“Said argued that the concept of the Orient as other serves to establish Europe and the West as the norm.“

In regards to the quote above, can the same be said in reverse?

 

Orient/oriental is an umbrella term that throws people of Asian descent into a neat little box with no further questions. The way we generalize people of certain skin color, ethnicity, nationality, and background has all to do with the norms established long before we learned what any of these things really meant. When Edward Said coined the term Orientalism, there was a sense of an US vs THEM mentality among society and its media that has been going on for hundreds of years—West vs. East. It’s prevalent in our daily lives, ingrained in our pop culture. How many times will we see white writers and directors take on projects that involve presenting an aspect of a certain culture to us before we begin to negate said content that ultimately doesn’t do the culture justice?

The perpetuated stereotypes presented by Western media for Asian men: sexual predators to white women, asexual/emasculated men, flamboyant villains, and Kung Fu masters.

The perpetuated stereotypes presented by Western media for Asian women: hypersexualized, the Lotus Blossom, the narrative of the white man saving the Asian woman during colonial and military history (aka China Doll), and the Dragon Lady (even if Lucy Liu looks like a badass).

                    

As much as we enjoy these characters sometimes (believe me, I love me some Kill Bill) it’s also a matter of being aware that these depictions aren’t as accurate as they could be. It’s just a lot more fun if we can see a culture from a more exotic perspective than a realistic one, isn’t it? White writers would never give you that. It’s the same reason cultural appropriation is a thing–we like the exotic appeal of things, not the true nature of them.

With race relations in the U.S. at an all-time controversial high, it’s safe to say that more and more people are questioning the status quo, asking why it’s still the same group that gets to decide what normal is. The reason this quote cannot be said in reverse is the same reason reverse-racism is not a real thing—who holds the power? If you’re not white you’re a minority, right? So the majority rules—literally. That’s not to say being a minority means you’re free of prejudice or don’t have the ability to push the same racist stereotypes but the shift in power would never be handed over to a minority group. In the grand scheme of things nothing really changes in the overall attitude of society if say a black person is prejudiced against a white person, white is till the norm therefore white remains in power despite whatever the black person does against them. But the problem with who gets to establish what the norm goes far back beyond what we see now.

When Europeans came to settle in North America, they came with a very narrow mindset of what was right and wrong—there were no other groups to tell them otherwise, besides the Native Americans and well that didn’t go down too well. Native Americans were seen as savages, uncivilized, heathens who didn’t know how to govern themselves. Europeans took over and decided that they knew what was best for this group of people. They established a norm just by believing it and enforcing it—because if we stop to think about it, every norm is but a social construct not a rule of nature. Race is a social construct that those same European settlers created when slavery became a “necessary evil” in their minds. To justify their treatment of African Americans they established this ideology that these people with darker skin color were destined to be inferior than them. All throughout slavery’s history, it was widely accepted as the white man’s duty to in some form or other save the black people because without them they wouldn’t know what to do with their poor, uneducated selves. When America was establishing itself as a nation, the more people came in the more diverse society became. With that diversity came conflict and if you open an American history book void of a white-washed perspective, you’re hard-pressed to find that a major non-white culture ever co-existed peacefully with the pre-established notions of race this country had. Racism has always been and remains to be about who holds the power which is why white has to this day remained the default for everything that matters, everything that’s “normal”.

 

1. With the rise of original content from streaming services, how does that raise the stakes for network television?

The rise of original content from streaming services is definitely something that is going to be putting more and more pressure on network television. Thousands of people are ditching cable for Netflix, HBOnow, Hulu, CrunchyRoll, etc in the recent years. And the more that do, the more capable these companies are to dish out higher production value programming. Take Netflix’s House of Cards for example. The first season was directed by David Fincher, a director known for movies such as Fight Club and Seven. If you watch the show, you will see just how much Fincher is weaving in cinematic qualities of filming to a “television” program. Shows that compare on network TV are AMC’s Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and pretty much any HBO program (though they also have their own streaming service now that is not linked to a television provider). Network TV is going to have to incorporate more cinematic qualities into the shooting of their programs if they are going to keep up with the streaming services, which means spending a lot more money on the production side. They also need to adapt to the way that people are watching television programs these days, by binge-watching. Some providers already have an on-demand feature that has the recent episodes of the most popular shows for their subscribers to watch whenever they want. I think there will have to be more of these options for people with non-traditional schedules that want to be able to view their programs at will. This goes against the traditional weekly episode system that has been around for decades of serial TV, so I don’t think it will be the easiest change for the medium, especially when factoring in the networks’ advertisers.

 

2. How has portability impacted television? Discuss both negative and positive impacts.

 

I think the portability of television has a lot of different negative and positive impacts. The fact that we can pull out our cellphones at almost any time (depending on the quality of your service) and watch something on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, or HBONow is pretty remarkable when compared to just a few years ago. I think it has been a good thing, following the invention of TIVO and the DVR, because not all of us can be home to watch what we want when we want. But on the other hand, I have seen it drastically change the way people are parenting their kids, for better or for worse. At a boring wedding last summer, I saw a few children just sitting at their table the entire time watching a program on Netflix. When I am at a restaurant, most children I see have an iTouch or iPad to keep them entertained. Lots of parent’s these days just hand a child a device to get them to keep still and quiet. Not that this is necessarily harmful in all cases, but I think it could be a potential negative impact for the children’s developmental and social skills. I think the portability is also changing the way we watch some genres of TV. In my opinion you wouldn’t choose to view the latest Batman movie on your phone, you would lose that cinematic experience. The same goes for more cinematic television programs such as Game of Thrones. So when people choose to do that, I think they are losing some of the intensity and production value just by staring at a 4 inch screen. I think we are going to start seeing more productions that are explicitly made for portable viewing, whether that be a good or a bad thing.

