1.
THREE takeaway points from the essay. These should be points that
you find to be of particular interest with regard to the representation of
Japan in this context.
1) Globetrotter photograph deliberately catered to Westerners. It reflected and reinforced Westerner’s fantasies and stereotypes of Japan, giving Japanese people in the images no opportunity to correct any misunderstandings a foreigner might have. It is far from the lived experience of actual Japanese.
1) Globetrotter photograph deliberately catered to Westerners. It reflected and reinforced Westerner’s fantasies and stereotypes of Japan, giving Japanese people in the images no opportunity to correct any misunderstandings a foreigner might have. It is far from the lived experience of actual Japanese.
2) Globetrotters were interested in buying
images of Japanese places and people that best represent their experiences and
meet their expectations.
3) Photographers constructed stereotypes with a
sense of authenticity by using “costumes”. Japanese people in these images are
no longer individuals with their own stories, but tools to display costumes.
4) Westerners have this fantasy on Japanese
women. They imagine that Japanese must be childlike, submissive and mild.
2. TWO images from the unit. Please write an analysis that encompasses both a visual analysis of the image and a content analysis that addresses the "politics of representation" as seen in the image. (The "politics of representation" has to do with ways in which meaning is constructed/conveyed through visual media or language, utilizing the various things we have discussed thus far, including ideology, coding, and myth.)
1. This is an image of two Japanese women in
kimono appreciating peonies in a greenhouse. They are surrounded by colorful
peonies, with one looking directly at the camera eye while the other looking
elsewhere, mouth closed in a slightly awkward way, which suggests that she knows
the camera eye is focusing on her and that she is probably from a well-to-do
family. There are a group of men, young and old, in the background looking at
the camera eye, too. But it gives the viewer the feeling that they are looking at
the two women in the image. It seems that they are stunned by the elegance and
beauty of the kimono women. The peonies signify beauty. The men in the
background signify beauty evaluator. All of these comprise the myth of oriental
beauty and elegance. The ideology here is that Westerners think that young Japanese
women in kimono are as beautiful and innocent as flowers, to be appreciated and
looked at by men.
2. This
is an image of a line of Japanese people growing rice sprouts in a rice field. Five
of them are not looking at the camera while the other two looked directly at
the camera, smiling and being curious. They are bare-footed and working very
hard. It must be quite tiring while bending your body forward and growing rice
sprouts at the same time, especially when they have pose for a long while because of the long exposure time of 19-century cameras. These constitute the myth of farm life. Westerners
who want to purchase this image are apparently interested in the agriculture
life of farmers. The code here is that Japanese farmers were doing their farm
work in such a backward and tiring way at that time, instead of using advanced
machines. The ideology is that Westerners may feel superior that they have more
advanced ways to do farm work back in their own countries.
No comments:
Post a Comment