Hi all,
For anyone interested in what I'm busy writing about right now (I'm on my second draft!), here is an abstract that I wrote for the piece a couple of months ago. My project has changed a little bit since then, but it aptly relays the jist of what I'm doing:
Title: “This is Africa”: Whiteness and Representations of the Other in Recent Hollywood Films
This research project aims to interrogate racial representations in the popular Hollywood films: The Last King of Scotland and Blood Diamond. In analyzing racial representations, specifically male whiteness in both films, I aim to identify images and ideas that have dominated knowledge production about Africa to the western world since Joseph Conrad’s key novel, Heart of Darkness. A common expression used by both lead characters in the films is: “This is Africa.” In both instances, the phrase is used in conversation with white foreigners to neatly sum up the way things are done in darkest Africa –creating a “TIA” discourse rife with unreasonable violence and terror. Because this discourse intricately shapes each character’s position within the narrative I will be using Edward Said’s “strategic location” (Orientalism, 1978) as a means of discourse analysis. As part of the Orientalist cultural hegemony that Said has established in his widely accepted theory of “Orientalism”, racial representations in popular film play a large role in how the dominant and the dominated are viewed, thus it is important to analyze and extract their cultural meanings to disband the ‘richness’ of the Orientalist fabric.
Title: “This is Africa”: Whiteness and Representations of the Other in Recent Hollywood Films
This research project aims to interrogate racial representations in the popular Hollywood films: The Last King of Scotland and Blood Diamond. In analyzing racial representations, specifically male whiteness in both films, I aim to identify images and ideas that have dominated knowledge production about Africa to the western world since Joseph Conrad’s key novel, Heart of Darkness. A common expression used by both lead characters in the films is: “This is Africa.” In both instances, the phrase is used in conversation with white foreigners to neatly sum up the way things are done in darkest Africa –creating a “TIA” discourse rife with unreasonable violence and terror. Because this discourse intricately shapes each character’s position within the narrative I will be using Edward Said’s “strategic location” (Orientalism, 1978) as a means of discourse analysis. As part of the Orientalist cultural hegemony that Said has established in his widely accepted theory of “Orientalism”, racial representations in popular film play a large role in how the dominant and the dominated are viewed, thus it is important to analyze and extract their cultural meanings to disband the ‘richness’ of the Orientalist fabric.
No comments:
Post a Comment