The Power and Powerlessness of the Exotic Status

This paper was  an academic presentation delivered at the XXVIIth Federation of Modern Languages and Literature (FILLM) conference in New Delhi March 15th - 17th 2017

As the overall conceptual framework of this Congress is an exploration of exoticism in the dual contexts of what is strange and what is familiar, let me start by introducing myself to you, by locating myself on the spectrum of the exotic: 

I was born in Kandy, in Sri Lanka. When I was almost five, our family left to go to Australia. I grew up in Sydney. But in 2012, I relocated to Sri Lanka. The word 'exotic' means something different to me, now I live in a country which was considered 'exotic' in the culture in which I grew up. 

      Exoticism exists because of the dualities and paradoxes of our human condition, and its inherent tensions. We see these paradoxes most clearly in our conflicted responses to each other, particularly in times of stress such as first contact with people with whom we are not familiar, who are strangers to us. 

I draw your attention to the image we see here, which shows the conflictedness of the way women are perceived: as a goddess in shining garments who is worshipped, and on the other side of the image, and with disturbing simultaneity, as an unclothed and beaten human woman. How do we reconcile the two extremes? Surely exoticism and our relationship to it can show us how necessary that reconciliation is. 

       In the world today, riven with polarised and warring perspectives, otherisation rather than reconciliation seems to be taking place, politically. And it seems to me that the concept of the 'exotic' developed from a self-centred world view, which defined oneself, the viewer, as the model of normalcy, and anything or anyone outside that pale definition as unusual. The strangeness of the other catalyses visceral reactions in us: we find the 'other' chaotic, or unsettling, or disturbing, or intriguing, or fascinating, or uncontrollable. A whole balancing perspective is left out. We need to resolve this dilemma, not by suppressing one but by actively engaging the two perspectives, by recognising that each Other is familiar to themselves, and that we are Other to them. 

   Recognising for example, that exoticism is generated by positioning oneself in relation to another. What would a Sri Lankan person find exotic? Perhaps the plainest of sandwiches? The blandest of sweets? The most unremarkable events? Whatever is most different from life as we ourselves know it. A space onto which we can project our fantasies, the desires and fears which we keep hidden in the workaday world.  

 To a plain paratha, a pizza loaded with the lot is exotic! To a milkshake, a falooda is exotic! It is a dynamic, with two sides and a shifting equilibrium.

Picture taken of artwork on a Colombo bus, by Devika Brendon

Being considered 'exotic' is both a blessing and a curse. I felt not so much praised and admired, but targeted, by being designated and defined thus. It took some years for me not to feel merely beheld. I was the only Devika in my area of Sydney. There are many Devikas in Sri Lanka and India. As I have started to not feel so noticeable, I have realised that my own responses and attitudes to things had been overwhelmed, silenced, suppressed and distorted by the incoming messages of my own visible difference, in Australia. 

 But enough about me! In the present day, I hope to understand this exoticism better by looking at some experiences of exoticism in literature which is so well known it is familiar to us. And some unfamiliar texts in which we will recognise certain aspects of exoticism and how it operates to empower (and disempower) those who are blessed (and cursed) with it. 

Picture taken of artwork on a Colombo bus, by Devika Brendon

I will do my best to get this positioning of anecdotes in the right sequence. I chose them to illustrate The Power & Powerlessness Of The Exotic Status. If I were to express them as newspaper headlines, they would read: 'A.D. Hope Praises A Divine Image Which Appears In His Kitchen', 'Hercule Poirot Whole Heartedly Appreciates European Countesses'; 'Tess's Beauty Makes Her Stand Out From The Crowd'; and 'Chilean Ambassador Rapes The Woman Who Cleans His House'.

What do all these texts have in common? They are illustrations of how those who occupy the exotic status are singled out for public attention. That people who are called 'exotic' are often in fact categorised and diminished by apparent praise, and actually targeted by what seems to be admiration.  

