The Differences between Western and Indonesian Culture

After I watched the Step Up movie, I found the differences between Western and Indonesian culture. There were some examples that make them different.

The way of Eating

The Western people eat which uses knife and fork. It is different from the way Indonesian people eat, which uses our hands or just  uses a spoon.

Indonesian people eat the same food every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That is rice. Rice is a main food for Indonesian folk. Even so, they eat it with other foods,  likes meats and vegetables. On the other hand, American people eat a variety of foods each day. In particular, they eat breads, sandwiches, pastas, noodles, meats and vegetables without rice, and the feel full without eat rice not like Indonesian people.

The Language

In Indonesian language, we have several words to refer to the speaker and the addressee. They are ‘saya’, ‘aku’ or ‘gue’ to refer to the speaker, and ‘kamu’, ‘anda’, ‘saudara’, ‘kau’, ‘lu’ or ‘Bapak/Ibu’ to refer to the addressee. Each of those words is used depending on the relation between the speaker and the person the speaker is talking to (the addressee). For example, when you talk to your friend, you might choose to use the word ‘aku’ or ‘gue’, to refer yourself and use the word ‘kamu’ to refer to your friend but when you talk to the headmaster in your school, you will choose ‘saya’ to refer to yourself and ‘Bapak/Ibu’ to the headmaster.  However, English language, the word ‘I’ and ‘you’ can refer to anybody. ‘I’ and ‘you’ are used when you talk with your friends, your parents, your boss, your teacher or even to strangers people.

Lifestyle

First is their lifestyle, in that movie people went to the club with their friends and it was their custom. However in our country it is taboo for us to go to the club, especially for girls. It is very taboo for girls in our country to hang out at the night or mid night because we considere that is not nice for girls to do that. The main reason of girls can not hang out at the night is, it is very dangerous for them. However, in our country lifestyle is changing. Clubbing has become trendy lifestyle for people. However that is not our culture. The father was drunk in front of his children while watched the movie, his wife also just did nothing of the condition and it was common situation for them.

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Dancing

There are differences of dancing between our country and theirs. In the Step Up movie there were Ballet and modern dance. Those are their dance. But in our country there are so many types of traditional dance such as, Pendet, Tor-Tor, Payung, Janger, Jaran Kepang, Gantar and many more. All of the dance is from different area and it is representative of  every ethnic in our country.

Clothing

In generally, the people wear clothes that are similar with western style. They wear traditional dress on special occasions. For formal occasions, Indonesian women wear polite clothes without showing their special part of body, but women in Western dominantly wear the clothes like people wear for having vacation at the beach, even when the student in the university did the same thing, they wore such a bikini in their daily life, and it is common.  

 In the movie of Step Up, the men wore Jeans, jacket, T-shirt, Long hand clothes and shoes,  and the women wear skirt, blouse, slacks, shorts, and because of the cold temperature they also wear shawl and leather jacket. The shoes were Boots and shoes.

School party

 There was a school party and I think that was also their culture, they made the school party, they were dancing and singing. In our country we do not make it like that.