False Portrayal

Sanjukta Ghosh essay, “Con-fusing” Exotica: Producing India in U.S. Advertising, explains how media lacks diverse minority groups (African Americans, Latinos, Indians, Native Americans) in mainstream media. Indians have been “systematically written out, erased, silenced, and marginalized in any mainstream picture of America” (275). In media, it is true that minority groups are often put in the background, if at all, in mainstream media to keep some form of “purity” for the country (America) (275). Sometimes though there is just a complete absence of these minority groups and this absence is a way to “reinforce their absence in the power structure” (276). Through this power, it allows media to “recode” the cultures of these minority groups in the media. This absence also makes it possible for media to erase these minority groups overall. This whole concept is actually very disturbing to read about. How is it possible that media either completely erases these minority groups or changes their cultural identities because they have the power to do so.

The most interesting point present in this article to me was the way “ad after ad, Indian products are appropriated, even robbed, and then represented as works of haute couture designers whereas Indians are airbrushed or erased out of the picture” (278). Their clothes (Indian’s clothes) is even really liked by many consumers because media appropriates them by placing them on white models, erasing their culture and history in turn seeing the product as sophisticated. Yet, when viewed on the objects themselves, the natives, they are seen as “primitive and backwardness” (279). Take for example this pashmina shawl ad above. Pashmina shawls are an Indian product. Do you see any history or culture tied to this pashmina ad? No, on the contrary, a very elegant classy white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes is displayed wearing the pashmina shawl, in a what seems fairly wealthy house. Cultural ties to the product are completely absent and recoded. If ads or media in general are going to represent minority groups at all, they need to not only present them correctly but more minority groups need to be presented in general and in the correct light.