The Eye Of The Beholder confers both Power and Powerlessness on the person designated as exotic. Noticeably, those described in these anecdotes are women, because the nature of womanhood seems to invite accusations of exoticism by men. Unwanted attention and the Uncreating gaze combine, in an act of interest and curiosity fused with desire and frustrated possessiveness. Men usually 'wrote' women, and constructed them as the unfamiliar to themselves. So - in a male-constructed world, a woman is the most exotic of creatures. 

This, to quote the generous-minded and traditionally-built Precious Ramotswe from the 'No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency' series, is well known! Less well known is that the famous Australian poet A.D. Hope wrote a poem which was a tribute to a voluptuous image of an Indian goddess which his wife and niece had affixed on the wall over the kitchen sink, as a role model for themselves in their quest to lose weight and 'get in shape'. Seeing her form and features every day inspired an endearing reverence in the poet. 

In Agatha Christie's Poirot novels, the Belgian background of her detective Hercule Poirot is central to her construction of him as a man profoundly different from the homogenic British, to whom he seems like a 'mountebank' and a 'jackanapes'. It is his brilliant brain, his generosity of vision, his tolerance, his empathy, his profound knowledge of human nature, which distinguish him. But it is his exotic, luxuriant moustaches which characterise him. So it was in character for Christie to describe HP as being attracted to exotic women: 
The young Hungarian Countess Helena Andrenyi in 'Murder On The Orient Express' is described as an exotic beauty: scarlet lips and dark eyes. She speaks English 'a leetle', and 'her accent is charming':

           "She lingered; her eyes watched him curiously. Lovely eyes they were, dark and almond shaped, with very long black lashes that swept the exquisite pallor of her cheeks. Her lips, very scarlet, in the foreign fashion, were parted just a little. She looked exotic, and beautiful."

          It later turns out that this gorgeous young lady is exaggerating her exotic appearance, to disguise her actual identity! But the point is made - exoticism and beauty are equated, in syntax as they are in life.

          Christie is aware that what is so visually appealing is easy to fabricate. In one of The Labours of Hercules, 'The Girdle of Hippolyta', a female member of a gang of art thieves does a quick change in the toilette of a train, going from looking like an awkward schoolgirl, unremarkable daughter of a Minister of the Church, to looking like 'a flashy piece of goods', appearing as the wife of a man whose passport includes a wife. What were her props? Lipstick, nylons, high heeled shoes, glorious little toque hat! What does her real face look like? 'Possibly only the good God knows!' exclaims Poirot. Here, exoticism because of the very familiarity of its brand and its constituent aspects and elements is again seen as a passport and a cover.

Exoticism comes naturally, however, to the Russian countess Vera Rossakoff, who appears unforgettably in Hercule Poirot's old age as a vision on the escalator in the London Underground. She is the definition of 'larger than life': a person of "full and flamboyant form; her luxuriant henna red hair crowned with a small plastron of straw to which was attached a positive platoon of brilliantly feathered little birds. Exotic furs dripped from her shoulders.'' She is fond of vibrant colours and layered textures, bedecked in jewels and draped in the spoils of war and the trappings of wealth. She is a compendium of desirable aspects: 'Chic. Sympathetic. Spirituelle... A femme du monde.' She also has a tremendously buoyant, vibrant, articulate personality, and 'good lungs': "To be content with what God gave you... That is arrogant!" she exclaims. She is 'a woman in a thousand, a million'. She offers fascinatingly detailed insight into what she does to keep up appearances. And 'she knew, none better, how to flatter a man':

          "Though it was something like twenty years since he had seen her last the magic still held. Granted that her make-up now resembled a scene-painter's sunset, with the woman under the makeup well hidden from sight, to HP she still represented the sumptuous and alluring... the flamboyant creature of his fantasy."

      Christie observes that 'It is the misfortune of small precise men to hanker after large and flamboyant women. Poirot had never been able to rid himself of the fatal fascination the Countess held for him."

