Essay 1

My personal favorite movie that we watched this year was Chak De India. It was interesting and and was very empowering.  It is not often that you see a movie about women succeeding in sports. I was also able to relate with the girls in the movie. I am often put down for being a girl. People saying that I am not as important and can not do as much with my life. That was the same issue the girls in the movie were having.  And I am also put down for being a girl who plays sports. People like to say that women's sports are a joke and are not as serious as men's sports. People just like to use the excuse that you are a woman as a way to make you feel lesser. Something that I found very different in this movie to my real life is the importance of field hockey and cricket in India.
All the girls on the team have a strong dream of winning the World Cup in field hockey. They are all also constantly being told that their dream is a joke. Saying that it is a goal that will not be able to be accomplished. Most of this comes from the men in their lives. Weather it is their fathers or boyfriends they say that because they are women it is silly of them to want this dream. All of India is also discouraging them from playing because they do not want to be a joke anymore. They are told that they are women and need to become house wives and moms. They take this criticism and turn it into the motivation to prove all of them wrong. These are also things that I hear in my life. I am told that I am a women and am lesser then men. They say that women are not as smart, not as hard working, not as strong etc. But I also take this and use it to my advantage. Hearing all these things just makes me want to prove them all wrong. It gives me the same motivation that the girls in the movie have. They take it and show that if  you do not let things get to you and turn it into a positive you can succeed. Seeing their success it shows me i can also do anything I want with my life.
This whole movie is an underdog story. These women come from all over India and have to learn to play together to become great team. This is a lot like my soccer team. We mostly do not play together during the off season and we have to become cohesive. We have to overcome some of the same issues the girls in the movie had to. We learned to positions that would help the team. Personally I went from being the one scoring goals to being in charge of stopping them. We also have the issue of egos. The Indian team had many girls who wanted the spotlight and they had to share it if they wanted to win. This is a problem with every team and the ones who can overcome it are the ones who win. Watching this movie was almost a mirror image of my team. We are all so different, but are able to come together and win for our school.
Something different I saw in this movie compared to my own life is the different sports that they play. In this movie the two most important sports they play are field hockey and cricket. Unlike here in the U.S. we play ice hockey and baseball. The reason those sports are more important in India than they are here is because those sports steam from The United Kingdom, and the United Kingdom occupied India for several years. It is all based on our pasts. This shows how much our pasts influence our present.
Overall I really was able to feel connected to these girls because they have to overcome some of the same things that I do. They overcame this problems and it has made me determined to do the same.