The amount of food is disproportionate for such a small child. The mother closes the curtains, shutting the world out. The child attempts to feed a bird — violently. Yet he means well. This is how he’s being cared for. We keep hearing a voice, making judgments. In our minds, this child is being fed with these words, with these ideas, just as we too are being fed:
“Them people make love in the parks,
or in their bedrooms in the dark.
Who knows what agreements they have.
Them people wipe their windows wrong.
Them people need to put some curtains on.
Them people have their wrong scars...”
Cleaning again. We watch the parents watching TV: a headless person smashing their fist, as we hear “Them People” over and over. The father caresses the child as the choir of “Them People” grows louder. A group of faceless children sit behind what seem to be desks at a school, looking up, looking down, chanting “Them People.” Even between another child and our protagonist, there is tension — as one of them is becoming “the other.” So it’s not just at home. It’s at school. It’s on TV. It’s at every corner of this world. Everywhere lies the intolerance, the hatred of Them People.
Our child protagonist comes home to his loving mother, is hugged by her, fed again. We watch, in a split screen, “Them People” doing the same. We are confronted with how similar they look — how almost identical they are. Two mothers feeding their children, as if looking into a mirror. The voice cannot tolerate this. These People cannot tolerate this:
“Them people’s shadows overlapped ours. Them people do not belong in our nail in the ground.”
The family, the school, the TV — all placeholders, metaphors for a constructed society based on othering. The child is small, he is innocent. Yet toward the end of the film, after a childish game of hide and seek, he innocently kills an animal — in an attempt to feed it, exactly how his parents feed him. An attempt at love and care, the only way he’s learned it. It is saddening. It is horrifying. Our small child “is unable to differentiate between love, hate, and fear,” as Nausheen puts it.
“Them People”, this beautiful short animated film with a carefully crafted poem by the artist, creator, and animator Nausheen Javed, is essentially about the growing intolerance of “the other.” About alienating ourselves in alienating others. About the violence it bears. About xenophobia on an abstract scale — and how it’s (literally) feeding itself to a society. The artist’s voice speaks to us, echoing what These People think and judge about Them People. It reminds us how ridiculous and harmful it is when we make these little judgments, these small assumptions.
The form of the animation makes a point, as we see the smudge of the last frames — as if all these phrases, all this hatred we are fed from a young age, is leaving its trail. A smudge. We should be aware of it. Otherwise, horrible things happen — to Everyone. Because there is no “Them People” or “These People.” It’s all a violent, made-up construction.
“Horror Horror, them people are scattered all around.”
Text - Pariya Bakhshi
Nausheen Javed graduated in Fine Arts from New Delhi. She pursued her Masters in Animation Film Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. ‘Her Long Nails’ in 2014 August was her first film, made for her final graduation at National Institute of Design. She worked as a Broadcast Designer Star Network for an year, where she received few media awards for the animated promos and TV channels she designed.
She moved to Germany in 2016 for further studies in Arts at Academy of Media Arts Cologne. “Them People” completed on 1st February 2019, is her diplom film, which premiered in Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen 2020.
She now is based in New York as a multidisciplinary designer, UX/UI Designer, Graphic Designer and an alumna of New York University Tandon School of Engineering with a Master of Science in Integrated Digital Media.
