Orientalism is still a common practice used today. Edward W. Said the publisher of Orientalism describes it as a "Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient."(3) One form of orientalism can be movies. Slumdog Millionaire is a movie that shows orientalism by creating a discourse on India's quality and standard of living being low. It displays their quality and standard of living being low by showing the main character's life in the slums of Mumbai. With the drama film obtaining many awards and becoming famous, this can create discourse because the people can come to the assumption that most Indians living in India have to struggle in life living in the slums. In my past, I have had an experience where an uninformed high school student who would look down on Indians due to the release of the movie. To prove that the student was wrong, I setup a meeting with an Indian transfer student named Akshaya. Akshaya lived in India for 18 years and he states, "cities such as New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Pune have a very normal or medium standard and quality of living just like cities in the U.S." With this insight, the high school student realized he was deceived by the movie's misrepresentation. A movie such as Slumdog Millionaire can influence a person's view to see all cities in India as the same quality and standard of living. It is important for the youth of our nation to be informed of orientalism, so that reality is not hidden by representations by movies such as Slumdog Millionaire.
3 Comments
Ben Garceau
10/8/2017 02:29:44 pm
Great point! It's not that there isn't poverty in India, it's that the only thing we tend to see about India is its poverty. That is Orientalist discourse at work. If I remember, there are even parts of Slumdog Millionaire that show upscale offices, fancy houses and new buildings in Mumbai. The TV show part of the story, too, is a reminder of the developed economy and pop culture of India. But our focus in the story is continually directed by the camera and the narrative to not see this, or to only focus on poverty.
Reply
Alexandra Jimenez
12/9/2017 12:54:44 pm
I love the way you connect the media to what Said writes about. It's important to address these incorrect perceptions of places and people in order to keep discrimination at bay. Although the main focus of this post and of Said's work is pointing out this issues with "Oriental" countries, it's a shame that this occurs with many other places such as in Latin America. The media has done an awful job at portraying images of other nations accurately. Great job with setting that student straigh and with this blog post!
Reply
Radhika Halder
12/10/2017 01:19:02 am
This is such a great post! It is a common occurrence through out many third world countries and how Westerners view them. With your post especially, I can relate greatly considering that I am Indian and that I have had these sorts of views laid upon me, always getting some sort of sympathy and amazement of how my parents who are immigrants came to America and were able to 'escape hell'. The stereotypical ideas that are formed here in the west about the east is quite something... You can relate this sort of topic back to the "Danger of a Single Story", an idea by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who states that there is a single story that the media portrays and puts into our heads, thus that is the only story we know upon a race or country, as such in this instance, India.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
June 2018
Categories |