Sunday, November 22, 2015

Taylor Reflection

            Diana Taylor’s discussion in the section on “Theatricality” adds some dimension to the consideration of Gómez-Peña’s “Welcome to the Third World.” By supplanting the anonymous faces of the “indigenous” from various “exotic” lands with the names of famous Western Europeans who were known for exploitation of non-western culture, Gómez-Peña quite effectively satirizes the colonialist incentive to use “indigenous bodies [to] perform as a ‘truth factor; they ‘prove’ the material facticity of an ‘other’ and authenticate the discoverer/missionary/anthropologist’s adventure….” Taylor also discusses the “unidirectional gaze” involving the “native body” as an object to be viewed (“discovered”) by the “civilized observer.” I think there is somewhat of a parallel between this idea and the last words by Gómez-Peña in this piece: “I talk, therefore I am.” Taylor emphasizes the presentation of the “native bodies” as “not speaking.” “Voiceless, it lets us speak for it…. ‘We,’ those viewers who look through the eyes of the explorer, are (like the explorer) positioned safely outside the frame, free to define, theorize, and debate their (never ‘our’) societies.” (162)

No comments:

Post a Comment