W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2007 Harem Fantasies and Music Videos: Contemporary Orientalist Representation Maya Ayana Johnson College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons, and the Music Commons Recommended Citation Johnson, Maya Ayana, "Harem Fantasies and Music Videos: Contemporary Orientalist Representation" (2007). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539626527. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-nf9f-6h02 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Harem Fantasies and Music Videos: Contemporary Orientalist Representation Maya Ayana Johnson Richmond, Virginia Master of Arts, Georgetown University, 2004 Bachelor of Arts, George Mason University, 2002 A Thesis presented to the Graduate Faculty of the College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts American Studies Program The College of William and Mary August 2007 APPROVAL PAGE This Thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Maya Ayana Johnson Approved by the Committee, February 2007 y - W ^ ' _■■■■■■ Committee Chair Associate ssor/Grey Gundaker, American Studies William and Mary Associate Professor/Arthur Krrtght, American Studies Cpllege of William and Mary Associate Professor K im b erly Phillips, American Studies College of William and Mary ABSTRACT In recent years, a number of young female pop singers have incorporated into their music video performances dance, costuming, and musical motifs that suggest references to dance, costume, and musical forms from the Orient. In the first chapter, I examine how European and American Orientalism - a broad, complex, and often contradictory system of Western representation of a geographic area including the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia - of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries produced a body of artistic visual representations that presented an imaginary harem as the preeminent space for interaction between males and females in the Orient. This gendered Orientalist imagery continually reproduced a set of sexualized and racialized stock characters that also appear in early twenty-first century music videos and are used to render stories of desire, difference, and possession. The second chapter examines issues of the body, role-playing, and race. I consider the music video performers’ participation in their audio-visual fantasies in the context of Orientalist representation, focusing on the ways in which cultural cross-dressing and role-playing deny the agency of the women supposedly represented by these performances. I also reflect on the ways that Orientalist role-play interacts with stereotyped regional and racial identities already inscribed on American women’s bodies. I conclude this study by considering the overall cultural work of the music videos I have discussed, specifically how they are presented as hidden narratives of nationalistic superiority. Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgments iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Intimate Knowledge and Power: The Harem as Family Drama 4 Edward Said’s Orientalism 4 Gender and Orientalist Representation 7 Stock Characters in the Harem Family 13 Casting the Orientalist Harem in Music Videos 20 Chapter 2 The Bodily Work of Orientalist Representation 27 The En-lightened Body 27 Putting on Light-as-Air 37 Hottentot Video 42 Conclusion 49 Bibliography 56 Vita 59 i Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my very patient parents, Archer and Roberta Johnson. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Professors Grey Gundaker, Arthur Knight, and Kimberley Phillips for their thoughtful suggestions and invaluable guidance in the preparation of this thesis. Introduction In recent years, a number of young female pop singers have incorporated into their music video performances dance, costuming, and musical motifs that suggest references to dance, costume, and musical forms from the Orient.1 These Middle Eastern-tinged performances by artists such as Britney Spears and Beyonce Knowles coincided with the events and aftermath of September 11, 2001, and their appearance at this moment in United States history is cause for study. However, because the presentation of harems and sexualized Otherness in the music videos harkens back to previous Orientalist images, these videos’ connection to a larger, modem genealogy of Western representations of the Orient is equally compelling and worthy of attention. It is on the music videos’ connection to an Orientalist harem past that I will focus in this thesis. 1 I will use the term ‘Orient’ to encompass the Near East (including North Africa) as well as South and Central Asia. This usage has two purposes. First, I am drawing on and building from Edward Said’s original Orientalism and I want to maintain, as much as possible, continuity between theory and the geographical areas represented by theory. The second reason is that the dance steps included in the videos seem to blend various Middle Eastern as well as Indian dance forms, and a term encompassing both areas is necessary. While the Orientalism I am critiquing in this thesis deals with the Near East, South Asia, and Central Asia, it is important to note that the term Orientalism can also refer to parallel practices in the West concerning East and Southeast Asia. 2 1 will briefly discuss both the pop artist Mandy Moore and the crossover Latin rock artist Shakira. Also, due to the success of her first solo album, I would be remiss in failing to mention Gwen Stefani’s recent love affair with young Japan and the eclectic fashion sense of young people in the Harajuku shopping district that she experienced on an excursion to Japan. The first three videos from Stefani’s album, Love, Angel, Music, Baby featured four “Harajuku girls,” dubbed “The Gwenihana Four” by Wes, owner of the “Free the Gwenihana Four” blog at http://gwenihana.blogspot.com. Also see MiHi Ahn, “Gwenihana,”Salon.com April 9, 2005: < http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2005/04/09/geisha>. The other obvious inclusion in this list is Madonna, who, in the course of her career, has adopted a number of Eastern faces and bodies, including Japanese and Indian. See Michael Angelo Tata’s “East Is Hot!: ‘Madonna’s Indian Summer’ and the Poetics of Appropriation,” in Madonna’s Drowned Worlds: New Approaches to Her Cultural Transformations, 1983-2003, ed. Santiago Fouz-Hemandez and Freya Jarman-Ivens (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004). 1 In the first chapter, I will examine how European and American Orientalism - a broad, complex, and often contradictory system of Western representation of a geographic area including the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia - of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries produced a body of artistic visual representations that presented an imaginary harem as the preeminent space for interaction between males and females in the Orient. This gendered Orientalist imagery continually reproduced a set of sexualized and racialized stock characters. While these characters appeared in a number of artistic sites, both visual and performed, mid- to late- nineteenth and early twentieth century Orientalist painting survives as the richest visual collection of these characters. Moving ahead in time, the second section locates the stock characters in the music videos that inspired this project and investigates how the characters are used to render stories of desire, difference, and possession. The second chapter examines issues of the body, role-playing, and race. In the music videos that I discuss, contemporary American women place themselves in Oriental fantasies - whether through costuming, scenery, or types of movement. I consider the performers’ participation in such fantasies in the context of Orientalist representation, focusing on the ways in which cultural cross-dressing and role-playing denies the agency of the women supposedly represented by these performances. I also reflect on the ways that Orientalist role-play interacts with stereotyped regional and racial identities already inscribed on American women’s bodies. 3 I use the terms America and American here to refer solely to the United States of America. 2 I conclude this study by considering the overall cultural work of the music videos I have discussed, specifically how they are presented not only as depictions of foreign decadence - thus obfuscating American decadence - but also as hidden narratives of nationalistic superiority. 3 Chapter 1 Intimate Knowledge and Power: The Harem as Family Drama Edward Said’s Orientalism Edward Said’s Orientalism, originally published in 1978, is a critique, revealing the motivations and methods of Orientalist scholars. In a later essay, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” Said emphasizes the fact that his work - which has since become the central work of contemporary anti-Orientalist scholarship - is a portrait and expose of academic work, the very heart of which simultaneously supports and is supported by the practices of imperialism.4 However, Said argues that scholarship does not matter merely because it is tied to practice, but also that studying Orientalism itself matters politically.