THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY HYDERABAD THE DEPARTMENT OF INDIAN AND WORLD LITERARURES TITLE OF THE COURSE: THEORIZING THE ORIENT: THEORY AND PRAXIS IN INDIAN CONTEXT COURSE CODE: IWL 4141 COURSE TEACHER: DR. JAI SINGH NAME: RAKENDU LEO ENROLMENT NUMBER: HOOMAENG20161875 TITLE OF THE RESEARCH PAPER: ORIENTALIST REPRESENTATION OF INDIA IN WESTERN MEDIA
Orientalism Orientalism is a term used by scholars in art history, literary, geography, and cultural studies for an approach to the depiction of "Oriental" (that is Eastern) cultures (including those of
the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia). It can also refer to the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers, and artists. The former has come to acquire negative connotations in some quarters and is interpreted to refer to the study of the East by Westerners influenced by the attitudes of the era of European imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When used in this sense, it implies old-fashioned and prejudiced outsider interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples, allowing frequent misunderstanding of their cultural, ethical, and religious beliefs The Orientalist scholars did not distinguish among the countries of the region. The term "Oriental" was used to describe the Middle East and Near East and Far East. All of these different cultures were basically lumped into one for the purposes of study. The reason for the study was political also. The focus is on language and literature and the study in the area of philology where the already written texts and other works were translated as a means of studying
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the culture. The misrepresentations of the Orient and the various aspects of the Orient led to confusion and misinterpretation by the scholars and politicians.
The beginning of the study of Orientalism is traced to the early eighteenth century and focused on language. This early study consisted of translating works from the Oriental languages into European languages. The colonial rulers could not rule properly, it was believed, without some knowledge of the people they ruled. They thought they could acquire this knowledge from translating various works from the native language into their own. The Orient existed to be studied and that studying was done by Westerners who believed themselves to be superior to the "others", which is how they described the East. They were basically the opposite of the East and considered to the active while the Orient was considered to be passive. The Orient, Europe’s Other, was integral to the very formation of the European identity; it also justified the colonial presence in the East. Without first Orientalizing non-European cultures, colonizing powers could not justify taking possession of other countries and imposing economic and educational systems that benefitted colonizers at the expense of the colonized. Understanding themselves as higher cultures, western Europeans assumed the right to bring said lower cultures along, no matter how grizzly the means. According to them, the Orient existed to be ruled and dominated.
Edward Said’s Orientalism Edward Said's Orientalism, published in 1978, is a critical study and evaluation of the intellectual conventions which Westerners have created to describe the East. Orientalism by Edward W. Said is a critique of the study of the Orient and its ideology. Said examines the 2
historical, cultural, and political views of the East that are held by the West, and examines how they developed and where they came from. He basically traces the various views and perceptions back to the colonial period of British and European domination in the Middle East. During this period, the United States was not yet a world power and didn't enter into anything in the East yet. The views and perceptions that came into being were basically the result of the British and French. The British had colonies in the East at this time; the French did not but were trying to acquire some.
Since its publication, much academic discourse has used the term "Orientalism" in a more restricted sense, to characterize a perceived patronizing Western attitude towards Near Eastern societies that is used to justify Western imperialism. In Said's analysis, the West essentializes these societies as static and undeveloped—thereby fabricating a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, depicted, and reproduced. Implicit in this fabrication, writes Said, is the idea that Western society is developed, rational, flexible, and superior, while Oriental societies embody the opposite values. Europe and the Orient were discursively represented as binary opposites. Said’s Orientalism exposed the European universalism that takes for granted white supremacy and authority. Describing the “Orient” as a Western cultural construct, Said argued that it is a projection of those aspects of the West that the Westerners do not want to acknowledge in themselves, for instance, cruelty, sensuality and so on.
According to Said, the West has created a dichotomy, between the reality of the East and the romantic notion of the "Orient. The Middle East and Asia are viewed with prejudice and racism. They are backward and unaware of their own history and culture. To fill this void, the
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West has created a culture, history, and future promise for them. On this framework rests not only the study of the Orient, but also the political imperialism of Europe in the East.
