Quote:
Originally Posted by chrispedersen
Its a fantasy game, with fantasy flavors. Part of the mystique is far away lands, far away people, and things.
To argue that this is post coloninial jingoist heeby jeebyism is well silly. Do we make similar arguments for the japanese FF series, the popular korean series? Or do we just enjoy the flavors the author has written and say.. cool. I enjoy that.
|
I think someone else already pointed out in this thread how Orientalism came to shape the media exported from Japan/Korea. That is, what Orientalism told the world Japan/Korea was in turn shaped how Japan/Korea chose to represent themselves to the world.
That's why I said Orientalism is not an accusation that some conception is a mere collection of myths and fantasies, it is a theory (and a critique) of how the Occidental representations became reality.
An allegory that might help make it clear is the proverb:"life imitating art."
The American West that was appropriated by Hollywood and spaghetti westerns was only a mythic representation of the American west. Yet the American west began to don their representations in Hollywood as their own reality.
Knowing this, you can see why any theorist of Orientalism is unconcerned with the content of representation, why they are so concerned with the sublimation of their own work and thus write very obscurely, and why they all tend to be intellectual elitists especially regarding anything which even remotely smells of "mass culture".
I for one don't agree with skepticism towards mass culture. This is simple arrogance and is completely blind to the ways in which mass culture also engages in a sort of "obscurantist" anti-didactic modes of communication that conceal their work or make it totally undigestible to sublimation by the "pop industry monstrosity".
Re: Orientalism in Dominions
Hybrid Mode
