Deshpande

In Despande’s, “The confident Gaze,” he talks about how the popular magazine, “National Geographic” has been using its so called stunning photography to make poverty seem amusing to others who read the magazine.  Despande uses a National Geographic cover that has a child on it from India; he’s painted red for the Holi festival and looks solemn even though the festival they are celebrating is a happy and joyous time.  Poverty has become a good image for the use of the media because of how our senses are attracted to that almost abnormality we aren’t used to in American culture.

            Despande states, “This power to transform the most repulsive results of human actions around the world into images that are digestible is what makes for the culture of National Geographic.”  From this, Deshpande is implying that through the images we see in National Geographic, that facts of suffering and poverty becomes an interesting and almost amusing topic for its readers.  With the fact of breathtaking photography, the photography almost takes away from the underlying factors these images should really be portraying to viewers.

            Deshpande also states, “While we admire the accomplishments of its photographers to bring us the rest of the world, we forget that the photographs and the contexts in which they are placed represent a very conscious effort by the editors to make the world a happy place and a happy place especially for the western eye.”  Deshpande implies that through the use of breathtaking photography, the viewer doesn’t think of what is really going on in the images they are looking at.  The viewer might look at an image of a malnourished family in a landscape and think of how the place they live in is beautiful  and how in a way, their “struggle” and hardship is used to amuse the viewer.