Films like Tanna, Embrace of the Serpent, Three Seasons, The Scent of Green Papaya and numerous other exotic films referenced in this essay are easily accessible in terms of their narrative and historical background to transnational audiences. de Luca, 2013; Galt and Schoonover, 2010: 1517; Nagib, 2011; 2020. 283 0 obj Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume that world cinema per se is decoded as exotic. However, to pursue this line of argument any further here is beyond the purview of my inquiry into the aesthetic characteristics of the exoticist paradigm. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Exoticism in translation refers to using words or phrases which sound "exotic" in the translated language, because they are of foreign origin. SEE ALSO Cannibalism; Enlightenment; Gaze, Colonial; Gaze, The; Orientalism; Other, The; Prostitution; Sexuality; Stare, The; Stereotypes; Tourism; Travel and Travel Writing; White Supremacy. Film Quarterly,47 (3), pp. Performances of corroborees and other cultural practices can therefore be staged for tourists while the traditional rituals are on the brink of extinction. Tanna, made by the white Australian documentary filmmakers Martin Butler and Bentley Dean in collaboration with the Indigenous community of Tanna island (part of Melanesia) and which won the Audience Award as well as the prize for best cinematography at the Venice Film Festival in 2015, is an apt example.4 Although most critics have described it as a Romeo and Juliet story set in the South Pacific, in terms of its iconography and, indeed, narrative conceit of star-crossed lovers, Tanna betrays far more conspicuous similarities with Murnaus Tabu. They expect world cinema filmmakers to continue the tradition of Third Cinema and use their films as platforms of postcolonial resistance, instead of becoming complicit in exoticising their own culture, even if this entails potentially forsaking critical or commercial success. Questions addressed include: Did Rembrandt really hire Van Vliet as his printmaker, like Rubens hired Vorster-man, Pontius and others? London and New York: Routledge. ." These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. This article evaluates whether Lawrence Venuti's translation approach of "foreignisation" is likely to achieve his stated go al: translations that can resist cultural dominance. In: Stephanie, Dennison and Song, Hwee Lim, eds., Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film. How then are certain global art films decoded as exotic, while others are simply strange or bewildering? Ever since Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (in 1768) and other European explorers travelled to Polynesia and perceived the islanders as the incarnation of Rousseaus ideal of the natural man, untouched by the corrupting influence of Western civilisation, the South Pacific islands have come to epitomise paradise on earth (Childs, 2013; Connell, 2003). Kaplan, E. Ann (1997). However, most critics and scholars, especially in the West, see things differently and assume the position of moral gatekeepers. The exotic first emerged as a concept in Western history when European nations began to explore and appropriate far-flung parts of the world. ." Commenting on the films captivating beauty, film critic Roger Ebert (1992) notes: There is a sense in which Raise the Red Lantern exists solely for the eyes. Professor of Film Studies, Dr. Arguably the most dynamic site of cultural translation is the film festival circuit since it is here where the first contact in this cross-cultural encounter usually occurs and where global art cinemas meaning and artistic value is negotiated. If you were to imagine a range of translation options from -2 to 0 to +2, -2 might be a translation that is as close or loyal as possible to the German source text. Changes in the Meaning and Reception of an Orientalising Fine Arts Theme in Europe and Hungary, Master Class: Northern European Art (1500-1700) from the Permanent Collection, 2018, CORPUS RUBENIANUM VERSUS REMBRANDT RESEARCH PROJECT. I seek to show that through vision and touch, and the proximity of objects to bodies in domestic environments, goods from all over the world become part of the material culture of the seventeenth-century Netherlands. Mark Lee Pin Bins cinematography has been praised for its matchless compositional artistry (Bradshaw, 2016) and Wen-Ying Huangs production design for the visual extravagance of Oriental fantasies illuminated by brightly colored silk robes [] and sensual atmosphere (Young, 2015) (Figure 3). (USA/India/France/UK, 1988) and Monsoon Wedding (USA/India/Italy/Germany/France/UK, 2001) blend a documentary realist aesthetic (in the street scenes) with the exotic spectacle of vibrant colours (inside the Bombay brothel and at the Hindu wedding) and other exotic visual and narrative tropes, such as Indian poverty. