Hello Everyone,
This being my first post here I wanted to start of by saying that many of the things that I am learning in this class are very new concepts to me such as, Hegemony and the actual meaning of Orientalism. While other things such as the Ramayana and the things that make up Asian Theatre are merely be expanded on due to take Guru's class on Asian Folklore. I was quite surprised when I started this class at the fact of how little I know about the meaning of Orientalism and how it can be applied and I definitely had no idea what Hegemony even meant. Feeling that I really did not grasp its definition in class I decided to look up a formal meaning. Hegemony: leadership or predominant influence exercised by one nation over others. I applied this meaning to what we were learning in our first few days of class and I found that the lectures now make much more sense. Many of the Asian countries that we were discussing had be occupied and/or ruled by other nations with outside cultural influences. This, of course, leads to a resounding affect of the theatre. Orientalism comes into play here because I believe it affects how we view what we see in Asian theatre. We expect certain things when we are told about an Asian theatrical performance based off of stereotypes that we have come to understand are the "norm" of Asian performance.
Where I am from there really is no such stereotype. This is not because there is no prejudice in SW Virginia, but rather due to the fact that there is almost a total absence of Asian culture where I live. This is why the stereotypes of Orientalism did not register with me when I would watch TV or a play that contained Asian culture. I find that this initially is what drew me to the culture itself and I am rather glad that I escaped those preconceived notions so that my view of Asian culture can come strictly from a Non-orientialist point of view.
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