The Confident Gaze Summary

Sheckhar Deshpande in his essay, "The Confident Gaze", claims that the National Geographic is not really as informative or educational that we are lead to believe. He asserts that while the National Geographic takes all sorts of pictures that show off the locale of many different far off places that the "real" pictures or stories are never really seen. Deshpande feels that the National Geographic shows everything through the "Western Eye", and distorts things to make them appealing to their audience. In Deshpande's own words he says, "When we speak of an aesthetic of photography in the magazine we notice that in this magazine, the bloody conflicts from Afghanistan to East Timor become picturesque achievements that can be looked at one's coffee table without being troubled by the conditions in which these photographs were taken." What he means is that the posed pretty pictures we see the National Geographic are just that, posed pretty pictures. These pictures turn the horrible bloodshed and severe conditions into something nice to look at, and they don't convey the "trueness" of the actual situation.
Deshpande also believes that the National Geographic is staunchly in favor of the "Western World" and that generally everything is taken and measured through the western perspective. In his essay Deshpande states, "Constructions of self-identity comes through a representation/images of the other. The 'Third World,' with its iconic generality has represented the backwardness in time and accomplishment to the West. The primitive, often a focus of the magazine, serves the same function by providing images of what 'would have been' if the West had not taken a march toward 'civilization.'" What Deshpande means is that the National Geographic reassures the west of their "betterness", and that in order for a third world country to advance it must take the same steps toward civilation that the west has taken. Deshpande wants us to be much more critical, and see past the pretty pictures to the real issues behind them, and move towards seeing things through the perspective of others instead of the blindness of the "Western Eye".