A western biased representation of the Pacific

Extract

[...] Such as Gauguin and his paintings, there is a desire to satisfy a representation that is not the reality. However, I would like to add that, as our teacher pointed out, Pacific Islanders also use western instruments and sounds in their music. Thus, the real issue is to know what are these western sounds used for: is it for an artistic purpose or a way to bias what the viewers will hear? Regarding this question, I agree with Armstrong's ideas and the fact that Disney arranged the music to satisfy Westerners' desires. [...]

[...] In the second part of the sentence, Disney is seen as a colonist who wants to control the vision of the Pacific the viewers will have. And to do so, Disney adjusted the music of the film in order to make it more enjoyable for the Westerners: ‘When the audience does hear Polynesian music throughout the film, the first and last sound they hear is Western music, not Polynesian,' states R. Armstrong. In fact, they used indigenous music for the movie but they also made sure to add music which would sound familiar to the white viewers. And thereby biased the original traditional composition. [...]

[...] Nonetheless, as a woman I must say that it is quite difficult to accept those representations, and I can only imagine the bitterness Pacific Islanders women could feel. Furthermore, I would just like to link Gauguin's art with this sentence Doug Herman said: ‘Another depiction that is tiresome and cliché is the happy natives with coconuts tropes.'[1]. In the movie Moana, this is how Pacific Islanders are represented and it is nothing more than reducing them to an object, a coconut, just as Gauguin did to the woman in his paintings, reducing them to a lust tool. [...]

[...] Goldie in his text ‘The Representation of the Indigene'. What he is trying to say with this expression is that Westerners and especially colonizers projected their lust onto Polynesian women despite the fact that they are young (but also the ones who are not underaged), just as Gauguin did with his artworks. In fact, as Mr. Clay said they are often represented naked, unprotected and picking fruit from trees such as a metaphor for the woman fertilizing the land. This means that Polynesian women are seen as an exotic procreation tool to satisfy white people's sexual desire. [...]

[...] A western biased representation of the Pacific Nowadays, people are trying to speak the truth about issues which are morally and ethnically wrong. This leads me to question artworks about Pacific culture that deal with the issues mentioned before. Hence, I will argue how the representation of Pacific culture and its inhabitants is biased by Westerners' desires through an analysis of Gauguin's paintings, the movie Moana and theoretical texts by Terry Goldie, Robin Armstrong and Doug Herman. I. There is a desire to represent Pacific Islanders women as a sexual tool When Gauguin first made his paintings depicting Tahitian women, Westerners considered it as another masterpiece from the famous painter. [...]