The foreign film that I viewed was “City of God”. It is a Brazilian film based on a true story in Rio de Janeiro. The movie followed Rocket and Li’l Dice as they grow up and decide who they would like to be. Rocket’s family sold fish and his dad was a fish monger. His brother Goose, who was against selling fish, decides that he would be a hood also know as a hoodlum. Rocket, also didn’t want to be a fishmonger, decides that he wants to be a photographer and knows that would be his only way out of the slums. Throughout the movie, Rocket has to find ways to dodge Li’l Ze. He never wanted to be a hood and always maintained his goal of becoming a photographer. He started working for a newspaper delivering papers and worked his way up.
Li’l Dice was a street kid who also grew up in the same slums as Rocket. His only goal was to be the top hood. His best friend, Benny, and Li’l Dice grew up wanting to hang around the Tender Trio, which consisted of Goose, Shaggy (Benny’s brother), and Clipper. After a robbery at the local motel done by the Tender Trio and Li’l Dice, the Tender Trio all end up having to go into hiding. It was later revealed that everyone in the motel had been killed by Li’l Dice, who was only suppose to be a lookout but he was thirsty for blood. After the massacre at the motel, Li’l Dice ran off with Benny and began to rob people for money. Eventually he came back to the City of God, and ran into Goose. He shot Goose who was the last hood in the trio, making him the top hood. At 18 years old, Li’l Dice changed his name to Li’l Ze and began to take over ever drug territory because he found that there was more money in cocaine than there was in the robberies he and Benny had been doing. The cultural pattern of these characters in this film was nothing like our cultural patterns here in the United States. It was either one way or the other for these characters. You were either a hood or a worker. It was very black and white in the film, never a shade of gray. Every character in this film that was a hood started at like the age of eight. As a young child in the United States, the closest I ever came to seeing a gun was on television. These children in this movie constantly walked the streets with guns and had no parental guidance. The police would only get involved when their blackmail money was being jeopardized in some way. For instance, at the end of the movie the police finally stepped in the war and arrested both Carrot and Li’l Ze. Li’l Ze was then taken around the corner and release. The police said that he owed them a lot of money. Li’l Ze complained because of the war he was now broke. The police didn’t care how he came up with their money just as long as they received payment. The police have a belief here that says to protect and to serve, but in the film the police were only there to look after the criminals as they too were criminals. “A belief is an idea that people assume to be true about the world” (Lustig & Koester, 2006). The central belief was that the police wasn’t going to do anything about it and that they just had to let both sides kill out each other. I think that the beliefs in the slums were that everything that was happening wasn’t ok but it wasn’t talked about because it was an everyday thing. At one time, Rocket called it a mini Vietnam. It was something that the people in the slums grew accustom to. They got used to walking past dead people and their children joining the gangs. Rocket’s peripheral beliefs made it possible for him to get out of the slums and become a photographer. He made sure he stayed out of Li’l Ze’s way. Values are said to be “…what a culture regards as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair, just or unjust, beautiful or ugly, clean or dirty, valuable or worthless, appropriate or inappropriate, and kind or cruel” (Lustig & Koester, 2006). In this film, the main character’s values differed. Rocket knew what the hoods were doing was wrong. He knew better than to do the things that his brother was doing. Although he knew Li’l Ze had killed his brother, he never seeks revenge and he never gave up hope that he would become a photographer. Li’l Ze on the other hand was total opposite. He never stopped doing anything because he thought it wasn’t right. Everything that he did in the film was “wrong” to me. He walked around talking down to everyone and those who he thought disrespected him were killed without another thought. He was the “bad side” to everything that was good. Unfair, unjust, dirty, inappropriate, and cruel basically described his behavior during the film. But that is just how I would see him. Others in his slums was used to his behavior and thought that it was just a social practice. When Knockout Ned initially joined Carrot’s gang he joined only to get back at Li’l Ze and with hope that no innocent people would be killed from his side. The perception that I got was that he only wanted to harm Li’l Ze. He soon lost all his morals during a bank robbery when someone tried to shoot him. Instead he not killing the person, his gang agreed that there was an exception to every rule. This was a justification to the wrong they were doing. The farther he was drawn in the more he lost his values. Norms in the film included and were not limited to everyone smoking marijuana or snorting cocaine, carrying weapons, murdering people, selling drugs, and stealing. The children were smoking marijuana in the public and no one was there to tell them it was wrong. Everyone in the gangs carried weapons, whether they were concealed or not concealed. The gangs walked around murdering each other in broad daylight. The children were cursing out elders. Li’l Ze and his gang began to do petty robberies until they figured out there wasn’t any money in their petty thefts. Then they moved on to stealing drug territories until they had all but one. Even the gang members who were the drug dealers used their own drugs. Here in the United States, all of these things that were norms in the film are against the law. It almost seem as though they didn’t have any laws in the film.