Said makes the claim that the whole of Western European and American scholarship, literature, and cultural representation and stereotype creates and reinforces prejudice against nonWestern cultures, putting them in the classification of Oriental (or "Others"). The heart of the matter in understanding Orientalism is this power relationship and how the Occident has used and continues to use and understand the Orient on its own terms.
Edward Said’s book Orientalism had a strong impact on the study of the origins of Orientalism and the “Third World cultural studies in Europe and the United States” (Dirlik 384). Said provides three different meanings of the term “Orientalism”, each of which is independent in its explanation. The concept of Orientalism can be viewed as a controversial concept, which has been defined differently. To start with, the term “Orientalism” has been defined as an “ideology, a set of prejudices that bolster a sense of European superiority over the East and thus implicitly or explicitly legitimate imperialism and colonialism, the exploitation of subjugated people deemed culturally or racially inferior to the dominant culture”. Researchers suggest that the ideology of Orientalism may set certain limits to European way of thinking regarding the nature of the Orient. As a result, the ideology of Orientalism may exist as a set of ideas that fill social activities. Secondly, the term “Orientalism” refers to the academic discipline, which involves the study of Eastern culture, beliefs, values, religions, traditions and languages. Generally speaking,
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Orientalism as the field of study is based on the application of the Christian traditions of West. According to Wesley Longhofer and Daniel Winchester, “Orientalism is considered to have commenced its formal existence with the decision of the Church Council of Vienne in 1312 to establish a series of chairs in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac in Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Avignon and Salamanca”. The historical development of Orientalism as an academic discipline is based on its increasing scope because it is a field with an increased geographical representation in a wide range of realities, including social realities, political and linguistic realities. Thirdly, the term “Orientalism” has been applied to art and literature as a theme for discussion. The value of Orientalism is concluded in its artistic and artful techniques which make art and literature communicate important ideas. For example, the exhibition of Chinese ceramics from the Han Dynasty, such as houses and camels, reflects the values of historical period and the role of Confucianism in the establishment of Empire. In visual arts and literature of China, the ideas of Orientalism symbolize Chinese cultural traditions and beliefs. Said states that “Orientalism is the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient -dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”. The meaning of Orientalism is based on the above mentioned Said’s claim because it reflects the idea of supremacy of the West and its influence on the East. Central to Said's idea of Orientalism is its function of helping the West define itself by constructing an "Other" whose characteristics were understood as being in opposition to the West.
Criticism of Edward Said’s Theory 5
Said’s theory was criticised for its treatment of colonialism as a homogeneous structure, ignoring the differences such as its gender aspect, native complicity and the class dimension. Said’s critics argued that Orientalism concentrated too much on imperialist discourses and their positioning of colonial people, neglecting the way in which these people received, contributed to, challenged, or modified such discourses. Aijaz Ahmad‘s In Theory (1992) is one of the strongest critiques of Edward Said and postcolonial theory. He argues that Said is steeped in the High Humanist tradition when he presupposes 1) A unified European identity which is at the origin of history 2) that this history remains essentially the same up to the 20th century 3) and that this history and beliefs are immanent in the great books of the Western canon.
Homi K Bhabha, opposes Said’s homogenized approach (to subject formation), drawing on psychoanalytic and poststructuralist notions of subjectivity and language, and suggests that colonial discourses cannot “work” smoothly as orientalism might seem to suggest. Subjectivity, in the process of its formation itself, is diluted and hybridized, and hence, the identities of the colonizer as well as the colonized are unstable, shifting and fragmentary — being caught up in a complex reciprocity, and the colonial subject has various ways of subverting and resisting the colonial domination.
Orientalist Representation of India in Western Media “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” (Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of East and West)
The history of the West is replete with assertions of supremacy over the non-West on account of religious, racial, cultural and economic factors. Entire nations such as India, alive,
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vibrant and with much to offer global culture, are patronisingly portrayed as old-fashioned, traditional, quaint, banal or off-putting. “Indians are described variously as grotesque, smelly, disorderly, unsanitary, promiscuous and primitive. At the foundation of all American perceptions, Rotter found, was the view that “India was a land of mystery, exotic and inscrutable”.
