Blog 1 Wing Young Huie
Wing Young Huie
Young Girl Wrapped in Dora the Explorer Blanket, South Minneapolis, MN (2012)
On the first look this seems to be an image of a girl just standing outside of an old car with a Dora the explorer blanket on. At first I thought this represented the poverty in the area she lived in. I assumed the ratty old car and blanket were meant to give us the impression that she is of a lower economic status. However upon reading the blog I realized the picture wasn't about her income, it was about her relationship with the media. She has wrapped herself in a blanket with a huge picture of Dora the Explorer. The average person knows of Dora, however to this Latino girl Dora is her role model, and showed her at a young age that Latino girls would be a major part of media. Wing Young Huie wishes that he had had an Asian character that he could look to when he was her age.
Both Huie in this picture, and Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid's Tale have a concept of 'othering' in their art. 'Othering' is when a person or group of people are shown as "not one of us" in our minds. They work to show a group of people as being different or against the norm.
Both Huie and Atwood use symbols in their works to show othering. Huie in the above image uses Dora, a popular character in a children's television show as a symbol. In comparison to the girl being photographed, Huie viewed the two as appearing similar. Firstly, this reinforces a stereotype that all people of a certain minority look the same. The symbol of a imaginary Latino girl being used to comfort a normal Latino girl help to isolate their society. The picture shows that the Latino society is very isolated, and only respects itself.
Atwood's use of symbols to 'other' handmaids is most evidence in the symbols the Handmaid's wear on their uniform. The are forced to where angel wings over their face at all time so men are not able to see their face. This also isolates the handmaid's from the rest of society through the symbols. In religion, angels are beautiful creatures that spend most of their time with God, and only visits humans on occasion. The angels symbolize the handmaids because handmaids spend all their time with commanders and rarely interact with other people.
In these ways, both Huie and Atwood use symbols to other people in their works.
Your argument is interesting. It reminds me of one episode in "Master Of None" where POC representation in Hollywood is discussed. Reading your article made me think that maybe movie producers create this notion of us vs. them when thinking about POC playing major roles. White actors tend to represent the norm in Hollywood while POC are others who are different, almost alien to the red carpet (although that is slowly changing).
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