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Rebeca Reyes Diaz
Professor David
Core Humanities 203
04 August 2024
Week 11 Critical Response
The September eleventh incident marked the US policy on immigration forever.
The movie The Visitor dramatizes the difficulties people from Eastern countries were
discriminated systematically after the event and the stigma remaining. Barber explains
that democracy protects the world from a catastrophe. And Obama urges the country to
focus on what really matters instead of on divisor politics.
The Visitor represents nationalism as American value that has been distorted into
stigmatization of aliens. Nationalism and love for one’s country is good, and taking care
of who enters or exits is positive for the order in the country. However, in the movie we
can see that people from other countries were not assisted with patience in the correctional
they held Tarek, they sent them to other places and did not mind translating to them, while
also behaving differently with Walter.
The complexity of the situation after 9/11 is also shown in the movie when the lawyer
says that after the event, “you either belong or you don’t” (McCarthy). Moreover, the
conflict is made more tense because, according to Barber, “Jihad and McWorld operate
with equal strength in opposite directions,” later in the paper explaining that the rapid
forceful innovation and the also forced maintenance of the tradition are the two opposing
ways these two sides of the world were trying to get away with.
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However, the attack has happened and has united and divided the States in
different ways, but, as the movie also showed, humans should be treated as so. And as
Obama mentions in his speech, we need to address real current problems (Obama 198).
In the movie, the concern of Walter for the couple he found in his apartment should be
the attitude of every American: at the end of the day, human beings need somewhere to
sleep and means for their survival. Because their nationality does not define their
humanity. So, instead of dividing and segregating, problems in the country, that involve
both nationals and aliens, concern and affect everyone. Furthermore, we should not allow
politic differences to stop us from working on those problems. Most importantly, as
Obama highlights, we should work together to solve problems without becoming victims
of our past (Obama 197).
9/11 should still help to protect and love this country to Americans, but not only
to protect the country, also to embrace people from other places and stop stigma. Many
years after the event, we should focus on the real problems of nowadays such as policy
changes.
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Works Cited
Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union” (2008)
Benjamin R. Barber, “Jihad vs. McWorld” (1992)
McCarthy, “The Visitor” (2007)
