I'm posting here Thibaut's winning answer to our first quiz. Everyone else, who got 9.5 and above, please post your answers here.
4 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Question Number One: Critically discuss Miller’s study of “The Young and the Restless”.
Miller’s ethnographic study of life in the Trinidad TV serial viewers focused on how the US-produces television drama affected the lifestyle of people in Trinidad. He came to Trinidad with the assumption that media imperialism would be the main critical point of view but eventually realized that Trinidad citizens appreciation for the series was selective and they appropriated the images they wanted to emulate. In his interviews with the citizens, he notices that Trinidad people saw similar themes between the series and their everyday lives. His encoded interview data revealed that most of the people recognized the themes of family conflict, love triangles, and scandals. The word ‘bachanaal” was often used to describe Trinidad’s definition of scandal. His study revealed that the series was also seen as a means for lower class people to get exposed to a social community more privileges and less like their own. The reason why Trinidad fashion was influences by the show in the series was because it revealed possibilities of another form of dressing. It never really emphasized on US dominion. Ultimately, it was about the power of the audience to decide which US trend they would copy. A critique of the study has been on the grounds that it is not sufficient in determining the scope of US influence, maybe a quantitative comparative study on other countries should also be made. Moreover, more discussion should have been put in the area of “True True Trani” and how these authentic Trinidad characteristics (besides fashion) are appropriated due to the series.
(I feel weird doing this but okay, here I go.And yay! Good job Thibaut!)
Question: How does Oreintalism paradoxically construct the Other as both too close and too far?
I think that Orientalism constructs the Other as too far in terms of highlighting the East's darker, more mystic side. By focusing, or rather, giving emphasis on the East and its acts of witchcraft, sorcery and magic, the West is able to construct the East as something dark and sinister - something to be feared. By painting images of wife markets, the West constructs the East as crude and uncivilized. At the same time, by showing images of fair-skinned women next to dark-skinned women, the West seemingly points to the East's yearning to look more like the West. But in the end, I suppose, the West focuses on one main idea - the East's barbarism, its lack of refinement, its being devoid of civilization. In a sense, the East is constructed as something to be hated because it seems to symbolize a backwards way of life.
Meanwhile, I believe the West constructs the East as something to be desired simply because in the West's drive for modernity and civilization, it has lost the intimacy and sensuality that the East seems to openly exhibit. Images of a teacher with his students gathered upon his feet, of markets where people laugh and talk, of halls where everything seems to be communal and merry - these are the displays of intimacy that the West so desires. Moreover, the East shows no shame of the body, of the sensual. What the West finds publicly scandalous, the East celebrates. So, I think, the West and Orientalism in general, depicts the East as such because it craves the same intimacy and togetherness that is celebrated in the East.
Question: How does Oreintalism paradoxically construct the Other as both too close and too far?
based on my understanding, Orientalism is concerned with both familiarizing the other and also clearly separating the other from us. In the traditional sense, Orientalism was the white man's coping mechanism in which to understand what is foreign from them but also allowed them not to be tainted by this foreignness.
Hence they constructed those from the Orient (chinese,arabs etc) as wild, colorful, exotic creatures that live in a different world from theirs. But also because of the common characterization endowed to the foreigners, it enabled them to come closer to the "creatures" that were safely caged in their stereotypes and would therefore do no harm in how they construed themselves.
At present, Orientalism is still being practices and is now not just limietd to a Caucasian perspective. Rather, even people from the Orient practice Orientalism. An example would be how Filipinos such as myself see Arabs as wild gun-toting terrorists when in fact people from some parts of the globe see Filipinos as savage as the Arabs
We study representations in the context of globalization precisely because, for the majority of us, globalization is felt and experienced through the representations of the "others" or even of our own "kind". It is established that we live in a highly-mediated world and for most of us, the world is encountered through TV shows, periodicals, films, advertisements, internet, etc. These representations are arguably "reflections/distortions" or "representations/constructions" of reality.
We study representations partly because they could be wrong (exaggerated, understated, limiting, generalizing, etc.). But we study them mostly because an appropriate view of the world is a weapon for a better interaction with it.
Foucault asserts that we may never get to the truth (i.e. what the true reality is) and so the focus is on the effects/consequences of the "truths"/representations that we do encounter. In other words, even if you do not buy a certain truth, its effects on you and on other people are still there.
Perhaps some more questions that arise are whether you can study globalization without touching on representations, and whether globalization is at all possible without representations.