          In her first appearance, she is described by Hastings as "a whirlwind in human form,... a somewhat disturbing personality... who invaded our privacy, bringing with her a swirl of sables .... and a hat rampant with slaughtered ospreys." Her energy is full of the life force we generally associate with men. It acts like a magnet on Poirot, who, full of himself, respects the strong personalities of others. She disturbs him, and he likes it. Note here that, in contrast to several other men in this survey, Poirot focuses on her lungs and not her breasts. :) :) :) :) :) 

So exoticism means only positive things to a broad-minded citizen of the world. And a man full of brains as well as ego not only likes a woman who pays attention to him, he enjoys hearing her speak. They are, despite their social class differences, allied in their status as foreigners, in London.

But away from the aristocracy of Central Europe, in the regional areas of England, to other kinds of people, this luxuriance operates as an invitation to become a predator. Particularly if the woman in question (unlike Poirot vis a via his Countesses) is of a lower social class than the man who appreciates her. We see this in Thomas Hardy's 'Tess Of The D'Urbervilles', from the description of Alec's first sight of Tess:

     "Tess had an attribute which amounted to a disadvantage just now; and it was this that caused Alec d'Urberville's eyes to rivet themselves upon her. It was a luxuriance of aspect, a fullness of growth, which made her appear more of a woman than she really was. She had inherited the feature from her mother without the quality it denoted. It had troubled her mind occasionally, till her companions had said that it was a fault which time would cure."

   The quality her exotic beauty denotes? Is clearly an indication of sexuality and sensuality, an invitation to the dance of life. And she has no shortage of potential partners. 

        Alec articulates his frustration, when it takes him some time to get her to respond to his meretricious advances: 'Good God!' he burst out, 'what am I, to be repulsed so by a mere chit like you? For near three mortal months have you trifled with my feelings, eluded me, and snubbed me, and I won't stand it!' He wants to give her 'the kiss of mastery'. She seems to be asking for it, doesn't she? Her luxuriance suggests so. 

      It is a familiar saying that Beauty is In The Eye of the Beholder. But it would be equally true to say that Beauty is described as being in the Face of the Beholder. And that the way the Beholder sees Beauty speaks volumes about the Beholder himself. Our attitude to the Exotic is an index of our biases as well as our preferences. 

     Take Tess for example. See how she appears, because of her exotic beauty, to a lot of men: to Angel Clare, to Alec D'Urberville, to the Captain of the Immortals, who 'sports' with her: as if she is unconsciously appealing to them.

Her luxuriance of aspect, her full figure, the red ribbon in her hair, her beautiful eyes, seem to invite their attention. But does that attention have to take the form of assault? She becomes a 'wounded name', a 'Maiden No More', who cannot escape the consequences of her exotic allure. She actually at one point in her struggles removes her eyebrows to stop people commenting on her beautiful face, feeling her beauty to be inviting unwanted and predatory attention.

         I began this paper by commenting on the dualism of perception which exoticism reveals in us. In this novel, the dualism is externalised through characterisation of Alec and Angel as binary opposites. Angel Clare, a better man than Alec, sees Tess from the start in a more emotional and spiritual way than Alec does. 

          " 'What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that milkmaid is!' he said to himself. And then he seemed to discern in her something that... carried him back into a joyous and unforeseeing past, before the necessity of taking thought had made the heavens grey."

          Unlike Alec, who sees her as a 'crumby girl', to Angel 'Tess...seemed to inhabit a dignified largeness both of disposition and physique, an almost regnant power, possibly because he knew that ... hardly any woman so well endowed in person as she was likely to be walking in the open air within the boundaries of his horizon; very few in all England. Fair women are usually asleep at midsummer dawns. She was close at hand, and the rest were nowhere."

             Here, as with A.D. Hope, we have a man who appreciates the divinity of women. Hardy is explicit about it: "She impressed him most deeply. She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman - a whole sex condensed into one typical form. He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names half teasingly, which she did not like because she did not understand them.

              'Call me Tess,' she would say askance, and he did."

     Here is a girl who can say 'No'. And a man who can accept it.