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. She regards fiction films such as Chen Kaiges Huang tu di (Yellow Earth, China, 1984) and Zhang Yimous award-winning Ju Dou (China/Japan, 1990) and Dahong Denglong Gaogao gua (Raise the Red Lantern, China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, 1991) as a new type of ethnography practiced by those who were previously ethnographized and who have, in the postcolonial age, taken up the active task of ethnographizing their own cultures (Chow, 1995: 180). Against this background, contemporary world cinema and the global film festival circuit, its prime site of exhibition, can be understood as a new type of contact zone, which Mary Louise Pratt has famously theorised in the colonial context as the intercultural space of symbolic exchange and transculturation, catering for cosmopolitan cinephiles and their interest in cultural difference. endobj Thus, exotic world cinema speaks to contemporary Western societies anhedonia and desire to escape the perceived blandness of Western culture by inviting spectators to sense how other people sensuously inhabit their world (Marks, 2000: 241). exoticism in American English. For instance, if I were translating the classic VW advertising text from the early 1990s, I might leave the German term for "the joy of driving" in German: "Fahrvergngen". In most cases too, we find a country having several social/cultural diversities. Paragraph 24 (3), pp. 1986. Khoo, 2007: 6; Heung, 1997). Of special importance is Edward Saids description of Orientalism as a discursive construction of European fantasies. not native within the linguistic boundaries of the community adopting it. . In: Matthew, Bernstein and Gaylyn, Studlar, eds., Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film. 303 0 obj This is, however, not to say that all exotic films substitute glossy surfaces for deep meaning, thereby effectively compensating for the hermeneutic deficit that may arise when world cinema travels. Forsdick, Charles (2003). When letters make sounds that aren't associated w One goose, two geese. Jameson, Fredric (1986). relationship between foreignisation and exoticism, which will be based These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. 1. 6276. This article examines why exoticism is central to thinking about the global dynamics of world cinema and its transnational reception. As exotic goods and materials become part of the domestic environment, global goods gain local meanings, and simultaneously bestow new layers of meaning on the material culture of the early modern Netherlands. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ). In. The Guardian, 21 January. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. In short, it turns cultural difference into a form of commodity fetishism. ORIENTALISM . Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Not much Arctic exoticism. Segalens slim volume Essay on Exoticism: An Aesthetics of Diversity was posthumously published and is an unfinished fragment that reflects his impressions of Tahiti and China whereto he travelled between 1902 and 1919. The Velvet Light Trap,50, pp. Previously, it was the role of China specialists to translate and introduce artistic works from China to the Western audience. Durham: Duke University Press. Translated and edited by Yal, Rachel Schlick. Huggan, Graham. For When 'Lowdown Crook' Isn't Specific Enough. These differences impede, in one way or the. Journal of Historical Geography 29 (4), pp. (LogOut/ The fashionable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for example, had her portrait painted in a Turkish costume; the dissemination of stereotypes about the supposedly effeminate Orientals allowed her to appropriate the male garment of the turban without this being viewed as an act of cross-dressing. The study of world cinema is one of the most vibrant and fastest growing areas in film studies. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Social and cultural differences exist between and amongst nations. These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'exoticism.' Galt and Schoonover, 2010: 327. London and New York: I. The widowed Mr Chu prepares elaborate banquets for his three daughters in Eat Drink Man Woman. The Family Romance of Orientalism: From Madame Butterfly to Indochine. (2000). Kiernan, Victor Gordon. The fact that Tanna as well as Embrace of the Serpent, which is set in the Amazon, were made in collaboration with Indigenous communities, who are credited with being the chief creative impetus and co-creators of these films, makes them not only politically correct but, arguably, also examples of self-exoticisation. E-Book Collections Title Lists and MARC Records, Latest Financial Press Releases and Reports. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/raise-the-red-lantern-1992. Coconut trees and torrid skies. An experience where the exoticism and passion speak the same language. Although exoticism is associated with notions of animality, it carefully distances itself from the violence and exploitation that characterize the related concept of barbarism. The Chinese Exotic: Modern Diasporic Femininity. "Exoticism 1990. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 302 0 obj In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. In: Sheldon, Hsiao-peng Lu, ed., Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Whether or not this kind of autoethnography is a deliberate strategy or an unconscious process is one of the questions that Rey Chow addresses in her study Primitive Passions on Fifth Generation Chinese cinema and Chinese visual culture more broadly. According to David Damrosch (2003: 175), works become world literature by being received into the space of a foreign culture, a space defined in many ways by the host cultures national tradition and the present needs of its own writers. Rather than conceiving of world literature as a canon of foreign literary masterpieces, Damrosch describes it as a mode of transnational circulation and reception that gains in translation. Chen has three wives already and Songlian, as his fourth wife or concubine, vies with the others for his attention and material favours, and much jealousy and intrigue ensue. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. It really depends. Insights and Discoveries, Amsterdam 2017, pp. Click on the arrows to change the translation direction. Add exoticism to one of your lists below, or create a new one. The same holds true for world cinema, which must travel from its site of origin and be watched by audiences originating from different nations, regions or cultures. Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts. <>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF /Text]>>/Type/Page>> Exoticisms multi-sensory appeal is especially evident in ethnic food films such as The Scent of Green Papaya, Yin Shi Nan Nu (Eat Drink Man Woman, Ang Lee, Taiwan/USA, 1994), Like Water for Chocolate, Politiki Kouzina (A Touch of Spice, Tassos Boulmetis, Greece/Turkey, 2003) and The Lunchbox (Ritesh Batra, India/France/Germany/USA/Canada, 2013), to mention but a few titles of this prolific genre. Nagib, Lcia (2020). One had to make a decision to be loyal to the author of the text, or to be loyal to the reader. anything exotic, as a foreign word or idiom. London: Routledge. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Iconography and Identity in Frederick Rihel's Equestrian Portrait, Kuretsky "Worldly Creation in Rembrandt Three Trees" Artibus et Historiae 1994.pdf, Govert Flinck and the Houses of Orange and Brandenburg: network and influence, India Ink: Imagery of the Subcontinent in Early Modern Europe, Shalom Sabar, Between Calvinists and Jews: Hebrew Script in Rembrandts Art, in Mitchell B. Merback, ed., Beyond the Yellow Badge: Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism in Medieval and Early European Modern Visual Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 371-404, 559-573, Thoughts on the Market for Rembrandt's Portrait Etchings by Stephanie S. Dickey, Review of The New Hollstein: Rembrandt (7 vols.) For example, Mira Nairs films Salaam Bombay! The exotic also notably unleashes the sexual desires of repressed Westerners. the quality of being exotic; "he loved the exoticism of Egypt". Translation Studies 4 (1), pp. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin. Situating World Cinema as a Theoretical Problem. <> Childs, Elizabeth C. (2013). It is ravishing to watch like being caressed by layers of precious silks, writes Wendy Ide (2015) in The Times, it is virtually impossible to unpick fully what is going on. This sense of enigma and mystery is due to family and political intrigues that are the mainstay of the narrative coupled with the fact that there are two actresses playing double roles (Clarke, 2016). Framegrab. Chow, Rey (1995). Zeischtrift fr Interdisziplinre Hungarologie. In: Lcia, Nagib, Chris, Perriam and Rajinder, Dudrah, eds., Theorizing World Cinema. Lost in Translation: Exoticism in Early Modern Holland Claudia Swan Whilecontent andlanguageformacertain unityinthe original,like afruit andits skin,the languageofthe translationenvelopsits content likearoyal robe with amplefolds.For it signifiesamoreexalted languagethan itsown andthusremains unsuited to itscontent, overpowering andalien. Offering a theoretical discussion of exoticism, alongside the closely related concepts of autoethnography and cultural translation, the article proposes that exoticism is a particular mode of aesthetic perception that is simultaneously anchored in the filmic text and elicited in the spectator in the process of transnational reception. Homi Bhabha and subsequent scholars of hybridity and the encounters between subaltern and dominant cultures, therefore, make every effort to draw attention to exoticisms parodic dimension in order to empower and render eloquent its latent subversion of oppressive and exploitative fantasies. Sight & Sound, February, p. 68. 33. While the term exotic denotes the imaginary qualities or essence of difference that are projected on to cultures as well as natural environments that are radically different from ones own, exoticism describes a particular representational strategy or, as Graham Huggan (2001: 13) writes in The Postcolonial Exotic, a mode of aesthetic perception [] which renders people, objects and places strange even as it domesticates them, and which effectively manufactures otherness even as it claims to surrender to its immanent mystery. In order for exoticism to enable the kind of imaginative investment that replaces cultural authenticity with the construction of an idealised (or, conversely, threatening) form of alterity, it needs to traverse spatial (and frequently also temporal) distances, as well as cultural and/or national borders. Encompassing global art cinema as well as popular genre films and their transnational reception, world cinema is an amorphous and critically versatile concept that invites contestation and debate. To be sure, in addition to their visual allure, the exoticism of Raise the Red Lantern and several other of Zhangs films also rests on established narrative tropes, notably that of the exotic-erotic-enigmatic Asian woman, frequently represented as a concubine, geisha, prostitute or simply the suffering wife of a much older oppressive husband. By looking at a number of things in circulation in the early modern Netherlands, we can identify them as both global, in the sense of having travelled across long distances, having accumulated associations with the exotic, and as local, part of the cultural practices we have come to think of as Dutch. To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds toupgrade your browser. Clarke, Roger (2016). This is assessed in light of criticism of his approach from other translation . It is not suitable for many language pairs . To save this word, you'll need to log in. Berghahn, 2017: 29). 