Exoticism

Exoticism (n) :

1. tendency to adopt what is exotic.
2. exotic quality or character.
3. anything exotic, as a foreign word or idiom.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

My English professor (for English 205 "critical thinking") is very interesting; the book he assigned us for the class is Roland Barthes's Mythologies. It's not about mythologies, however; it is about semiotics ("the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior; the analysis of systems of communication, as language, gestures, or clothing") and the mystification of world cultures.
This next essay he is assigning us is quite fascinating to me; Roland Barthes wrote an essay on exoticism called 'The Lost Continent', after an Italian film about the Malay Archipelago. We are to compare this with films like Monsoon Wedding and Passage to India, and how Hollywood packages the idea of India into a stereotype that is not only inaccurate, but degrading and insulting. Now, the professor chose Indian culture for an example, since he is Indian himself and knows what is accurate and what is ridiculously embellished.

My point is, I find this to be a fascinating topic. I am an aspiring artist, and many people's ideas of art are that art is to depict things as they are, or, more importantly, to embellish them and to make them aesthetically pleasing. I want, more than anything else out of this life (besides a never ending pot of perfectly made coffee), to have my art mean and say more than just what is, or the mystification of such. I want it to say what is real, what is poignant, what has depth and is beautiful in its reality.
I find the idea of semiotics and the mystification and exoticism of cultures to be fascinating because it points towards a way that I can say more with my art. First idea: a coloring-book style picturesque in it's lines and lies a representation of a certain culture, and painted over it a realistically porportioned, lifelike and un-colorful, verson of the same. That is what I mean when I say that these ideas of social problems are an inspiration in and of themselves.

Fine, fine, I'll stop gushing. I just think the idea is infinitely interesting... I'm actually looking forward to writing the essay, which is odd, I know.