Ethnocentrism in the Film 'The Grind: Whaling in the Foroe Islands'

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FILM QUESTIONS
1. The moments in the film that can fit to be described as ethnocentric.
Generally, ethnocentrism involves judging other peoples culture based on one's perceptions
about the values and standards of one's culture. Therefore, ethnocentrism behavior includes
judging other groups or communities relatives to perceptions of the other community culture.
Most of these behaviors are related to the language, behavior, customs, and religions of a certain
group. All these behaviors relatively define the ethnicity and unique cultural identity of the
group. In the film "The Grind: Whaling in the Foroe Islands", ethnocentrism occurs in the
following ways;
The film indicates that in the world of Faroese "The modern mankind is an enemy of nature
whereby we have groups which have the mentality that hunting is an offense. "In the past nature
was a giant and we humans were so small, but today it's the other way around."
Bogadóttir and Elisabeth (34) shows that the entire relationship between humans and nature
describes the concept of ethnocentrism in the film. "Our ancestors were at one with nature”. The
film now shows that humanity is directed to opposite direction whereby people are now
becoming a threat to resources. Most of the groups care for natural resources but hunting of the
whales in the community seems as ethnocentrism that's not allowed at all. Most of the cultural

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beliefs are not linked to the hunting of animals but the community in the film hunts whales and
sea animals.
'I'm very poor, my car is ten years old.' That's how she measures poor. Now, for me, coming
from a country that you actually see poverty, and people need something to survive, to actually
have something to eat, otherwise they die, it's an insult when these people are saying: 'we need
this to feed the population.'
As the sea shepherd was protesting on whaling, there emerged another person who stated, "They
intrude in our food (Bogadóttir & Elisabeth, 200). That’s no small thing." The Faroese Doctor
Weihe now meets the resistance and he urges people to halt eating contaminated food. Hunting
and believing that whales are sources of food to some communities not true. There are a lot of
economic activities that help groups to obtain food. The film shows that eating whale is a way of
being connected to ancestry thus showing that hunting is strictly connected to their identity.
Weihe in the film states that "It has been a personal dilemma to take part in something that will
change the Faroese identity,"
... ..As a method of killing an animal, it's very, very efficient, along with the blunt hook, of
course. You drag the whale in its nostrils of course, I don't know if the whale feels pain or not. I
suppose it does. As would we, if we were dragged by our nostrils, of course. ... I think it's so
effective that it's a very good thing.
The Faroese whalers are already aware pilot whales are more than inanimate objects yet this
however does not mean whales lives should forfeit before the human need (Singleton & Russell,
123). The group is serious with hunting activities in the sense that they have a belief whereby
losing the tradition of the hunt in the group will mean losing the entire cultural identity and their