CLIT 2050 GLOBALIZATION&CULTURE: RACE: LOOKING AND THE SPECTACLE OF THE OTHER

RACE: LOOKING AND THE SPECTACLE OF THE OTHER

I: THE GAZE AND THE EXOTIC

II. RACIALIZING THE OTHER

III. ORIENTALISM

Background Knowledge and Key words:

Available @ http://english.emory.edu/Bahri/Orientalism.html

The Orient signifies a system of representations framed by political forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and Western empire. The Orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and alien ("Other") to the West.

Orientalism is "a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient." It is the image of the 'Orient' expressed as an entire system of thought and scholarship.

The Oriental is the person represented by such thinking. The man is depicted as feminine, weak, yet strangely dangerous because poses a threat to white, Western women. The woman is both eager to be dominated and strikingly exotic. The Oriental is a single image, a sweeping generalization, a stereotype that crosses countless cultural and national boundaries.

Latent Orientalism is the unconscious, untouchable certainty about what the Orient is. Its basic content is static and unanimous. The Orient is seen as separate, eccentric, backward, silently different, sensual, and passive. It has a tendency towards despotism and away from progress. It displays feminine penetrability and supine malleability. Its progress and value are judged in terms of, and in comparison to, the West, so it is always the Other, the conquerable, and the inferior.

Manifest Orientalism is what is spoken and acted upon. It includes information and changes in knowledge about the Orient as well as policy decisions founded in Orientalist thinking. It is the expression in words and actions of Latent Orientalism.

TIME’s report on an exhibition held both in Amsterdam and in the US

Saving Afghanistan's Art

Hidden Afghanistan, a traveling exhibit that recently opened in Amsterdam's Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), gives a tantalizing glimpse of Afghanistan's stunningly diverse cultural legacy, and tells an engrossing tale about how these remnants of it were saved.

Question--can it be one type of manifest Orientalism or it will somehow dispel the myth of the Orient, the Other in exhibiting the cultural heritage of Afghanistan in the West?

Troppenmuseum

A special feature of this museum is the recreation of streets modeled after those that would be found in Java, the Middle East or Africa. Operated by the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), an independent centre of knowledge and expertise in the areas of international and intercultural cooperation, the museum plays host to many cultural events. This has made the Troppenmuseum the largest anthropological museum in the Netherlands.

The Spectacle of the Other in Zhang Yimou’s oeuvre (Self-Orientalizing)

RAISE THE RED LANTERN /大紅燈籠高高掛 1991

http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=gyQKOkrUWrI

JUDOU /菊豆 1990

http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=9QNjOkUFK1A&feature=related

Refer to Chow, Rey. Primitive Passions. New York: Columbia UP, 1995, and "We Endure, Therefore We Are: Survival, Governance, and Zhang Yimou's To Live". The South Atlantic Quarterly 95.4 (1996)

Woman As Spectacle In Zhang Yimou's "Theatre Of Punishments" http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fir1298/JDfr5b.html

Martin Scorsese KUNDUN (1997)

http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=dCiuVMD3lqo

Kundun is a 1997 film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Melissa Mathison. It is based on the life and writings of the Dalai Lama, the exiled political and spiritual leader of Tibet. Both Scorsese and Mathison (along with several other members of the production) were banned by the Chinese Government from ever entering China as a result of making the film.

The film did poorly at the box office, but was generally praised by film critics. Some criticized the movie as hagiographic,^[1] but many found it exceptionally moving and stunning, even within Scorsese's impressive oeuvre. Some — notably Jonathan Rosenbaum and Charles Taylor — consider it to be among Scorsese's finest films.

The majority of the film was shot at the Atlas Film Studios in Ouarzazate, Morocco.

The name "Kundun" is a title by which the Dalai Lama is addressed, literally meaning "presence". It is written སྐུ་མདུན་ (Wylie: Sku-mdun) in Tibetan and is pronounced [kũtỹ] in the Lhasa dialect.