Post Class, 2/28 Ann

I enjoyed our class discussion on Tuesday about simacular and the fantasies of Disney World and Las Vegas.  In CMC 200 we have talked a little bit about how Disney portrays history as well as the rest of the world.  It is just as important to critique the things that Disney leaves out as well as the things that they include.  This relates to Pierre Machery’s theories of studying the rupture, or what is left out of a text.  If we look at Epcot and the “around the world” attraction it is interesting to see what countries are represented.   The attraction features representations of eleven countries: Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, the United States, Japan, Morocco, France, the United Kingdom and Canada.  Nearly half of these countries are countries in Europe, and three of them are in North America creating an emphasis on western culture.  China and Japan are the only Asian countries represented and Morocco is the only African country represented.  There is no representation of any country from South America.  By choosing the countries that they did to represent the world they put an emphasis on white, western culture.  One country whose representation interests me the most is the representation of Morocco.  First of all I found it interesting that they would have chose one of the only African countries that is predominantly white as the only African country represented.  Morocco is also the only predominantly Muslim country that they chose to represent.  The way the represent Morocco is very inaccurate.  The architectural representation is pretty accurate but culturally a lot of things are inaccurate.  The fact that they have belly dancers goes along with the stereotypical sensationalized image of the Muslim woman.  Having just been in Morocco I witnessed how women are treated and how women must be fully covered in public in all times.  Muslim women have a stereotype of being sexual figures that live in harems and are there to sexually please there husbands.  In reality this is not true and Moroccan women must dress conservatively and do not dress in belly dancing costumes.