Orientalism

After reading pages 11-129, I learned a few key terms when talking about and trying to understand Orientalism. First off, Orientalism is defined as a term popularized by cultural theroist Edward Said that refers to the ways that Western cultures concieve of Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures as other and attribute to these cultures qualities such as exoticism and barbarism. Orientalism sees binary opposition between the West (the Occident) and the East (The Orient) in which either negative or romanticized qualities are attributed to the latter. For Said, Orientalism is a practice found in cultural representations, education, social science, and polotical policy. For instance, the stereotype of Arab people as fanatic terrorists is an example of Orietalism. Next I wanted to define the term binary opposition. In the book it is defined as the oppositions such as nature/culture, white/black, male/female, mind/body and so forth, through which reality has traditionally been represented. Although binary oppositions can seem immutable and mutually exclusive, contemporary theories of difference have demonstarated the ways in which these oppositional categories are interrelated and are ideologically and historically constructed. This leads to the exclusion of other positions in the spectrum between these binaries. For example, sexuality exists along a continuum and not soely in the form of two poles of identity, male and female. The historical reliance on binary oppositions points to the way that differences is essential to meaning and how we inderstand things.

However, binary oppositions are reductive ways of viewing the compexity of differnece, and as philosopher Jacques Derrida has argued, all binary oppositions are encoded with values and concepts of power, superiority, and worth.

The capacity of the photograph to establish both norms and otherness is highly evident in contemporary advertising, in which ads attach notions of exoticism to their products through images of places that are coded as distant and outside the world of consumptio the implied locale of the rice paddy and the use an Asian model give ordinary women's clothing a peasant quality. Here the hats worn typically by workers in rice paddies in order to shield their faces from the sun are recorded as signifiers of exoticism. We are not intended to think these women are actually performing the labor of working in the rice paddies . Rather the paddy offers an exotic location in which highly paid models and expensive clothing can be put on display.

In the Safari Ralph Lauren ad, the ad invites the consumer/viewer to assume the role of the liberated travler who moves through and unidentified exotic locale. The ad is arranged like a travelouge or scrapbook. The consumer is interpellated in these ads as a westerner who can buy an authentic exotic expierence. The consumer is also promised a virtually authentic experience as tourists in consuming the product.

One of the primary binary oppositions that is reiterated and debated in contemporary representation today is that the differences between Western and Eastern cultures. The difference formerly was captuered in the terms Occidental and Oriental, with Orientalism describing the tendencies of westterners who have fetishized, mythologicalized, and feared the culrues, land, and people of Asia and the Middle East. Photographs and other forms of representation are central elements in the production of Orientalism.

Cultural theorists Edward Said emphasized that the Orient is not strictly a place or culture in itself, but rather a European culture construction. Orientalism he expalined is about " the Orient's special place in European Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is alos the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of the deepest and most recurring images of the Other". Said argued that the concept of the Orient as other serves to establish Europe and the West as the norm.

Modernism

After reading pages 93-110,I can describe modernity as a term that scholars use to refer to the historical, culture, political, and economic conditions related to the Enlightenment (an eighteenth century philosophical movement)the rise of industrial society and scientific rationalism, and to the idea of controlling nature through technology, science, and rationalism. Modernity is associated with the belief that industrialization, human technological intervention in nature, mass democracy, and the introduction of a market economy are the hallmarks of social progress. The exact dates and conditions of modernity as a period are debated by historians. This is because not all countries became modern in this sense during the eighteenth and ninteenth centuries and because even those countries that did modernize in this way did not all embrace this same notion of the modern. Also not all countries embraced the same ideology of progress in the economy, thechnology, and military power. Whereas modernization was part of instituting a capitalist economy and a liberal democracy in the United States, for the Soviet union modernization in the form of industrialization and technological advacement was tied to Communist ethos of equal benefits and living conditions for all citizens . Imperial Europe played a role in instituting modernizing eneterprises in its colonies. The colonial strategies of modernization were justified by the Eurocentric belief that European practices and beliefs were objectively better than the cultural practices and ways of knowing and living in the world that had been in place prior to colonization.

The conditions of modernity were the grounds for the emergence of modernism. Modernism is a term that refers to a group of styles and movements in art, literature, architecture, and culture around the world dating from the 1800's through the mid to late 1900's. We use the term modern in an everyday sense to mean the present or recent times or to refer to contemporary views and fashions. In reltaion to art and culture, however the term modern takes on a differnt set of meanings .German scholar Jurgen Habermas explains that the concept of the modern has been used over and over again by socities since as long ago as the late fith century. In Haberma's terms the present culture sees itself as the product of a transition from old to new, modeling itself on a past era that is regarded as embodying timeless, classical principles. This all changed with the Enlightenment.

