Western
media, the media that is ruling by white people is considered to be authoritative
and is in a leading role throughout the world. However, it tends to be tendentious
as it usually provides the information solely from the white people's
perspective and may not be able to concern other group of people's value system.
Being brain-washing by the mainstream media, it is interesting to learn about
how the non-western local media present their people in their own ways through producing
the media products, films for instance. These media products can be seen as a
different voice, a challenge or even a resistance to the western media.
According
to Said, “non - western countries together as inferior to so-called western
countries.” This causes the complaints of non-western people. Learning from
class, “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off
against the orient as a sort of surrogate or underground self.” This derives
from the essentialism. “For instance, if westerners are to identify themselves
as rational, peaceful and liberal, logical, capable of holding real values,
without natural suspicion. We other people do not have these things?”
Questioning
from this point, two “third-world” film scenes could be used here as examples.
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Fist of Fury - a Chinese film
whose protagonist is Bruce Lee, presented the notion of “the other”.
The
background is set at the time when china was semi-colonized by the West because
of the western desire towards the east. The main character Zhen was trying to
enter the embassy which does not allow Chinese people to go in. He was rejected
by the public security. As a resistance to the racism, he shows his anger by
using Chinese Kungfu and breaks up the board. His racial dignity is expressed
through the media portrayal of his strong physique. Thus, the conventional
East-Asian image of “sick man” conceived by the western media can be broken
through this way.
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The
second relevant example is a scene from the middle – eastern terrorist film, Paradise
Now.
From
the image, audience could observe that the main character is doing the video
recording before the suicide bombing. For Said, “in films and TV, the Arab is
associated either with lechery or bloodthirsty dishonesty”. Well, this is true.
But, in the process of videoing, he shows his humanity when mentioning about
his mother. Since his “unexpected” emotions appeared, the video recording could
not even be continued. This presents their psychological world and it is a
chance for them to speak out to the world.
Therefore,
to watch movies from different stream of media may not be a bad thing as it
provides different points of view for the audience to understand different
groups of people by listening to their own voice.
Sources:
Said, Edward. "Orientalism. 1978." New York:
Vintage 1994 (1979).
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