Babel

The interconnections in this film were highly complex.  The film gave the audience clues as to these connections with the many different narratives that unfolded.  The one that I was most surprised with was the story that took place in Japan.  How could such a highly technological city be connected with a family in the Morocco?  In the beginning chapters of Brother, I'm Dying we see how transnationalism is alive and well due to the vast array of racial backgrounds she and her father encounter at the doctor's office much like there is a vast array of ethnicities in the film "Babel."  People across the globe unseemingly connected to one another.  The connection is an interesting one since the item in question that has brought all these stories together is a gun.  A masculine and deadly device, the exchange of the gun foreshadows the ensuing exchanges between the American victim, her husband, and the local community that they take refuge in as well as the exchanges involved when the American family's maid and their children cross the border into Mexico.  Perhaps the most obvious exchange is present in the Japanese girl.  Her exchange lies within her developing sexuality which must compensate for her deft and muteness so that she does not seem like a "monster."  All encounter a bordered space whether physically or mentally through identity.  The border between the U.S. and Mexico is the most solid example of this, something that Wendy Brown discusses in her book Walled States, Waning Sovereignty.  The border patrol acts to invoke the sovereignty of America by monitoring who gets in, which in this case happens to be the caretaker of the American family who was involved with a accident in Morocco.  The police officers that come to question the Japanese girl's father, one of these officers the girl tries to take advantage of, question the man as to whether the gun he owned was that which was used in the shooting, thus connecting the Japanese narrative to those unfolding in Morocco.  There is also a bordered network involved in the American shooting where there is a language barrier and a larger political one wherein the American family must wait for the the necessary precautions to take place from the American consulate in order to get the woman to a hospital.  And then there is the a similar barrier with speech and overall understanding between the Japanese girl and those she is attracted to.