Orientalism, a literary criticism theory by Edward Said, attempts to explain the relationship between the East in the West as depicted in academia. It maintains, among other things, that "scholarship is sometimes informed by racism and intellecutals have been complicit in the administration of imperial power". Rather than giving an honest depiction of the East in literature, oftentimes fantasies are projecteted onto the East by Western authors.
We as a class were told to watch Indiana Jones in light of this new information on Orientalism. The result was a heartened discussion about the idea of Indiana Jones (and Speilberg by virtue of directing the film) promoting racist stereotypes about the East to a largely ignorant American audience. Could this be racist propaganda that we blindly take in?
A comment was posed in class about the stereotypes in Indiana Jones (chilled monkey brains, anyone?) perhaps being funny because the audience "knows" that they aren't true. To this, I respond as follows. As a future teacher, I'm of the opinion that I cannot assume anything about the knowledge that my students or peers may have. Doing so may mean that we start on uneven footing with the class, which is not good at all. In quite the same way, we as a nation (sorry for the overarching generalizations, but they are necessary to promote my rampant idealism...) cannot assume that the audiences watching the Great White Indy saving the world are aware of stereotypes being untrue or offensive. Whenever humor is at the expense of another's culture, it's not funny. Sorry.
Not that Indiana Jones is exactly the peak of "scholarship" or anything, but the social implications of Orientalism must be noted. Francis Bacon said that knowledge is power. If this quote is to be assumed to be true, then it also can be said that when scholarship is being dictated by racist ideas, to be powerful is to be racist. The downfall of the social sciences is that their followers/proponents can fall into the rut of "I have an advanced degree and have written many lengthy and verbose papers so I must know everything" and not bother to inform themselves with research on different ways of life being lived before writing about them. This is scary for a couple of reasons.
First, again working off of the Bacon quotation, the power structure that we have rests on the idea of higher education. When we read texts without at least talking about the -ism implications, we leave the power structure of -isms and ignorance intact. Without questioning the intention, or at least the message of a text, we leave the underlying messages be, "camouflaging the social network in which texts are embedded". Second, particularly in the field of education, not questioning these things in texts teaches people in school to not question them either. We are essentially promoting generations upon generations of people to be content with a power structure in which being an intellectual means being above self-reflection and critique.
Ghandi said that we should be the change that we wish to see in the world. This means not only being a part of big things like the Tiaenthaem Square protest but also acknowledging the biases of popular or admired texts. Including "time-honored" traditions like Indiana Jones.
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I agree completely with you about the dangers of making assumptions about audience. At any rate, we can never know what Spielberg and Lucas intended. We do know, however, that, as you say, the humor plays off racist stereotypes. Said's work is important in identifying the ways in which racism is constructed in the West.
If you're interested in exploring discourse-power issues, you should look into the work of Foucault, to whom Said owes a lot. The Marxists Adorno and Gramsci are also helpful.
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