French philosopher Michel Foucault, in the twentieth century, argued that the human subject is constituted in modernity not through liberal human ideals but through the discourses of institutional life of the period. Foucault saw the subject as an entity produced within and through the discourses and institutional practices of the Enlightenment. Foucault's subject is never autonomous but is always constituted in relationships of power that are enacted through discourse.

The term discourse is defined as , in general the socially organized process of talking about a particular subject matter. More specifically, according to Michel Foucault , discourse is a body of knowledge that both defines and limits what can be said about something. Although there is no set list of discourses, the term tends to be used for broad bodies of social knowledge, such as the discourses of economics, the law, medicine, politics, sexuality, technology, and so forth. Discourses are specific to particular social and historical contexts, and they change over time. It is fundamental to Foucault's theory that discourses produce certain kinds of subjects and knowledge and that we occupy to varying degrees the subject positions defined within a broad array of discourses.

Decoders

After reading the assigned pages I learned a great deal about encoding and decoding. In the book it states that all images are encoded with meanings in their creation and production that is decoded by viewers. Then in states that Stuart Hall wrote an essay explaining the three positions viewers can take as decoders of cultural images and artifacts.

The first position that i learned about was the Dominant-hegemonic reading. They identify with the dominant message of an image or text, such as a television show, in an unquestioning manner. According to Hall few viewers actually occupy this position at any time because mass culture cannot satisfy all viewer's culturally specific experiences, memories, and desires because viewers are not passive recipients of the messgae of mass media and popular culture.

Next I learned that Negotiated Reading means that they can negotiate an interpretation from the image and its dominant meanings.According to Hall most readings are negotiated ones, in which viewers actively struggle with dominant meanings and modify them in numerous ways because of their own social status, beliefs, and values.

Lastly I learned that Oppositional reading means that they can take an oppositional position, either by completely disagreeing with the ideological position embodied in an image or rejecting it altogether.

When trying to figure out which decoder I would label myself as I decided that I am most simialr to the definition of a Negotiated reading. I can see some of the dominant readings, but I object others. I struggle with most dominant meanings and modify them because of my own social status, beliefs, and values. I chose this one because I can see what most people see, and I see why the would see things that way and decode things a certain way. I can also see what TV shows and such would want me to see. But untimatly I do have a very different set of values, and beliefs and they do influence the way that I would see things and decode them.

Interpellation in advertisements

After reading the assigned pages, I learned that interpellation is a term used by Marxist theorist Louis Althusser to describe the process by which ideological systems called out to or "hail" social subjects and tell them their place in the system. In proper culture, interpellation refers to the ways that cultural products address their consumers and recruit them into particular ideological position. Images can be said to designate the kind of viewer, they help to shape us as particular ideological subjects. If you flip threw a magazine, you will see this all too much. Advertisements are all about interpellation.
The role interpellation plays in advertisements is, crucial to good advertisements. If you find your favorite beauty product for example, you will see that their is most likely a model, and she is probably looking happy, young, and beautiful. Womens place in the system is to be beautiful, happy, and of course she has got to look young, even when she is sixty years old, advertisement comapnies target women around the ages of 30-50 to start making them think about getting old, wrinklkes, grey hair, and how to prevent it from happening. Even men for that matter, are targeted to make them self concious about getting old, greying, balding or thinning of the hair, and wrinkles are all things that are taken into consideration when trying to sell beauty products to anyone. When advertisements interpellate images, they target them at individuals. They make them easy for people to understand, and make them seem as if that ad were specifically for them. They do not try to aim for a group of people, they seek individuals. They make things very personal for the consumer. It is a known fact that images interpellate viewers. Images and media texts seem to call out to us, and catch our attention.
As I continued my reading, I learned about aesthetics and kitsch. I learned that aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with judgements of sentiment and taste. The term can be used to mean the philosophy of art, which considers art's meaning and value in light of standards such as beauty and truth. Postmodern theorists questioned the universalizing claims of aesthetic judgment. I then went on to read about how kitsch comes into play with all of this. i learned that the meaning of the word kitsch is art or literature judged to have little or no aesthetic value, yet that has value precisely because of its status in evoking the class standards of bad tatse. Afficionados of kitsch thus recode kitsch objects, such as lava lamps and tacky 1950's suburban furniture, as good rather than bad taste. Kitsch can also refer to cultural objects and images that interpellate viewers in easy codes of sentimentalism.
After reading about the relationship between tatse and kitsch I understood it much more. And the relationship between the two is, tatse, is known as the shared artistic and cultural values of a particular social community or individual. Everyone known about tatse. But kitsch on the other hand, I believe is someone who find the things that are labeled with bad tatse, intriguing. Kitsch is bad tatse, or cheap tatse in a way. Someone known that not everyone likes it, some may find it to be tacky, but they enjoy it and find that to be good tatse.An example would be the old lady that loved leopard print, or animal skins. Most find it to be tacky, but she thinks it shows good style and loves it and wears it any way that she can.