West is West analysis

I recently watched a movie called West Is West for my World Literature class. While I had to focus on the aspects of assimilation and diaspora while watching the film, I couldn't help but think about my Theories of Masculinity course and how it has slipped into most of the aspects of my life outside of class. I instantly saw the lives of the women in the film as a theme of interest. This man George had a wife and daughters in Pakistan. He moved to England to get a job and make more money and while over there, he remarried an English woman. There he had three sons and didn't return to his family in Pakistan for about 15 years. The roles of both women were surprising and traditional at the same time. The Pakistan wife comments to her ex husband and says, "I didn't know if you still thought of us as your family. You took another wife. That is your right". It is the husband's right to leave his family and start a new one. This revelation shocked me but it is a custom in their culture that the man can make whatever decision he chooses. The English wife was not aware that he was already married when they got married. She decides to let him go back to Pakistan with their youngest son and he was only supposed to be gone for a month. He doesn't return for another 3 months so she goes to find him herself and is appalled to find out that he spent all of their money to build a house in Pakistan for his family there. All of this is to say that it reminds me of theories that we have read in class. It reminds me that these traditions that women have to follow whatever the man says and does are detrimental to the woman's well being mentally. It makes me think that if these men had watched movies like Tough Guise or paid attention to things said in the rap industry, maybe families wouldn't be destroyed or treated indifferently.