Open AccessPerformance, Paradigms of Visual Culture and The Matrices of Representation: Anna Deavere Smith’s on The Road
Author(s) -
Chen Bi-ju
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
smart moves journal ijellh
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2582-4406
pISSN - 2582-3574
DOI - 10.24113/ijellh.v9i5.11025
Subject(s) - representation (politics) , mainstream , craft , character (mathematics) , hegemony , visual culture , iconography , literature , aesthetics , art , history , sociology , visual arts , law , politics , political science , mathematics , geometry
This paper attempts to put radically in to question the hegemonic choices of representation in western visual culture by examining Anna Deavere Smith’s performance series On the Road: A Search for American Character. What is brought to the sharp focus of this study is the logic of perpetuating the conventional categories of race, ethnicity, gender and age in performance – a logic that prevails in the mainstream media; more specifically in theatre – and the unmasking of these categories in representation.
Then with a shout we rushed upon him and locked our arms about him; but the ancient god had not forgotten his craft and cunning. He became in turn a bearded lion, a snake, a panther, a monstrous boar; then running water, then a towering and leafy tree, but we kept our hold, unflinching and undismayed, and in the end this master of dreaded secrets began to tire. So he broke into speech ... .
The Odyssey IV, 384 ff.