Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins, in their book “Reading National Geographic” (1993), studied 594 randomly chosen photographs of non-Westerners that National Geographic, an American magazine, printed from 1950 to 1986. It showed them mainly as exotic, happy darkies stuck in the past.
Collins and Lutz divide the world into three parts (their division, my names):
- Westerners – the white societies of North America and Europe. Turkey counts as part of Europe.
- Native Americans – indigenous people of the USA. They were not part of the study: Lutz and Collins see them as a special case for an American magazine.
- natives – everyone else: Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the indigenous people of Canada and Siberia.
It is clear from pictures that the Geographic divides the world into the West and the Westernizing. The West, particularly America, is what the whole world wants to be like, even if they have to be carpet bombed into it like Vietnam. The melting pot writ large. What Edward Said calls modernizing theory.
The Geographic tended to show natives as:
- exotic – this above all. Their cultural differences are played up, big time;
- ritualistic – they often go to weddings, funerals and other rituals;
- dressed in cool native costumes – even those who mainly wear ordinary Western clothes in daily life;
- smiling – especially children;
- gentle – rarely shown fighting or suffering from violence, even in countries where there is a full-scale war at the time, like Vietnam or Korea;
- neither rich nor poor;
- neither old nor sick;
- male – 70% are male;
- hard-working – they are often shown at work. Even children are often shown doing chores;
- timeless, stuck in the past – but being saved by the West!
- not living in cities – 68% do not, even though this was during a period of rapid, worldwide urbanization;
- nameless – names were rarely given;
- bare-breasted – but only if black and female.
- Edenic: no wounded, dying or brutalized bodies of war. No starving children till the 1980s.
Americans at war: American soldiers help the natives! They throw ice cream parties for them. Agent Orange, what’s that? Hue was beautiful in 1961 – but apparently was not worth showing after its destruction in 1968. In effect National Geographic supported the Vietnam War. It hid the ugly, failed side of modernizing theory.
White rule was beautiful: As countries break free of white rule, they become uglier looking.
To its credit, though, unlike most of American media of the time, the Geographic did not show:
- natives as revoltingly different,
- natives as having a “violent nature”,
- natives as mostly sunk in war, poverty, disease and death.
Evolutionary Ladder of History: It saw some cultures as better and more up-to-date than others (these are my names):
- modern – the West – based on science and economics
- traditional – Asia, Latin America – based on culture
- tribal – Africa, the Pacific – based on nature
So while its Africa was not Broken and Apocalyptic, like on CNN or in The Economist, it was mostly stuck in the Stone Age.
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Interesting how something as seemingly benign as “educational television” can be a huge proponent of cultural imperialism. Excellent post as always, I want you to know that you were one of the inspirations for my own site, http://aarevolution.blogspot.com 🙂
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I was raised in Canada but went to live in Nigeria for only 3 yrs! the questions that my fellow Canadians asked me when I came back were so dumb I was ashamed, they actually thought that we all still live in villages, very few still live those types of lives. They asked me if i had a pet *insert wild animal* and if we had good education (which i can understand) because i used to wonder about the education too (which Is actually more better than The states & Canada)…In fact, you’d have to go to a museum to find a hut. This is what they (western media) always does and it’s bad because they show only one type of life, that the majority don’t live anymore. I don’t even tell ppl I’ve lived there anymore because they start acting so different towards me, and treat me like I’m slow or smth (cuz I’m quiet, they think Its because I’m a foreigner)…like if I forget something about Canada then they think its because I’m african but it’s just that I forgot for only a sec. Even other blacks, mostly Jamaican, used to ask if my brothers name was *click, click, click*…these people don’t even know their real last names…imagine if I was born and raised in Nigeria.
What they’re doing is actually dangerous and false representation. Everyone is westernized in africa and Asia to an extent.
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@ Kiwi,
Not even accepted as equals..just not in need of constant attempts at colonizing or westernizing. A large part of that is the acceptance of white/light beauty standards and the agreement to a certain “permanent underclass” of ppl as inferior, too inferior for trade or even societal freedoms. I think the net has connected us all,really. The good and bad…
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@Sugarkiss
People of color and other minorities aren’t seen as equals in AmeriKKKlan. Of course the racist White AmeriKKKlan media is going to depict Indigneous people of the Americas as savages and inferior, their goal is to promote White supremacy.
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This is definitively from the white lens.
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A good post of the propaganda machine directed to us. This world view is the one they want us to believe in the “west”. Those “natives” do not believe in it, they live “out there”, but many of us do. This is intented to fool us to believe that everything “over here” is ok and better than anywhere else. The same goes with the “horror stories”. This is part o the control machine of the system.
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It’s about damn time that National Geographic acknowledges its racist past.
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