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Childhood experiences are defined through the environments in which they are raised in. Regardless of their environment, a child will thrive through natural survival instincts, coping skills, and will exhibit resiliency characteristics throughout their childhood. Throughout the films ‘Kony 2012’ and ‘Babies’, it displays childhood from two very different views, and how childhood can manifest differently according to geographical habitus.
‘Kony 2012’ was a film produced by the organization Invisible Children, and was made to create awareness about a Lord’s Resistance Army leader, who had abducted children to become his child soldiers and sex slaves. This film gives a good insight to what these children experienced throughout their childhood, and how they coped through their trauma and became empowered through speaking about their experiences. In comparison, ‘Babies’ is a documentary that observes the lives of four babies in the first two years of their lives, showcasing the contrasts of the four cultures without using any narration. Although these two films are shown to be very different in which environments the children are raised, they all experience similar characteristics as they move through phases of life. This analysis will expand further on the connectors that these two films have by looking at how all these children grew through their struggles with their natural instincts, even though they all come from separate environments.
In the film ‘Kony 2012’, they talk about what they did to help communities affected by Kony and his army. With the help from people all over the world donating money, the workers of invisible children were able to rebuild communities. They rebuilt schools which meant providing them with education, jobs, and built a warning network system to alarm if soldiers were entering their area. Although the children were aided by the workers of invisible children, this in turn helped these children cope, and played a huge part in helping these children re-gain their inner strength. These children wanted to go to school and learn to be independent, they had hope within themselves. Okot, mentions in the film that “the best you can offer a child is by letting them in independent”, and this really helped bring out the sense of empowerment these children had to rise above. Comparingly, in the film ‘Babies’ we also see some sense of coping and ability to get through challenging situations. We see Mari in her home trying to self-sooth while left alone in a room, appearing to be very frustrated with her toys trying to put together two objects. She copes with this by trying her best to make it work, and eventually throwing herself on the ground rolling around, and crying. Again, we see this play out with Bayar as he tries to keep himself occupied while tied to the bed alone in a room. Evidently, these scenarios are on two ends of the spectrum, however it reminds us that children from both films still exhibit similar characteristics in their abilities to cope.
In ‘Kony 2012’, a clip showing all the children stationed in a community that is considered safe for them. One of the children said: “We fear that if we sleep in our home, we can be abducted by the rebels. They will catch us then they will take us, so we come here to save our life”. This scene is not only heart wrenching but definitely visualizes that their survival instincts had kicked in, and they needed to flee their home towns in order to be safe. In ‘Babies’, in a scene where Bayar is with his sibling, he is receiving a little bit of tough love, as his sibling is hitting him with a piece of fabric. Interestingly, Bayar does what he knows best on how to defend himself. He does this by turning his head trying not to get hit, closing his eyes protecting himself, and crying because he knows someone will hear it and hopefully come to help him. Although this shows what our survival instincts are on a smaller scale compared to the scenes shown in ‘Kony 2012’, it still gives a good baseline on where we start psychologically even as babies trying to protect ourselves.
During the film ‘Kony 2012’, the film director forms a strong relationship with one of the children directly affected by Kony’s abductions, Jacob. Jacob talks briefly about how watched his brother die, and cannot bear the pain from experiencing that, and goes on to say he doesn’t want to live because it would be better than what he is facing now. Fast forward a couple years Jacob is now in America and speaking at events to help advocate for children back in his home land, and wanting to empower others to help in an effort to stop Kony. This is a great example that even through the wrong doings and life’s hardships, he had come out on the other side through his resiliency. Comparatively, in ‘Babies’ we see Mari learning how to walk with no verbal instruction from her mother. She falls down a couple times, yet without encouragement from her mother, gets herself back up and continues to keep walking. This shows that even without encouragement, Mari was instinctively teaching herself how to walk. Gaining resiliency skills like this to keep moving forward, much like Jacob in ‘Kony 2012’, really gives some reason as to why Jacob continued to survive and go through the hardships he experienced.
The beautiful discovery about both these films is that childhood cannot be solely defined. Childhood presents itself in many different ways throughout the world culturally and environmentally, but the common connector is that we all have natural abilities and skills that help us evolve. Through the good and the bad things, we experience throughout childhood we all have the strength to survive, cope, and be resilient. These two films were perfect images to show just what we as tiny and grown humans, are capable of.
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