{"id":60,"date":"2024-11-13T20:33:34","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T20:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/?page_id=60"},"modified":"2024-12-13T17:15:38","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T17:15:38","slug":"project-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/projects\/project-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Kashti"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cyclic Relationship between Commodification and Cultural Consumption<\/strong>\"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 1:\u00a0 CRC Cycle<\/p>\n

Abstract\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I hope that through uncovering the invisible, I am able to convey the prevalence of the one world world ideology and how it drives the cyclic nature of commodification, representations, and cultural consumption. Cultural consumption refers to the use of culturally significant items and customs without understanding and respecting the modes in which they are created and deployed. Specifically, throughout this class we have talked about how representations are reductive oversimplifications. I intend to break down this cycle both inside and outside colonial contexts. Additionally, I hope to draw on the complexity cultural consumption rendering it not necessarily negative.<\/p>\n

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Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Throughout the class, we have discussed how representations misinterpret and oversimplify groups. These representations lead to incorrect expectations of the real\u00a0<\/em>version of a culture. Here reality is an ambiguous term crafted by the user in hopes for the existence of an all-encompassing representation.\u00a0 The conception of representations as holistic understandings arises from Arturo Escobar’s concept of the “one world world,” which refers to reducing the world to an inside and “single out-thereness” (Escobar 86). The one world world perspective can easily arise from a colonial perspective, which views a colonial inside and simple colonial outside, but it can also arise outside the colonial lens. Thus, with the context of the one world world, representations create false conceptions of the euro-centric colonial outside.<\/p>\n

This website explores how representations interact with cultural consumption and commodification, both inside and outside the one world world lens.\u00a0 Cultural consumption can be done by both people inside and outside the one world world perspective, but the ways it occurs and is enacted differ in purpose and result. Both hope to understand another culture, the euro-centric inside to derive understandings of a more tribal, natural culture and the outside to better fit into the euro-centric world. This will be explored through the films Imagining Indians, Cannibal Tours, <\/em>and Paris is Burning.\u00a0<\/em>Through these examples, we explore how one can traverse the cycle of representation, consumption, and commodification in different ways and what the cycle looks like in a non-colonial setting.<\/p>\n

Imagining Indians<\/strong><\/p>\n

This example reveals one way to travel the CRC Cycle: Representation -> Cultural Consumption -> Commodification. This is done through an analysis of poverty statistics and how they impact Dances With Wolves\u00a0<\/em>and Hopi symbols and their conceptions.<\/p>\n

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Figure 2: Select Poverty Statistics on Native American Reservations in Time Periods Relevant to Imagining Indians (Trosper)<\/p>\n

According to Figure 2, in 1989, 47.7% percept of families in the Hopi reservations were below the poverty threshold, with each individual making on average $4,566 dollars. Additionally, in the decade before 1989, the year of release of the film, there had been a 8% increase in per capita income and a 6% decrease in poverty. Imagining Indians was released in 1992, making this the last census data set prior to the release of the film. While these statistics point to severe amounts of poverty on reservations, they are inherently misleading as they ignore the existence of a Hopi tribal government. Established in 1936, the tribal government handles many aspects of community well being for the Hopi, such as care for the elderly, scholarships for youth, and healthcare services (The Hopi Tribe).\u00a0 Thus, while statistically, individuals in the tribe were facing poverty, in reality they had large support systems and non-traditional economic systems which were not addressed in the data set.<\/p>\n

Such statistics misconstrue the economic status of indigenous individuals living on reservations, the group which comprises the actors in\u00a0Dances With Wolves.\u00a0<\/em>Through the colonial one world world lens, the indigenous individual is closer to nature, and this misconception is further emphasized thorough alleged poverty. It makes indigenous individuals seem more separate from capitalism and thus more indigenous.\u00a0 Figure 2 acts as a representation of the Hopi tribe. As stated by Victor Masayesva in his piece “The Emerging Native American Aesthetics in Film and Video,” films about Native Americans have been “produced by and for the Whitemen” (156). Figure 2 results in the preconception of the Whiteman that arises from a representation. However, as Masayesva has stated, preconceptions and derived understandings, stemming from representations like Figure 2, have lead to the production of films, which consume Native American culture to present it to a white audience. These consumptions, hailing from “people who have constructed those times and spaces differently,” are exemplified by Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves.\u00a0<\/em>This film, as seen in Masayesva’s Imagining Indians<\/em>, allows for a reductive commodification of Native American culture, with actor Marvin Clifford stating, “we got this little bitty G-string you know, it supposed to be our outfit you know.” (4:43). The Costner film is a commodity which created a version of the Native American, and then cast Native Americans to enact that role. It literally tells the Native American cast who they are supposed to be in order to sell a commodity which profits off of preconceptions of their culture.<\/p>\n

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Figure 3: Glimpses of Hopi Symbols while Dancing (Masayesva 31:00-34:00)<\/p>\n\n\t\t