necessary, although a great challenge in the presence of war.
ReplyDeleteIn Paisan, the possibilities of communication, despite a language barrier, are endless but can be hampered by urgency and wartime surroundings. In the very first scene of the film, American soldiers find their way to an Italian village at night. At first, the Italians are frightened because they are unsure about what side the American soldiers are on. This confusion and uneasiness transforms to comfort and understanding in a couple minutes after the soldiers are able to communicate through common words. The Italians from the village comfort stemming from a common goal with the Americans to destroy the Germans. Later, American Soldier Joe is assigned to keep watch on Carmela. Once again, Joe is hesitant to communicate to the shy Carmela because of the language barrier. However, as the evening goes on this hesitancy erupts into personal conversation about their respective families. Through dramatic gestures and common words, Joe and Carmela are able to break the language barrier and hold conversations. Joe and Carmela’s downfall happened because they were attempting to communicate and their wartime surroundings hampered this communication. The Germans and the wartime surroundings are similarly to blame for when the American soldiers believed that Carmela killed Joe. Contrary to the many language barriers in the first episode, the last episode shows strong communication between the Americans and Italians. Without sharing one language, the American and Italian soldiers strive towards the common goal of defeating the German sentries. The horrifying ending of the film where the Germans sacrifice Italian partisans shows that defying the language barrier will always be a faulty and imperfect process. Nevertheless, with time and a common goal there can be successful communication.
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ReplyDeleteThe final segment of Paisan, in the Po Delta, the film explores cultural norms, which serve to further unite and divide people from different nations. There are sets of moral values eminent in each country. One such value held by the Italians and Americans is to uphold the sanctity of human life even if it is not safe or tactically intelligent to do so. When a dead, anonymous partisan is found floating down the river, two men decide to retrieve his body. An Italian goes to pick up the corpse while an American distracts the Germans. Both men put themselves at significant risk in order to do this, and there is no apparent benefit as the partisan is already dead. The concept of recovering and honoring dead comrades is inundated in both of their cultures so they make a dangerous decision for the sake of their principles. This clearly ties the two nationalities together and helps them to coexist and work as a successful unit. The high estimation in which they hold life continues to be demonstrated, when they rescue downed British airmen. Again, they do so at risk to themselves and they have nothing to gain other than a reaffirmation of their principles. Their morality is further demonstrated when they deal with the Italian peasants. They could have easily stolen as much food as they wanted, but instead they go to the family and ask, and even bring some gifts (mosquito repellant) in return. Contrary to this, the Germans mercilessly gun down the Italian peasants who provided the partisans with food. Men, women, and children are shown lying dead simply for the crime of assisting the Allies. Even if one argued that the family gave up their civilian status by willingly providing material aid to the “enemy,” this would still not excuse the killing of most of individuals in the home. Additionally the Wehrmacht callously murder their Italian prisoners, despite the fact that the POW`s posed no threat whatsoever due to the German`s superior numbers and weapons. The Germans saw no reason to preserve human life and behaved in distinctly dishonorable ways, distancing themselves from the ideals of the Americans and Italian partisans. While the Allies would risk themselves to give a dead Italian Partisan a proper burial, the Germans went out of their way to pointlessly kill Italian POW`s and civilians in the most cowardly manner possible. Germany had a long record of executing and arranging the deaths of undesirable prisoners during the war, while the US generally followed the Geneva convention and even Italy provided better living conditions than the Nazis. Germans were so focused on cultural and racial superiority that they saw no reason to preserve non-Aryan life unlike the Allies who, for the most part, tried to avoid unnecessary killing. The final scene in which the Americans try to stop the murder of the Italians highlights the difference between the ideals of the Germans and the Americans, demonstrating that codes of conduct and morals are what bring people together, and draw distinctions between people, in war.
