Blog #2

Hello all! Over the past week we have been talking a lot about the civilized society versus the uncivilized societies in the Argentine culture around the 18th century. I know during class we made the connection to the Disney movie "Jungle Book", and the song they sing in there called "I wanna be like you". This was a nice parallel to the Argentine culture in this time period as the Gauchos were not respected because they were viewed as inferior/barbarian, and because of this were thought of as uncivilized. However, the fact of the matter is that they simply did things differently than the Europeans. The city dwellers of Buenos Aires were egocentric of their own ways, they were caught up in "Europeanizing" anything they could get their hands on. This is why I really liked this connection to the movie because it shows how a lot of people want to be like someone/something else. They want to aspire to be better than them self in one way or another and they do this by trying to transform into something entirely different than who they actually are. What is almost ironic about this whole situation (about the Argentine culture), is that the Europeans are annoyed at the uncivilized ways of the Gauchos and peasants of the farm land, yet the only reason the Europeans could be considered "civilized" is because of the presence of an uncivilized people. In order for a society to be considered civilized, one has to have something to compare it to, for example; a society that is not as civilized. Anyways, these are just my rather surface deep thoughts on a very deep and complex topic that has gone way over my head... haha. Well, see you sooon!