Adapting To Others: Spanglish Film Analysis

Adapting To Others: Spanglish

The film Spanglish to me seems like a comical yet thought invoking movie. This movie stars a slew of great actors as main characters. Adam Sandler and Paz Vega played John Clasky and Flor Moreno. Flor is the housekeeper of John and his wife named Deborah who is played by Téa Leoni. Deborah and John also have two children together. In the movie Flor states that there is a struggle with her schedule because of her child Cristina who is played by Shelbie Bruce. Ms. Clasky decides to have Flor and her daughter move in with them. As time goes by tension erupts between everyone as the struggle to live with one another increases. For the families they had to learn how to adapt to one another and learn to respect the

Co-culture is a group of people that exist along with dominant cultures, those in the “co-culture” still remain connected through cultural heritage though. Collectivism involves focusing mainly on a group’s views and needs rather than the individual’s. Collectivism can affect co-cultures because it does not focus on one individual at a time but the whole group. Unknowingly, an individual’s needs could be getting rejected all along while others may feel as though the group’s needs and goals are met. Mexico is a collectivist society so for Christina to grasp the fact that John addressed her as an individual. While John and the kids were sitting on the patio at the beach house he asked them each to find sea glass for his platter. Christina did not believe that she was in fact “one of the children” and did not respond to his invitation entirely. John treated her as an individual rather than just another kid in his house. Individualism mainly focuses on the individual’s contribution to the group. It stresses the need of independence and personal achievement. Being our own individual is what sets us apart from the rest. Here in North America individualism is valued greatly. We seek out to be different from the rest and pursue our own paths. Individualistic cultures view individuals as those who are independent and those who are able to succeed and excel by themselves. Almost two hours into the film Christina proclaims to her mom “Not right now. I need some space”, her mother responded with “Not a space between us (Spanglish Script)”. When Christina said she needed space she used “I”, meaning she saw herself as an individual and did not want to be stuck under her mother following her ways. Flor responded to her with collectivistic culture by saying “us”, meaning that they will be together through this and she also wanted her daughter to stay connected to life she was raised in. Individualistic views