ReplyDeleteHuman beings ability to communicate with each other is something that sets us apart from other beings in the wild, because of the complexity in which we are able to get our ideas across to each other. However, this same form of communication that can bring so many people together can also create a divide between those that do not understand the same way that one might communicate. Within this episode of Paisan we are presented with how the difference in language can make it difficult to be able to express our feelings to another. Jersey Joe is obviously in a conflicted place during the war and he is attempting to just hold a regular conversation with Carmela but struggles to be able to talk with her; eventually resorting to imitating a cow and drinking milk. As the movie progresses, we see that the Italians and Americans have found different ways to be able to best communicate with each other in the face of the war. When it is most urgent, during these times of crises, we are incentivized to make an effort to communicate with others that do not speak our same language, in order to survive. Jersey Joe’s death could be attributed to the fact that he could not communicate properly with Carmela, while the survival of individuals in later scenes of Paisan are due to the ability of the people to speak with each other for directions and advice.
ReplyDeleteThis episode tells us something about the simplicity of communication, as well. Despite the fact that Joe and Carmela struggled to talk with each other during their time in the tower, both of them began to gain feelings for the other. The possibility to have the most basic forms of communication open up so many doors to allow others into at least some of our daily thoughts and feelings. Carmela and Joe both can feel the pain that the war has brought upon each other and that allows them to become closer. They were united through their shared emotional communication, despite the language barrier that separated them.
Although it may seem that the ability of Jersey Joe to overcome the language barrier between Carmela and himself is a great achievement, the following event of both of them being killed is a symbol that the violence of war overcomes all. In this first episode of Paisan, the American soldiers employ the help of an Italian peasant named Carmela. While the rest of the troop goes off to explore, Joe is left to supervise Carmela. They obviously don’t speak the same language; Joe must find his own ways to communicate. He does things such as pantomiming milking a cow and trying to teach some English which starts to form a connection between them despite the language barrier. This comes to a screeching halt when a German sniper takes out Joe just as he is showing Carmela some family photos. This shows that even though it may seem cool for a moment to find a way to communicate, the overarching violence of war trumps all. There may be many different scenes in this movie that show different cases of the language barrier with different results, but this specific scene does not show the language barrier as an achievement in my mind. Paisan in this way can be considered very realistic. War is a distraction from everything else, so there is no time for trivial things like teaching some English to an Italian peasant in this scene. The fact that both Joe and Carmela end up dead at the end of the scene is a testament to that.
ReplyDeletePaisan shows how important communication is during times of war, but also how communication often becomes distorted. Through the six different episodes Paisan gives a real interpretation of how people try to live their day to day lives through the hardships of war. In the opening episode a teenage Italian girl and a U.S. soldier are left together by other U.S. soldiers and attempt to break down the language barrier and form a friendship. This friendship is tragically cut short when the soldier is shot while attempting to show the girl a photo. The soldier’s death was a direct consequence of his attempt at communication. When the other soldiers return the girl is blamed for his death and she is unable to communicate with the soldiers to explain her side of what had happened. The girl is then killed by the soldiers. Without the barrier of communication or without the stress of war both the death of the girl and the solider could have easily been prevented. Because Paisan is set in a time of war accurate communication becomes an issue of life or death. In the third episode and American solider is so caught up in the stress and pressure of war that he doesn’t even realize that the woman who picked him up off the street is the women he fell in love with months earlier. When the women realized who he was she asked him to meet her later but he never showed up. A common theme in the film is how war prevents people from living a normal and happy life. This episode is a good example of that theme because the American soldier is so drained from the war that he is unable to have a normal functioning relationship with the women in a way that might have been possible without the war.
