Colonial Oppression Fudge Yeah!

Self-determination and a sense of identity are wiped from cultures through colonialism. The notion of superiority developed in western civilizations lead to the practice of spreading western beliefs and ideas over cultures that were weaker or below western culture. Edward Said’s Orientalism captures the oppressive nature of colonialism and shows how misrepresentations of cultures are created through colonialism. These misrepresentations silence the voice and erase the original identity of people within a colonized culture. This aggressive and erroneous nature of colonization can be found the song America, Fu*k Yeah, as it seems to force the ideas and culture of America on to the listeners. Said’s ideas applied to the video montage from of the Team America theme song nicely capture how imperialism works to alter conquered cultures in to an “ideal other” that fits in nicely with their already established society.

To begin, Said proposes the idea that the image of the “ideal other” is emphasized by “a common human failing to prefer the schematic authority to the disorientations of direct human encounters with humans”(Said 876). The inherent desire to learn from texts and not through experience only aides in the creation of ideas of cultures that are distorted and slanted truths. Said uses Aeschylus’s The Persians as an example to show how “a highly artificial enactment of what a non-Oriental has made in to a symbol for the whole Orient”(Said 877). In the video we can see a wide array of images of American culture and they work to form an image of American identity as being a nation of people who live on fast food, sex, and consumerism. In the same manner of Said’s beliefs of relying on schematic authority, if one were to believe that America was comprised only of the ideas in the video images then that would allow for a generalization of Americans in the context of their culture. By using this Said is able to show how textual ideas distort the truth of cultural identity and replaces it with an idea or image that is more acceptable to the imperial rule.

Additionally, an idea of superiority filters the view of imperialist nations which leads to the thinking of other cultures that, “everything in it was, if not patently inferior to, then in need of corrective study by the west”(Said 880). Said explains that the imperial powers saw the cultures in their colonies as being inferior to theirs, and they needed to be helped by being taught the ways of their rulers. This way of thinking allows for the muting of an original cultural voice and in turn it is replaced with the voice or ideas from the imperial rule. Looking at the video we can see how America is forced upon the viewers. With the repetition of “America, Fuck Yeah!” the intense delivery of the words, and the fast flashing of icons in American culture create the feeling of being forced to accept American ideas and values. This need by imperialists to guide inferior cultures to their teachings ensures the creation of the ideal other that they want to incorporate in to society.

As powerful nations in Europe once competed to colonize as much of the work as they could it came at the expense of the cultural identity of each nation that was trampled. The destruction or alteration of culture was often seen as a necessary happening during the colonization of the world. The misrepresentation of cultures in the minds of the Europeans lead to the creation of incorrect ideas of what other cultures were like, and without a proper understanding of another culture there is no way to conquer it. The notion that one can force another culture to behave in a manner that they see fit is to erase any form of identity of ever existing in their culture.

Works Cited
Said, Edward. Literary Theory: An Anthology." Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Blackwell Publishing. Maldon, Ma, 1998. (873-876)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhnUgAaea4M