Have you ever heard of the term “people watching”?
For me, people watching meant sitting in a highly populated area where a lot of people would pass by and observing. My mom, dad, brother, and I used to always love to people watch at malls, on the boardwalk, at amusement parks, etc. What we were really doing is observing other’s culture and diverse social and personal actions! I feel that we as humans have a natural interest towards other people and how they function.
Another simple way to observe other cultures is through watching television and movies from other countries and in other languages! For this blog post, I chose to use Netflix to watch a television show in another language. After searching through their ‘international’ section, I found a show titled “La Casa de las Flores”.
Click here for a link to the show I watched!
“La Casa de las Flores” is a romantic comedy about an upper-class family in Mexico consisting of a mother and father and their three children who are now adults. The family comes together for a birthday party for their father and at the party, they discover that the mistress of their father has hanged herself in their flower house. The episodes continue with the family coping with this discovery of both the father’s infidelity as well as why his mistress killed herself.
Before I begin breaking down the episode I watched and discussing cultural differences and similarities that I observed, I want to include some videos that will give you some background knowledge on Mexico and it’s demographics and culture.
Before I begin noticing some similarities and differences in the culture of the characters of this show I have to make two comments about why these observations are unable to be generalized as typical Mexican culture. First and most importantly, this show is a Netflix romantic comedy/drama and so the events and reactions that occur within these episodes were made to be outlandish and overreactive. In this way, watching a Netflix show to observe true culture is not the best idea. However, through these shows, you are able to observe small cultural differences that may apply to some people in some parts of Mexico. The next comment I have to make is that the show is about an upper-class family coming from great wealth so some of the things I noticed may apply only to people of similar socio-economic status.
In the television show, I noticed that the family was extremely tight-knit and secretive. They did not like sharing their business with anyone outside of the direct bloodline and where careful as to taint their image. This could have been because of their upper-class standings and the fact that they were well known in the community. Another thing I noticed is that the family, especially the mother, was hesitant towards any of her children’s love interests. For example, one of the daughter’s had a fiancee who was an African-American man of middle-class socioeconomic background. The mother did not feel comfortable with him at a family gathering and was very judgmental about his choice of clothing. This also seems to be a result of the socioeconomic status of the family and their popularity in the community.
The one cultural difference I did take notice of occurred when the American man was greeting his girlfriend’s family. The family members told him that they greet by kissing one on the cheek rather than a hug as we would in America or two kisses as one might in Europe. This was interesting to me as I did not know that was typical to do in Mexican culture. However, this is still a television show and that occurrence could have just been placed to increase the differences seen between the family and this man or could have been a specific courtesy of this family or the region in Mexico that they are from.
After watching this show I observed very few differences culturally in social interactions when compared to that of Americans. The people seem to have similar social norms as those on television shows from America. The differences in culture mostly came from foods, music, and traditions. However, these cultural differences were not highlighted in this episode as it’s main purpose was to introduce the family and the mysterious death of the father’s mistress.