Afgan Star Essay

Cultural Paper

The thing that makes every country different is culture and every culture is different. Culture is the people’s way of life and can be found through their beliefs and forms of media including clothing, movies and music. In the Documentary “Afghan Star” it showed this singing talent competition somewhat like American Idol. It has the same concept where the people watch and vote for their favorite singer in the competition. In Afghanistan this was huge and loved by the people. It was a big deal for them because it gave the people a chance to listen to music by their own people and also it gave Afghanistan’s the right to vote who they wanted for and this can be a beginning sign for a democracy revolution in this country.

At the same time they were documenting the talent competition it also showed the culture of Afghanistan. Their culture was definitely still influenced by the Islamic traditions. This influenced the clothing of woman who had to be covered up in public, unless they’re in their homes. Family life in Afghanistan is members loving, caring and respected towards each other. The head members of the family decide for their kids who they’re marrying and what school they attend to. Their culture loves writing and speaking poems and this is why I think people loved Afghan star. Most of their songs they sang about were telling a short story like a normal poem does. If you look at their culture it looks very outdated and the atmosphere seems to be corrupt. This is because of Islamic invasions and terrorist attacks that slowed down how the people lived. The people our walking on thin ice if they do anything that seems to be against Islamic traditions like dancing or not wearing the right articles of clothing they could be sent off somewhere or be killed by the Taliban.
I have lived and know the culture of the United States. The similarities in culture between Afghanistan and United States are family life, and the love for arts. Family life in America and Afghanistan do share the similar qualities of loving each other and knowing that purpose in life is family. This was shown in the film that the families for the contestants were very proud of them and even though it went against some of their Islamic traditions they still believed in them. Both these countries share the same love for the arts in their culture. In America music for the American people is what we do express our self and have done very good at it. It is the same way in Afghanistan culture that people love to hear and sing songs to express them selves. In the beginning of the documentary it showed this kid who was blind but still so happy to sing and express his feeling through a song.
For any two cultures in the world being compared there’re similarities and differences. The main differences in United States and Afghanistan cultures are amount of freedom and amount of entertainment. In America freedom is a big factor in our culture. With these freedoms we can control the way are culture looks and how it lives. In Afghanistan obviously there is not a lot of freedoms because the Taliban and their religion are the ones who control the rules that end up affecting how to culture is. Entertainments in these cultures are different; also with America we have a huge entertainment with stable industries like music and movies. In Afghanistan the entertainment is lacking stable push to grow. Their entertainment was growing in the 90’s but then slowed to a stopping point when the Taliban took over. Today the Taliban got overruled and what this documentary did was showing that the entertainment industry is finally growing. In the film it showed a member of the cast went to the city zoo and showed a big exhibit, which was the live pig. Which I thought was funny and a true sign of how their culture has some differences between the United States. This part in the film showed that this pig, a common farm animal in America could be completely different in Afghanistan where it was a popular exhibit and showing that we do have differences in these two different cultures.
In this film it’s main purpose was to show about the new show in Afghanistan called Afghan Star but what I got out of it was seeing the Afghanistan culture. I saw that they have similar qualities in their culture and differences between my country and Afghanistan. The good sign for Afghanistan is that their young people want to change the culture and make it have more freedoms. I think they’re going to do this by singing that will lead them in having a voice in changing their culture from the destruction they previously had.