I'm posting here Thibaut's winning answer to our first quiz. Everyone else, who got 9.5 and above, please post your answers here.
4 comments:
Question Number One: Critically discuss Miller’s study of “The Young and the Restless”.
Miller’s ethnographic study of life in the Trinidad TV serial viewers focused on how the US-produces television drama affected the lifestyle of people in Trinidad. He came to Trinidad with the assumption that media imperialism would be the main critical point of view but eventually realized that Trinidad citizens appreciation for the series was selective and they appropriated the images they wanted to emulate. In his interviews with the citizens, he notices that Trinidad people saw similar themes between the series and their everyday lives.
His encoded interview data revealed that most of the people recognized the themes of family conflict, love triangles, and scandals. The word ‘bachanaal” was often used to describe Trinidad’s definition of scandal. His study revealed that the series was also seen as a means for lower class people to get exposed to a social community more privileges and less like their own. The reason why Trinidad fashion was influences by the show in the series was because it revealed possibilities of another form of dressing. It never really emphasized on US dominion.
Ultimately, it was about the power of the audience to decide which US trend they would copy. A critique of the study has been on the grounds that it is not sufficient in determining the scope of US influence, maybe a quantitative comparative study on other countries should also be made. Moreover, more discussion should have been put in the area of “True True Trani” and how these authentic Trinidad characteristics (besides fashion) are appropriated due to the series.
-Margie Lim
(I feel weird doing this but okay, here I go.And yay! Good job Thibaut!)
Question: How does Oreintalism paradoxically construct the Other as both too close and too far?
I think that Orientalism constructs the Other as too far in terms of highlighting the East's darker, more mystic side. By focusing, or rather, giving emphasis on the East and its acts of witchcraft, sorcery and magic, the West is able to construct the East as something dark and sinister - something to be feared. By painting images of wife markets, the West constructs the East as crude and uncivilized. At the same time, by showing images of fair-skinned women next to dark-skinned women, the West seemingly points to the East's yearning to look more like the West. But in the end, I suppose, the West focuses on one main idea - the East's barbarism, its lack of refinement, its being devoid of civilization. In a sense, the East is constructed as something to be hated because it seems to symbolize a backwards way of life.
Meanwhile, I believe the West constructs the East as something to be desired simply because in the West's drive for modernity and civilization, it has lost the intimacy and sensuality that the East seems to openly exhibit. Images of a teacher with his students gathered upon his feet, of markets where people laugh and talk, of halls where everything seems to be communal and merry - these are the displays of intimacy that the West so desires. Moreover, the East shows no shame of the body, of the sensual. What the West finds publicly scandalous, the East celebrates. So, I think, the West and Orientalism in general, depicts the East as such because it craves the same intimacy and togetherness that is celebrated in the East.
-- Xela
Question: How does Oreintalism paradoxically construct the Other as both too close and too far?
based on my understanding, Orientalism is concerned with both familiarizing the other and also clearly separating the other from us. In the traditional sense, Orientalism was the white man's coping mechanism in which to understand what is foreign from them but also allowed them not to be tainted by this foreignness.
Hence they constructed those from the Orient (chinese,arabs etc) as wild, colorful, exotic creatures that live in a different world from theirs. But also because of the common characterization endowed to the foreigners, it enabled them to come closer to the "creatures" that were safely caged in their stereotypes and would therefore do no harm in how they construed themselves.
At present, Orientalism is still being practices and is now not just limietd to a Caucasian perspective. Rather, even people from the Orient practice Orientalism. An example would be how Filipinos such as myself see Arabs as wild gun-toting terrorists when in fact people from some parts of the globe see Filipinos as savage as the Arabs
sam :)
Question no. 7:
We study representations in the context of globalization precisely because, for the majority of us, globalization is felt and experienced through the representations of the "others" or even of our own "kind". It is established that we live in a highly-mediated world and for most of us, the world is encountered through TV shows, periodicals, films, advertisements, internet, etc. These representations are arguably "reflections/distortions" or "representations/constructions" of reality.
We study representations partly because they could be wrong (exaggerated, understated, limiting, generalizing, etc.). But we study them mostly because an appropriate view of the world is a weapon for a better interaction with it.
Foucault asserts that we may never get to the truth (i.e. what the true reality is) and so the focus is on the effects/consequences of the "truths"/representations that we do encounter. In other words, even if you do not buy a certain truth, its effects on you and on other people are still there.
Perhaps some more questions that arise are whether you can study globalization without touching on representations, and whether globalization is at all possible without representations.
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