ReplyDeleteThe urgency of war both helps and hurts the language barrier in Paisan. In the first segment both sides of the argument are addressed. When Joe attempts to talk to Carmela, the urgency proves to be a positive effect. When Joe and Carmela sit and he tries to talk to her, both of them literally know nothing about each of the opposing languages. But the war going on around them and the urgency of war giving the feeling that neither of them might be alive much longer makes them more desperate to find ways of communicating. The way Joe does this is by trying to act things out, showing pictures, and use similar sounding words in each language. After all of these different strategies are used, the two begin to understand, learn about, and like each other. If the urgency surrounding the war hadn’t been looming above Joe and Carmela, there probably wouldn’t have been as much motivation for the two to understand each other and the language barrier would have been much more obvious. The problem with the urgency of war and language barriers is that during times of violence it is very easy to jump to conclusions. When something terrible happens, like when the American soldiers find Joe dead on the ground, it is very easy to form solutions in one’s head. This is exactly what the American soldiers did, they assumed Carmela killed Joe. With all of the violence and tension surrounding them, they didn’t take the time to try and consider the other outcomes that may have led to Joe’s death and since there was a language barrier between Carmela and the American soldiers, she had no way to defend herself. If no war was going on, Carmela could’ve taken her time to explain that it was in fact the Germans who killed Joe and not her. This is how the urgency of war can both help and hurt a language barrier between two people, all shown through the first scene in Paisan.
ReplyDeleteIn times of war people, despite differences in race, gender, political beliefs, and languages, unite to fight a common enemy. The Sicily clip in the film Paisan, shows how the language barrier can somewhat be overcome in times of war. During a war, communication is extremely important; miscommunication can lead to a trap and change the outcome of the war. Usually, people who speak different languages have trouble communicating with one another. In the Sicily clip, the language barrier is very visible. After the American troops find Carmela, an Italian native, who is recruited to guide them leads them to an abandoned sea side castle. When the American troops spread out, Jersey Joe stays to watch Carmela. During the time the two of them spend together, Jersey Joe tries to build a relationship with Carmela despite the language barrier. Although Jersey Joe cannot speak Italian and Carmela cannot speak English, they still manage to communicate. Instead of just using words, Jersey Joe uses hand gestures, gives an impromptu English lesson, and even pantomimes a cow. Jersey Joe even shows Carmela his family photos. For a second, the mood is lightened and the viewers almost forget that there is a war going on while Jersey Joe and Carmela are building a relationship. Viewers are quickly brought back to reality as a sniper goes off in the background and Jersey Joe is killed. Later, the American troops return and blame Carmela for Jersey Joe’s death. Although the war “unified” many people to fight a common enemy, people were still unable to fully trust their allies. When Jersey Joe was killed the small amount of trust that was building between the American troops and Carmela was broken. The film Paisan tells us that people are willing to unite with others from different backgrounds to fight a common enemy. However, the alliance is only temporary and the trust between allies is always going weak as long as there is an extreme difference in beliefs/morals between allies. In the war, the Italians and the Americans were very different. Italy supported the Axis powers for most of the war the death of an American troop in the presence of an Italian made the troops lose trust. Another example of a “forced” alliance is the American alliance with the Soviet Union during WWII. The two countries fought together during the war to fight against Germany. However, after the war ended, the United States and the Soviet Union did not stay allies; the difference in political beliefs (democracy vs. communism) played a huge role in the ending of the alliance. The relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union never got repaired. Today, the United States and Russia (formerly known as the Soviet Union) still do not have a strong relationship.
ReplyDeleteThe opening episode of Paisan, directed by Roberto Rossellini, is set in Sicily where an American soldier known as “Jersey Joe”, desperately attempts to communicate with Carmella, an Italian peasant recruited to guide them. Joe does not simply make verbal attempts to break the language barrier between Carmella and him, but goes as far as to farce a cow and even show Carmella photographs of his family. This decision by Joe to extensively attempt to speak with Carmella is what unfortunately gets him killed by a German sniper in the area. This course of events is meant to symbolize the fact that communication is not just hampered greatly by war, but also made vastly more urgent as well. Joe and Carmella are essentially meant to represent their respective countries (America and Italy), and if there wasn’t such a cultural difference between their nations, Joe and Carmella would have been able to communicate swiftly and easily, with no need for death at all. Joe and Carmella could not simply resolve their issues through words, instead the need for guns and violence needed to take place in order for the conversation to reach a conclusion. As a result of Joe’s death, his fellow American soldiers believed that it was Carmella who killed him, and she ironically cannot explain to them what really happened. This moment in the film is what symbolizes how communication is made more urgent by war. Carmella’s life is on the line here, and if she were only able to explain to the soldiers what truly happened, perhaps her story could have ended differently.
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