Question:

1. How has portability impacted television? Discuss both negative and positive impacts.

In his textbook chapter, P. David Marshall talks a lot about the increased portability of television. I’m going to preface this blog entry by mentioning that Marshall wrote this piece in 2009, back when watching portable TV meant putting a disc with the first season of friends into your portable DVD player on a long car trip. Even though it’s only been seven years, portable TV has changed drastically. For many, it means watching Netflix on your iPhone at the gym… or on a plane…  or at a boring family gathering. So that’s what I’m referring to when I say portable TV.

The most notable change brought on by portable TV is increased consumption. There are now screens EVERYWHERE, which has both its pros and cons. The most apparent con is that we get less exercise and sunlight, but increased consumption fosters a community feel, since TV brings people together.

Portable TV also affords us more agency. Marshall talks about how traditional television leaves little up to the consumer. Yes, you can choose which channel to watch, but other than that, the TV does its own thing and continuously spouts out content and information. With portable TV like Netflix, we can pick when and where we watch shows and episodes of our choosing. Although we could be robbing ourselves of valuable information using this method, increased agency is generally a good thing for the consumer. It puts more pressure on networks to create quality content since there’s a more pressing threat that we’ll simply watch something else if their shows are bad. Hollywood went through this same transformation when the spectacle of movies began to wear off and Edison lost his monopolistic control over the industry.

The third biggest change deals with content and affects networks rather than audiences. Since screens continue to shrink and audiences increasingly bingewatch, producers must find a way to cater to these new needs. Marshall mentions that some shows have tried to change filming styles to better suit phone screens, and writers have complicated the plots (Jane the Virgin is a great example of this) to hook viewers for hours on end. It’s too soon to tell weather or not this is a negative or positive development for the TV industry.

Portable TV has undoubtedly changed television’s landscape. Like any development, it carries both negative and positive changes, but overall, the agency, community, and content change are largely beneficial.

 

1. Said argued that the concept of the Orient as other serves to establish Europe and the West as the norm.

   1. In regards to the quote above, can the same be said in reverse? Who establishes what the “norm” is?

It can be said that the West as the norm serves to establish the the orient as the other, since Western culture in a way subconsciously established itself as the norm through various aspects. This idea of binary opposition where we identify as something being a certain way therefore we must be this, or the opposite of that concerning this particular topic traces back to the era of colonialism. Instead of these countries traveling and identifying the West, the West went and “discovered” them. That already puts these lands and people which just so happens to be parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa in a state of inferiority or being uncivilized, whether that be the case or not. Since these lands were subject to colonization and then became partners in trade with the West, we have looked to these areas as foreign and mysterious. Thus creating the cultural construction Orientalism that establishes the East as the Orient and the west as the Occident or the norm. This construction is then maintained by familiar cultural representations, especially stereotypes though culture and the arts. This reinforcement is made by artists painting seductive women which started movements such as the Neoclassical, or pictures that can reinforce common false assumptions of how Egypt is mostly made up of sand dunes and  camels. These examples support how many of these stereotypes are still prominent today and can be easily identified through visual media. Cinema is full of cultural stereotypes and can be traced back to binary opposition such as in the movie The Mummy Returns where the plot is based on an Egyptian curse. Or Aladdin where the antagonist is tall dark, mysterious, a sorcerer and wears a turban. Not all of the Middle East is Muslim speaks Arabic and wears hijabs or turbans, yet that is how Western culture tends to associate those people. For a more recent example, not all Hawaiian men have tribal tattoos, wear straw skirts, and participate in luaus, yet that is the first thing that comes to mind when people of Western civilized culture think when they see the word Hawaii . A land that we took over not too long ago.  Therefore, The West or the Occident has established the norm by the events and practices throughout history such as colonization and control of other countries that have identified foreign land as unfamiliar and the Orient which unfortunately makes it subject to discrimination.

It is difficult to say if the West would have some sort of cultural construction if colonization didn’t occur, I’m sure some sort of stereotype would still be present just based on the advancement of Western civilization at the height of the era of colonization even if control wasn’t in place, just maybe not the certain extent of how associate Orientalism to the East like we do today. There would still be some sort of feeling towards foreign land due to trade. It would be interesting to theorize what would’ve happened if the situation was flipped. Would the West be the Orient and subject to similar discrimination?

 

The Gaze

Said argued that the concept of the Orient as other serves to establish Europe and the West as the norm.

1. In regards to the quote above, can the same be said in reverse? Who establishes what the “norm” is?
2. If meaning is established through differences, how does one account for the similarities?
3. Could it be argued that women of the harem were the ones in power and not merely objects for males to gaze at?
4. Can “gender in the gaze” be equated to objectification?
5. In what ways does the audience of a film identify with what is being played out on screen?

 

 

By: Victoria Martinez and Angel Ortiz