The Antagonistic Construction of the “Self” and the “Other”: Television and The Village

Abstract

This research paper will highlight how in a society false ideology results in repressing people and threatens their identity with the problematic construction of “self’ and the ''other.” By comparing both the movies Television and The Village we will see that there are groups of people who have made some specific rules and regulations that do not actually exist in their actual culture. Creating such norms generates a culture within a culture, justifying the manipulation of the common lifestyle by imposing a new identity over the subalterns. Every individual has their self-knowledge but when someone from outside introduces a new identity to a community, there will rise a contradiction between two identities. Therefore, the “other” identity is constructed by the “self” as a subject position that accepts what the majority of the commons desires to be the master identity, exposing its subjects to a positional hierarchy. Though both of the movies are from different countries, it seems they have questioned a common phenomenon which is how false ideology can be constructed, why people might accept those false ideologies, and how they can be exploited by them since an already superior “self” holds the socio-political licence taunt an inferior “other.” The end result of the paper confirms the suffering of a great majority from an identity crisis, making them unaware of the purpose of their life. As a result, it can be stated that a strong message in both movies is that if an antagonistic relationship between two different selves or communities rises, there will be violence or clashes of interests and various kinds of crime can take place in those communities due to identity repression.