I watched a movie yesterday titled, ‘The Other Sister’, made in 1999.  This movie is listed as a romantic-comedy.  This is a feel good movie about a young mentally challenged girl named Carla who had to be sent away from the family to attend a boarding school when she was quite young.  This was necessary because of her challenging behaviours and the risk of her two sisters getting physically hurt by her.  The movie begins with her return home from this school when she is a young woman and her struggles for independence from her protective mother.  While trying some classes at a technical college she meets a young man on campus who is also mentally challenged.  They fall in love and eventually get married. One of Carla’s sisters is gay, and is living in another city involved a live-in sexual relationship.  Carla’s immediate family is very wealthy and socializes with the upper classes in her home town.  Like I say, this was a feel good movie that did not portray the likely reality.  At the end of the movie your heart is warm and you think to yourself, it’s not so bad.

What would be the likely reality?  Carla and her husband would live in their own apartment and their parents would be largely responsible for supporting them for the rest of their lives.  Most families however, would not have this option because they would not have the needed wealth to do this.  We see the gay sister in bed briefly with her lover and think… they’re just sleeping together.  We forget that there is sexual perversion that has gone on in this bed behind the scenes.  What does this do to someone inside their heart and mind?  The dad is always home and involved with the family.  The reality?  He hasn’t made this kind of wealth as a doctor without working tremendously long hours and establishing a very successful business career.  This takes a lot away from a family.  The movie does not indicate that he is retired, and the likely reality is that he would want to keep working and building up his empire until he is not able to work anymore.  Carla’s second sister has been living together with her boyfriend and gets married to him in the movie.

This family is portrayed as a loving, quirky, but deep down healthy, very nice family, who has some different kinds of things going on in their lives.  None of these things in the movie affect their inherent goodness or upstanding values.  This is a false narrative that people watching this movie are being told and shown.  It’s no wonder that people would say “it’s not that bad “.  They may have little else but this type of movie to gage their opinions and facts upon. Today’s young people do this all the time with the movies that they watch.  It  seems they to try to make sense of their world through what they see on their technology screens.  This is not reality.  However, they can defend a position staunchly  based upon what they have seen and what they have been told through the media. ” I know what that’s all about, I’ve seen the movie.”, and “Why are you being so prejudiced?”, and “There’s nothing wrong with it, you’re just being a bigot!”