Dominant Discourses of Power Relations and the Melanesian Other: Interpreting the Eroticized, Effeminizing Gaze in National Geographic

ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLE
By Hyndman, David; Naithani, Sadhana; Stone, Janferie
Cultural Analysis , Vol. 1

Article excerpt

The effeminate and sensual idealization of the Melanesian Other stems from National Geographic's gaze, which in turn is broadly linked to themes in Western cultural history. Race and geopolitics become organizing backdrops for narratives told about the Melanesian Other, and exemplify the "noble savage" theme as fetish. To travel in space is to travel in time. The fantasmagoric presentation of nude Melanesian men and women is for the consumption of Western white reader's back home. Immoderate sexuality and the uncontained body of black savage's poses a tangible threat to Western male viability in Melanesia. Mourning the passing of traditional Melanesian society and imperialist nostalgia makes racial discrimination appear innocent and pure in National Geographic, which masks the West's involvement with processes of domination. It is an eroticized, effeminizing gaze that reestablishes existing power relations in the imperialist scheme.

REPRESENTATION OF THE MELANESIAN OTHER

Reading National Geographic by Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins (1993) is an evocative portrayal of a "world brightly different" (Lutz and Collins 1993:87). According to Lutz and Collins, National Geographic has devoted 35% of its coverage to Asia, 22% to Latin America, 15% to the Middle East and North Africa, 12% each to Africa and the Pacific, and 6 % to Polar regions (120). As an anthropologist whose focus is Melanesia, I was intrigued to learn that photographic representation of Pacific Islanders is 50 times higher in National Geographic than would be anticipated given the region's small proportion of the global population. Hollywood movies and World War II photojournalism (Lindstrom and White 1990) have been important contributors to the West's postwar depiction of the Pacific region. However, in creating an audience for images of cultural difference in the Pacific, National Geographic has an unrivalled worldwide reach to over 37 million people per issue. The contribution by Lutz and Collins (1993) to postmodern discourse and representation is taken as the main theoretical point of departure to critically examine the postcolonial depiction of Melanesians in National Geographic. When I started anthropological fieldwork in the eastern half of New Guinea in 1973 it was still an Australian colony, and did not become the State of Papua New Guinea (PNG) until 1975. In the western half of New Guinea the changeover from Dutch colony to Indonesian recolonization occurred just over 30 years ago. Data analysis in this paper is based on the 146 photographs of postcolonial Melanesians from the island of New Guinea that have appeared in the pages of National Geographic over the last three decades (see Table 1).

Dumont (1988) relates fashions in the exotic Other to shifting emphases in Western political and economic foundations, with the kind and amount of coverage vacillating according to prevailing international relations between the West and the rest. For Melanesia, race acts as a more significant backdrop constraining camera access than geopolitical interests per se. Backdrops, according to Appadurai "can be interpreted as sites of epistemological uncertainty about exactly what photographs seek to represent" (1997:1). Rydell demonstrates that the scale of evolutionary progress that placed the black-skinned Other (e.g., Africans, Melanesians) at the bottom of the human scale, the brown-skinned Other (e.g., Asians) midway and Whites at the top not only informed nineteenth-century explorers and home consumers of their images but has continued to operate in the West (1984). Race becomes an organizing principle of narratives told about Melanesian peoples.

Racial attitudes control cultural ideas about the nobility of the Melanesian Other. Melanesians exemplify the Noble-Savage theme as fetish because they display "the kind of pathological displacement of libidinal interest that we normally associate with the forms of racism that depend on the idea of a 'wild humanity' for their justification" (White 1978:184). 

Dialoguing with the Biocosmic Aspects of Melanesian Religions: A Missiological Perspective

ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLE
By Mantovani, Ennio
International Review of Mission , Vol. 91, No. 361

Article excerpt

Introduction

In this article I intend to describe and reflect on one aspect of Melanesian religions. I call this aspect biocosmic because in its symbolism -- stories, rituals, and celebrations -- it shows no concern with a theos -- a god -- but with a bios, with the fullness of life, a life which is not limited to humans but is shared by the whole cosmos. Hence, it is biocosmic. (1)

A further intent of this article is methodological, i.e. how to enter into dialogue with a cosmic religion, (2) and with people who express their belief not through philosophical reflections and terminology but through stories, rituals, and celebrations, i.e. through symbols.

Symbols, which are polyvalent by nature, take their full meaning from the system to which they belong and from the context in which they are used. As a consequence, what appears to be the same symbol can have different meanings in different systems and contexts. In order to understand a symbol, one must understand the system to which it belongs, i.e. the cultural context that gave birth to it and in which it is used. If one intends to dialogue with the biocosmic aspects of religions in Melanesia, one must begin by understanding the biocosmic symbolic system. Any other approach will lead to misunderstandings.

To dialogue, however, one needs mutually understandable and clearly defined terms. This creates a serious problem. Melanesian languages lack such technical terms. The praxis is to use Western terms like "religion", "gods", "spirits", "magic", "rituals", "sacrifices", etc. to express Melanesian religious phenomena. The question is: "What if the Melanesians have religious experiences the West does not know about and which are different from the Western ones?" (3) By naming the experiences one interprets them; one assumes that they are identical or very similar to the experiences known in the West. However, this is exactly what has to be proven.

One cannot enter into a dialogue and assume that one knows the experience of the partner and that, therefore, one can name it. One reason for entering into a dialogue is to be enriched by the partner, by discovering something new. By naming a phenomenon one ends the search: one pretends to know what it is all about. If possible one should use the local term or describe the phenomenon, e.g. one could say Simbu "kill pigs" instead of Simbu "sacrifice pigs". "Kill pigs" describes the phenomenon while "sacrifice pigs" interprets it. The former leaves the issue of meaning open for further discovery; the latter closes it. The latter looks like indoctrination under the disguise of dialogue. One must enter the dialogue with an attitude of humility; and of openness for the surprise, for the discovery, for the enrichment.

In any religion, as in any culture, one should distinguish between the ideal and the real: the ideal is what ought to be, the real is the human compromises with and the betrayals of the ideal. In Christianity one distinguishes the ideal Christ gave to its church from the abuses and sins of Christians in the past, and present. One preaches and proclaims the ideal, knowing that in life it is often compromised and betrayed. One is attracted and motivated by the ideal, not by the real. What the outsider sees of a religion is always the real, not the ideal. One needs to read and meditate on the sacred scriptures to discover the ideal.

One should adopt the same attitude to other religions. The abuses and distortions should not lead one to ignore and condemn the ideal of which the real is a distortion. One should go to the "sacred scriptures or traditions" to discover the ideal. Besides this, one should not compare the ideal of Christianity with the real of other religions, Melanesian ones included. In this article I shall try to present the ideal of Melanesian religions as revealed through the stories and celebrations, well knowing that Melanesians, like Christians, often do not live up to their ideal; they distort it and sometimes they betray it. …

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