City Of Joy Essay, Research Paper

The movie “City of Joy” was an excellent use of class time and it shows life in Calcutta very vividly. Life in Calcutta is described in detail and more vividly in the movie than in the textbook. “City of Joy” helped me in understanding the city of Calcutta and the country of India.

The movie was a good use of class time because you can learn things from the movie better than you can from the textbook. Some advantages of showing the movie are viewing a different type of learning by seeing the actual city of Calcutta and observing the monsoon season almost first hand. The monsoon season was the actual time; it never sounded so bad in the textbook. “City of Joy” was a Hollywood made movie but I learned more from that then I could have from documentaries. The movie was interesting; most of the time documentaries are boring.

The movie “City Of Joy” gives a clearer picture about life in Calcutta because it shows the difficulties of moving a family from a rural area to a big city. The amount of people living in poverty and uneducated in India was amazing. Another thing that was different from the textbook is the way the people treated the lepers. They acted like seeing the lepers would give them leprosy, a disease. The fact that they tried to burn them and kill them because they were living near them was inhumane.

I believe the movie was a good experience for the cultural geography classes. It showed life in Calcutta; it made us see life in a third world urban city. The movie should be shown to all classes. It is worth it.