I thought that in addition to my post about Rasselas, I would make a short post about the presentation on Orientalism. When I began to read Rasselas I was hoping to find an oriental atmosphere, but seeing as how the characters weren’t very active, I didn’t get that feel at all. They just talked about various theories and disciplines, and really the whole novel could have taken place in one room for what it had. In the non-western tradition class that I took in my first year of university, I was introduced to different novels from authors of various ethnicities. Some were boring, some were intriguing and others were shocking. It was a completely different world from our own and I felt as if I was in the middle of it, yet alien. I couldn’t identify with the characters or the situations, but I still felt like I was part of it. I really enjoyed those novels. The photographs in the background of the presentation reminded me of those novels, and nothing to do with Rasselas. I really enjoyed the presentation and the work that must have been put into it. Even with the minor audio difficulties, it was very funny and insightful. When asked if we (or america) could really portray another culture in literature, film, etc. I thought of the novel, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. When it first came out anonymously, the world was in uproar because everyone believed that this novel was the true memoirs of a geisha. It was our real first look into the life of a geisha. What fools we all were when it turned out that it was nothing but a really enjoyable piece of fiction by a Jewish man from New York. Very compelling, but not what we thought it was. At first glance we believed it to be true because we don’t have that insight into another culture. We only get it through the writings and tellings of people who are actually living or have lived in that culture. We may get close, but it will never be the same thing. Like someone in our class said, to the rest of the world we all live in igloos with pet polar bears, or are lumberjacks who say “eh?” after every sentence. Stereotypes have too big a role in how we view other cultures.