“Social practices are the predictable behavior patterns that members of a culture typically follow” (Lustig & Koester, 2006). The war between Li’l Ze and Knockout Ned was a social practice. Here their war that would normally be more like a day riot, but instead it was for months. It was heavily publicized featured in the newspapers and on local television stations. They even went as far as interviewing Knockout Ned once he was captured by the police and jailed. Knockout Ned said during his interview that the police jailed him while Li’l Ze was left free to continue to kill people (Meirelles & Katia, 2002). Li’l Ze and his gang social practices included getting high, selling drugs, robbing people, and killing whomever was in there way. Rocket’s social practices were different. They included the informal tasks that a typical teenager would be doing. These tasks included hanging out with friends, getting a job, helping his father, and last but not least staying out of trouble. I think that the film is inconsistent and hopefully a little bit over-exaggerated for a dramatic effect. Although this film is based on a true story, I would hope that some things were added to make the film more interested. I don’t think that the police would be that corrupt to let a war go on between counterparts for that long. Even though in the film it said that they fought so long they forgot what they initially started fighting about (Meirelles & Katia, 2002). The factors that led up to the war like when Li’l Ze made Knockout Ned take off his clothes and dance naked at Benny’s going away party, Li’l Ze raping Knockout Ned’s girlfriend, or Li’l Ze coming to his house and killing his brother and other family members took a toll over Knockout Ned and how he felt about killing. I don’t know this Brazilian culture but I would hope that people are not able to walk around with weapons and kill people in broad daylight. To me it is just not realistic. In the end, I really enjoyed this film. Although both Knockout Ned and Li’l Ze ended up being killed by children, I was glad to see Rocket make it out the slums on behalf of Li’l Ze and the crooked cops. I do believe that in any community there will be different cultural patterns but hopefully they will not include killing and doing drugs. I understand that norms, values, beliefs, and social practices will vary person to person and community to community. It is hard to think that everyone’s beliefs or values are not yours and I think that is where most of the conflict comes.

Works Cited
Lustig, M. W., & Koester, J. (2006). Intercultural Competence. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Meirelles, F., & Katia, L. (Directors). (2002). City of God [Motion Picture].

Notes
Constant police raids in the slums after the robbery at the motel
Tender trio consist of goose (Rocket’s brother), Shaggy (Benny’s Brother), Clipper (church boy)
Tender Trio robbed a gas truck, but gave gas to everyone. Goose gave money to brother
Shorty was the snitch of the slums who called the police after the robbery and also Goose was having an affair with his wife and Shorty buried her alive.
Benny and Li’l Dice were best friends
Most of the children were without parental guidance and were doing drugs. Are drugs illegal there? Don’t know
Li’l Dice changed his name to Li’l Ze when he was 18 and took over drug territories
Li’l Dice shot everyone in the motel just because he wanted to feel incharge
People were either workers or hoods.
When Shaggy died, the journalist and camera people were right there taking pictures of his lifeless body.
Li’l Ze killed to take over the drug areas
Blacky shot Benny accidentally trying to kill Li’l Ze then went to Carrot and Carrot shot him.
Knockout Ned didn’t want any innocent people to get hurt. Li’l Ze raped his girlfriend and made him dance naked in public, then came to his house and shot it up killing his brother and dad.