The exploration of Orientalism that the students and I conduct typically ends with a partial examination of this film, which is difficult to say the least. I present it as an example of the ways in which Orientalism can work inside territories to which Orientalism is also applied.
Thus you get a film made in an Orientalising manner about people–young, would-be suicide bombers–who describe the world in similarly essentialised, dichotomous and hierarchical terms. While the ideology within the film is relatively easy to pinpoint, the ideologies that shape the film are more slippery. It’s quite a challenging task.
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Posterous
Truly truly, really really
9 January, 2009
in commentatrix,in Aotearoa,teaching & learning
My international students and I usually spend the last fortnight of our course together looking at Orientalism, making a consideration of its discursive (rather than, say, institutional) function. One thing we discuss is essentialist images of Asia that circulate today. This is what we have been doing this new year.
An obvious example at the moment is the Malaysia: Truly Asia campaign, whose television advertisements, as screened in this country at least, show a country apparently devoid of any actual Asian people, at the same time as promoting the country as part of an experience of geographical authenticity. Everyone featured in the advertisements appears to be either a white tourist or a white-looking local. I find this particularly discomfiting, as do my students.
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