tourism

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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