MY DEFINITION OF CULTURE

The Polish movie director Billy Wilder grew up in a devastated Europe after the First World War and he was fascinated with the jazz music, the Charleston and the actor Douglas Fairbanks. For this passion he has for the American culture he started to work as journalist and then as a movie writer and director.

Taking in account that a type of music, a type of dance and something related with the films are included in the sack of culture, it can be define as the knowledge and the characteristics of a group of people, who can be seen through their habits, their traditions, their cuisine, their religion, the three arts mentioned and anything able to tell us something about this group of people.

Group of people and culture are two terms that cannot be separated; in this world, there are a lot of people, a lot of groups and, therefore, a lot of cultures. Every person received the culture as something established, for example, in Spain there’s a traditional Catholic religion; but, also it’s received a dynamic process that depends on a personal choice, for example I can live in Spain and don’t practice the mentioned religion.

Both sides of the culture co live with other cultures and it makes the world a multicultural place, with multicultural societies which have pluricultural people. So, we live in a big society which has smaller ones. Despite the different cultures, there’s a need that in these societies exists a social cohesion.

A weapon to keep this cohesion can be the language and the education. The nowadays societies need to grow up with tolerance and respect towards other cultures and, the teachers, and more English or any other languages have the power to make that possible.

Wilder was fascinated for the good things that other people from other cultures can do, in his case through art. And this love for a foreigner art made him an expert of explaining things of the American culture and he became one of the most important directors in USA. A good example of the multicultural world we live in and the pluricultural people in it.

                                  

 Billy Wilder between two great actors.