The insistence upon viewing Indians through those very lenses even today, many decades and achievements later, as evident in the Oprah special, may be driven by the fear, as explained by Lloyd and Susan Rudolph of the University of Chicago, that “we (the West) would be less ourselves, less this-worldly, masterful, egalitarian and individualistic if Indians were less what they are”.
No less influential on Western impressions of India was the German philosopher and thinker, Hegel. His India was a realm of “phantasy and sensibility” that had something “pusillanimous and effeminate” about it. To Hegel, India was stuck in infancy, arrested in development and incapable of maturing on its own, while Europe was the penultimate end in the evolution of nations. Only the West had been endowed with reason and thus entitled to be in the driver’s seat as part of God’s plan, the central agent of world (universal) history.”
Many documentaries explore the poverty and other pressing issues like illiteracy hounding India but they conveniently forget to state that the only reason that such abhorrent conditions exist in India is because around 3 to 4 centuries ago our ruling classes were busy amassing huge personal wealth and to speak nothing of the colonial powers exploiting India for her own gains.
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The Western Media also plays a vital role in keeping this poor image of India intact. In 2014, when India successfully launched the Mars Mission, New York Times published a rather crude cartoon mocking India. A poor farmer along with his family cow knocking the doors of an elite house is the best they could conjure up to make fun of India. This image, although not far from reality, is not what India stands for; however, it is this image that is etched in the minds of the people in the West when someone says India.
As a Quora reader rightly pointed out, “For a leading publication like NY Times to entertain such notions is a testimony to their hypocritical nature. For them, India is still defined by cows and the emaciated farmers. No amount of strides in science, technology or culture can change such a narrow viewpoint.�
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Music always transcends barriers. Indian elements are making its way to the foreign music videos, be it in the form of instruments used, or dance or art or even as collaborations with Indian artists. The west is waking up to India, however I feel that most of this is done as a marketing strategy. With the advent of globalization, each culture race and ethic group seeks to have some representation of theirs on a global platform. And Indians and Indian-born citizens constitute a large population of the world. After all we are the second largest country in terms of population. Furthermore, a large representation means larger spectatorship, which would ensure more profits.
A shot from the Music Video Hymn for the Weekend
A recent example would be Coldplay’s music video titled Hymn For The Weekend that is shot entirely in India. “From the children playing Holi to levitating sadhus, the video makes itself at home among the most widely-circulated images and stereotypes of Hinduism. This speaks to an interesting element of Coldplay's Orientalism, where they find a way to experience the ecstasy 9
and transcendence provided by Hindu and Buddhist worlds respectively, yet still maintaining their elevated position as the secular protagonists,” writes Reva Bhatt of Huffington Post. With With grey smoky eyes and heavy embellishments along with an elaborate headgear, Beyonce looks more like a woman of African descent than of Indian.
She goes on to say, “This video takes the complexity and vastness of Indian culture and squeezes it into the long-romanticized Western narrative of said culture. India, yoga, and Hinduism entered the Western consciousness in the 60s when LSD-emboldened hippies discovered tie-dye and "vibrations". India does have sadhus, people dressed up Shivji's, autorickshas, bustling streets, intricate jewelry and textiles, sacred geometry, a myriad of dance styles and colors galore. But to reduce one of the world's oldest civilizations - with over 29 states, 70+ languages, 8 religions, 200 years of British colonialism, and a culture of deep patriarchy - to four minutes of fetishized Indian fantasy… (is wrong), we deserve better.” It is evident that cultural appropriation is dominant in the video and showering colours to add the fun element does no help for the video which is insensitive enough to romanticize the plight of the poor.
Even movies are not spared. While there are countless Hollywood movies rife with Indian stereotypes that are nowhere near to what actual India looks like, the ones that stand out in particular are movies like Outsourced, The Best Marigold Hotel, Eat, Pray, Love and Slumdog Millionaire. Outsourced chronicles the life of a call centre executive who is posted in India and the movie is everything that is wrong with Hollywood representation of India. Almost all the characters in it is working in a call centre and is as though the entire Indian economy is dependent on outsourced jobs. The few ones who are not working white collar jobs are shown to 10
be wither housewives, vendors, sadhus or tricksters. The streets are shown to be chaotic with snake charmers and fortune tellers.
