POWER & THE MEDIA 1

"The media construct identity." How far do you agree with this view?

In your second year exam, you have a compulsory question on this topic Power and the Media. In our classes, we will be exploring how film, TV, the press and advertising construct representations of different groups. For example, we look at representations of gender and of Asian and Black identity. The full A2 course is here. Think about your recent analysis of gender (and disability) in Agent Carter.

Today, we start with the concept of Orientalism and the 'othering' of different cultures. 

The media have huge power to construct representations and to perpetuate stereotypes. Stuart Hall, Professor of Sociology at the Open University in the field of cultural studies, emphasises the importance of the concept of representation, a term which I understand to relate to the accuracy or distortion of the reflection of a person, group or idea. Although he argues for audiences having an active role in understanding media representations, for Hall, communication is always linked with power and those groups who wield power in a society influence what gets represented through the media.

We also start viewing a major text the film Yasmin - all parts available online. It stars the brilliant Archie Panjabi.
Yasmin is a compelling and topical personal drama of what it means to be Asian, Muslim and British in the 21st century, told from the viewpoint of a Westernised woman working in Britain while living in her own traditional culture.

Orientalism is an attitude that entails the stereotyping of Arab peoples and culture as exotic, backwards, uncivilized and sometimes dangerous. Orientalism emphasises, distorts and exaggerates differences between the West (Europe and the US) and the East. Edward Said was a founder of the field of post-colonial studies and his work Orientalism was a foundational text.

We watch the presentation below here

For Edward Said, the West constructs the East as an inferior ‘other’ in need of Western intervention and rescue; this was to rationalise the colonisation of the Arab world. From the 19^th century onwards, popular paintings, literature, postcards, cartoons  - that is, contemporary media - all portrayed certain stereotypes of Arab culture as an exotic and dangerous place of sand, belly dancers and hareems, with women exoticized and eroticized. It relates to the media because of its power to shape perceptions about identity. Said declared: “The sense of Islam as a threatening Other - with Muslims depicted as fanatical, violent, lustful, irrational - develops during the colonial period in what I called Orientalism. The study of the Other has a lot to do with the control and dominance of Europe and the West generally in the Islamic world. And it has persisted because it's based very, very deeply in religious roots, where Islam is seen as a kind of competitor of Christianity.” He argued that the West controlled the representations of the East through their invasions and settlements, their teachings and authorised views. He saw Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient; he saw the ‘justification’ as every empire telling itself that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.