Representing or Misrepresenting?

Today we was the first day of the second 2D-course, we had a short lecture and then a workshop of how we portray and interpret things. The workshop was designed to automatically fail as we were given the task to, in small groups, find a group of people that is completely different from the members of the group and then find images that portray that group as they want to be portrayed. It was not so much about creating a good presentation as it was an exercise showing how affected we are by our own perspective, seeing how difficult it is to portray a group the way they are and not as the stereotypes we believe they are.

We started by trying to list who we were, covering our different ethnicities, gender, social background etc. We also created a short list of who we were not, even though doing this it was very difficult to choose a group of people. There were several examples that came up but I realized that no matter how we tried, we eventually got back to stereotypes and our own preconceieved ideas. It is difficult to find what, for instance, a culture thinks represents themselves, their values and what is important to them when you are from a completely different background. Those aspects may be things we would never think of since they are not important from people from our culture. Even in the group we were from different cultures in a way with our different ethnical parentages, gender and varying social backgrounds.

It is very difficult but I feel it is a valuable lesson to learn and that it is far to easy to forget that not everyone is like yourself and think the same way you do. I did find a very interesting text that I feel explain part of this very well. In this case the author discusses why anime characters are white and comes to the conclusion that they are not, a Japanese viewer will interpret the character the way they feel is normal, as Japanese, while an American will interpret the same from what they feel is normal, being American. I do not think this is applicable to all situations though, there is still the issue with stereotypes which defines how the public see themselves and others. It does however make you think and question why you assume that everything is like you, why is your culture/ethnicity/whatever what is normal?

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