309 0 obj c}_i_3F)16=j. ) |{)yQmiN,ax ,sT'NuX0%vV*8}i `Xus$LuY,mz@@^t\Dsw The Location of Culture. Lutz Bassmann went first and kept his mouth shut the whole time. 2004 (1994). The word in the example sentence does not match the entry word. 0 && stateHdr.searchDesk ? The cultural translation of world cinema corresponds with the de- and recontextualization of the exotic, whose alluring alterity only manifests itself when it is perceived by someone belonging to a different cultural sphere. But needless to say, the individual human decision will not be made to use exoticisms and be in the -1 to -2 range. The fact that nineteenth-century photographs of indigenous people wearing the clothes of their colonial masters now strike us as more exotic than early photographs of nonwesternized, indigenous communities reminds us that exotic fantasies entail a contrast of, and hierarchy between, two different cultures, controlled by the Western point of view. It constantly signals the exotic source culture and its cultural strangeness. B. Tauris, pp. Their purpose is to show the exotic nature of the text. 49 0 obj The foreignizing method of translating, a strategy Venuti also termed ' resistancy ' , is a non-fluent or estranging translation style designed to make visible the persistence of translator by highlighting the foreign identity of ST and protecting it from the ideological dominance of the target culture. Dennison, Stephanie and Song Hwee, Lim (2006). Guha, Ranajit, ed. Bill Nicholss (1994: 16, 18) evocative description of film festivals as a new type of contact zone where cosmopolitan cinephiles can enjoy an abiding pleasure in the recognition of [cultural] differences reaffirms Chows argument that the encounter with the non-West is inevitably imagined in ethnographic terms. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. Within that early modern connected world, material culture played a key role. find that literal translation would result in awkward or unnatural translation. Segalen, Victor (2002). exoticism noun [ U ] uk / zt..s.z m / us / z.t.s.z m / the quality of being unusual and exciting because of coming (or seeming to come) from far away, especially a tropical country the exoticism of the East Want to learn more? Dennison and Lim, 2006: 2; Nagib, Perriam and Dudrah, 2012: xix). In Defence of Exoticism: Rescuing the Literary Imagination. This usually takes two forms: either discovering a common humanity that transcends cultural differences or recognising aesthetic forms and patterns familiar from European art cinema in world cinema. Translated texts using exoticism often use cultural and grammatical aspects taken straight from source texts. Test your vocabulary with our fun image quizzes, Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English. A Subaltern Studies Reader: 19861995. On the other hand, if one wanted to completely get rid of the origins of the text and make it as user-friendly for the reader as possible, one would remove all such exoticisms and replace them with colloquial terms that any American would readily understand. Hou Hsiao-hsiens first foray into the wuxia genre, The Assassin, deftly illustrates this. In China, Raise the Red Lantern was initially banned and Chinese audiences preferred Zhangs visually less flamboyant Qiu Ju Da Guansi (The Story of Qiu Ju, China/Hong Kong, 1992) and Huo zhe (To Live, China/Hong Kong, 1994), both films about ordinary people and a shared collective past and present. <>stream Historically, the exotic is inextricably linked to eighteenth-century voyages of exploration during which the encounter with radical cultural difference in remote corners of the world prompted a mutual sense of astonishment and wide-eyed wonder (though historical records, travelogues and novels of adventure are invariably skewed towards the astonishment experienced by Europeans). In: Charles, Forsdick and David, Murphy, eds., Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction. rogerebert.com 27 March. The history of the terms "anthropology" and "ethnology" tells much about the changing scope of the field and central deba, Cultural Relativism The meaning of EXOTICISM is the quality or state of being exotic. a person, an institution, an animal, a plant etc.) Although world cinema inevitably reflects the look from the outside and therefore anticipates what the transnational critic/festival jury/spectator wants to see, and although exoticism is an appropriate aesthetic strategy to fulfil these expectations, I am not suggesting that exoticism is the only or dominant mode of representation in world cinema. BIBLIOGRAPHY One moose, two moose. In: Rosalind, Galt and Karl, Schoonover, eds., Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. Much of contemporary world cinema is, in addition, also transnational in terms of its modes of global cultural production and funding. Ethnic Food Fetishism, Whiteness, and Nostalgia in Recent Film and Television. ), Art in Iran and Europe in the 17th Century: Exchange and Reception (pp. 120. Ruth Fulton Benedict (18871948), originator of the configurational approach to culture, was a mature woman when she en, Culture areas are geographical territories in which characteristic culture patterns are recognizable through repeated associations of specific traits, Exoteric-Esoteric (Kenmitsu) Buddhism in Japan, Expanded Food Nutrition and Education Program, Expanding Educational Opportunities for the Masses, https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/exoticism, Transculturation and Religion: An Overview. Europes Myths of Orient: Devise and Rule. TWO APPROACHES TO A CATALOGUE RAISONN, In-Laws, Lawsuits and Money: Interpretations of Rembrandt van Rijn. Was Van Vliet involved in some of Rembrandt's own etchings?