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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Essay

Decent Essays

The 2016 film “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” focuses on a journalist, named Kim Baker (portrayed by Tina Fey), who travels to Afghanistan to become a war correspondent in the midst of the 2002 conflict. This film tries to draw attention to the grave and serious nature of conflict in an attempt to make the events more “human”, “understandable”, or “relatable”. Despite that the majority of the movie’s plot occurs in Afghanistan, primarily white and/or American actors were cast to portray some of the diverse characters in the film, causing some backlash from the media. This movie was loosely based on the novel “The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan” by Kim Baker. The film was directed by American Directors, Glenn Ficarra John …show more content…

This movie also uses both Western and non-Western sounds throughout the plot. One of the more prominent examples of non-Western sounds in this movie is where the main character, Kim Baker, goes to the wedding of her Afghan guide, and friend. In this scene, the use of non-western diegetic sound is used in a Afganistan wedding celebration. This particular song is called “Ma-e mano akhtar-e shabha-e man (Lune et étoile de mes nuits)” by Ensemble Kaboul, an Afghan group that primarily plays the traditional music of Afghanistan. This group uses the following instruments in it’s songs: voice, harmonium, rubab, flute, zerbaghali drum, and the tabla. In this scene, the non-Western music is being used to mark a time of celebration (a wedding), and the use of music here allows the film's audience to establish cultural parallels between their culture and that of Afghan culture. Although music style in this scene is vastly different than music styles of those in the United States (the mostly likely audience for this film) the music still provides Western audiences some insight to the cultural background of the Afghan

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