The Confident Gaze

National Geographic
By Melissa Geneser
National Geographic is a widely viewed magazine that most people have at least read on article from, it give us information on animals, places and interesting topics, that inform our minds. We pick up a copy, read it, and then feel that they have done something useful, because we have learned something about another culture or a certain animals eating habits. But all that we read in the magazine, is it all factual? Well yes and no, we gain information, but we learn only what the writers want us to know, lets take the example of the 50 page, article on India, that National Geographic published. You don't see all the poverty and starvation, you don't see the orphans or the homeless diseased people crowding into a small hut with no food or clean water. You see only the cute little kids, the wealth kids, you see the streets, but high class areas only. We as a people don't like to see anything that makes us uncomfortable, we don't like the guilt it causes us to see others, not as well off as us. But that is the reality of life and we need to see it for what it really is, not turn our eyes away from it, be cause we dislike it. National Geographic has painted a false picture of the real life of other cultures, making us not feel so bad about how other people in different countries live. As Shekhar Deshpande states in her article entitled “ The Confident Gaze,””the photograph has constructed an image of the “ other” world, which is not only different but eager to be looked at.” We see in the photographs the culture shining through, and we marvel at what other counties are like, but we don't see the real hidden truths about it. If we did, we might judge those counties as inferior to ours, not equal, we judge them for not having technology and knowledge like us, we feel better than them. Does all the stuff we read and see have to be pleasing to the eye?(fake) “ It is as if that world needs to be posed in the appropriate way to the Western observer, he could not see it in its bare essentialities.”(Deshpande, pg.2) Do we have to be shielded to the truth of the world, we need to see the truth and realize what other counties are like. We can't live in a make believe world.