A scene from Slumdog Millionaire
Winner of seven Academy Awards, Slumdog Millionaire takes it to another level by illogically shows every negative thing about India happening in the protagonist’s life... slums, open-air lavatories, riots, underworld, prostitution, brothels, child labour, begging, blinding and maiming of kids to make them into ‘better beggars’, petty peddlers, traffic jams, irresponsible call centre executives. "It's a white man's imagined India," said Shyamal Sengupta, a film professor at the Whistling Woods International institute in Mumbai. "It's not quite snake
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charmers, but it's close. It's a poverty tour. The entire narration seems like the germination of a terribly sadistic and complex mind with the sole aim of satisfying the western idea of India.
Philanthropists and activists do their share in propagating this skewed version of India. Oprah Winfrey’s show Oprah’s Next Chapter were met with criticism that that the episodes, complete with snake charmers, slums and slumdogs, maharajas, joint families and eating with hands, were cliché ridden and reminiscent of the images of exotic India that saturate Western media.
“Julia Roberts’ movie Eat Pray Love is partly set in India. Julia Roberts's first view of India as seen from the back seat of a taxi is a "Mad Max" road game of chicken played at breakneck speed with overloaded trucks, bellowing cows and ambivalent pedestrians. The taxi slows, and it gets no better. She is besieged by aggressive flocks of beggar children and skeletal men on crutches. Finally arriving at her destination, Roberts, as "Eat Pray Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert, bolts - with obvious relief - from the chaos of India into the tranquility of an ashram. And here begins the ultimate India travel cliché. The only thing missing is a snake charmer on the doorstep,” writes Molly More for the Washington Post.
Conclusion
The one movie that calls out on this hypocrisy and sterotyping is Namaste London. One of the iconic scenes in the movie which would later become a hit among the masses due to its sheer strength and honesty. In the movie a British national berates India and reduces it to a land of snake charmers as recounted by his grandfather who served in the Indian Army. After overhearing him disparage India as a "land of snake charmers", Arjun Singh (Akshay Kumar ) 12
goes on to say, “We have 5,600 newspapers, 35,000 magazines in over 21 different languages with a combined readership of 120 million. We have reached the moon and back yet you people still feel that we have only reached as far as the Indian rope trick. We are the third largest nation in the world of doctors, engineers, and scientists. Maybe your grandfather didn't tell you that we have the third largest army in the world. And even then, I fold my hands in humility before you because we don't believe that we are above or beneath any individual,” The dialogue delivered in Hindi and translated on the spot by the female lead, struck a chord with all Indians as it shatters the very notion on which western image of India is built on.
Oriental representation of India is far from the truth and has a long way to go. It is this aspect that I have tried to bring in the research. The sterotypes in the media are many, all Indian food being spicy, lanes bustling with hawkers, cattle roaming on narrow lanes and land of spices. For them, Indians mean Hindus, whereas ours is the most diverse of nations with different religions, castes and sub castes. Representation of India as a spiritual nation also doesn’t help in improving this orientalist view of India. And the foreign media does little to check the facts while representing India. Perhaps India will always be complicated in their eyes but never sophisticated.
REFERENCES
SAID, EDWARD . Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979 NOCHLIN, LINDA. The Politics of vision : essays on nineteenth-century art and society. New York : Harper & Row, 1989 INDEN RONALD, Orientalist Constructions of India, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3. (1986), pp. 401-446. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Orientalism 13
https://literariness.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/edward-saids-orientalism/ https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wpcontent/uploads/sites/33/2014/12/Said_full.p df http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-orientalism/#gsc.tab=0 http://study.com/academy/lesson/orientalism-by-edward-said-summary-lesson-quiz.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/12/AR2010081203593.html http://www.firstpost.com/india/oprahs-india-through-the-lens-of-western-universalism398785.html http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/dear-coldplay-beyonce-india-is-not-an-orientalistfantasy_b_9161710 http://research.jyu.fi/jargonia/artikkelit/jargonia8.pdf
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