     Tess can say this because she is being approached by a man who is more evolved than most. He sees her sensitive feelings and her qualities of mind, as well as her beauty of body. He sees her as a whole person, and does not seek to separate her from her source, or reduce her. She can speak to him, in the imperative voice.

           In contrast, Pablo Neruda expresses his own conflictedness as a justification for targeting, an excuse for attacking, what he sees as other, several steps further in his Memoirs, when he describes the sexual assault he himself perpetrated on a Tamil maidservant while he was the Ambassador for Chile, in Sri Lanka in the late 1920s. It is a bizarre incident, for many reasons. I had been used to hearing of Neruda as a great love poet and a man who had great sympathy for the poor and oppressed. 

   What struck me from the first reading is the absolute brazenness of his hypocrisy. He praises her beauty, and likens her to a goddess, like the statues of goddesses in the temples of South India. But people worship goddesses, they do not rape them. It is other human beings they assault. Particularly those they consider vulnerable, in relation to them. This violent binary opposition in the way beautiful women are seen and treated has been brilliantly portrayed in the image we see here on the projector. Neruda's behaviour shows the transition between the two conflated approaches, and their violent outcome. 

He offers tributes, at first. He leaves gifts for her, knowing she is poor.  Colourful silk garments. But she ignores them. I get the impression that he was incensed because she ignored him. Returning to the Orient Express, it was Countess Andrenyi's alert and intelligent gaze that highlighted her beauty for Poirot. She was not only beheld, she was a beholder in return. She wanted to know what he thought, saying 'Why did you ask me that?' She connected with him.

In Neruda's case, in Wellawatte, he is made to feel invisible, and his advances are completely negated. One day, fuelled by both feelings of sexual desire and sociocultural and gendered entitlement, he decides to 'go for all'. He forces himself upon her. And he describes the act poetically:

        In 'I Confess That I Have Lived' (1974), he details the incident. Shall we read it, together?

Note that he describes her as a goddess 'made of stone', a 'statue'. She was silent throughout the encounter, and kept her eyes open. He states that 'that there was no language in which he could speak to her'. I wonder how SHE would have thought or spoken about the encounter. In HER memoirs. 

My point is that, by initially exoticising her, Neruda gives himself permission to do whatever he likes to her. She becomes an object, in his eyes. Even if his sexual imposition of his imagination, his desire, and his body on her was seen by him as an act of worship, it was not an invocation to a superior deity. It was, in contrast to the reverence expressed by A.D. Hope, an act of self-worship. A glorification of his own virility and forcefulness.

Her thoughts, her ideas, were not 'unknowable' to him. They were actually of no interest to him. His use of the passive voice is very indicative of this: 'The experience was not repeated', is the phrase with which he ends his description. A dismissal. Distance. Literally a throwaway line. He saw himself as a complex, living being, with a trajectory, a life. He saw her as an object, an incident, along the way. 

So, since this Nobel Prize-winning poet seems incapable of basic human empathy, I ask myself, 'How was the experience, for her'? (A question that Pablo Neruda did not ask himself, let alone the unknown woman.) The power differential between them is staggering: as a man of 25, as a Chilean Ambassador, as a man in the 1930s, Neruda had all the power, in this encounter. He was fully aware of her relative powerlessness in relation to him: as a woman, as a servant hired to clean his latrine, as a Tamil from the 'pariah' caste. Her powerlessness, refracted through the lens of exoticism, excited him. He was able to blame her beauty for exciting his desire, and also use her socio-economic status as a justification for his treatment of her. In a real sense, her exotic beauty is used to excuse his response to it. 

     So as the honey-coloured deities we are, we people of colour, we unusual, different, colourful people, should be careful when people pay us compliments on our alluring beauty. It is a short step, easily taken, from being admired - or worshipped - to being mistaken for a piece of exotica. 

     In a more generous era, inhabiting the exotic status meant being admired. Today, in a world where everyone is under stress, being seen as different or other can get an exotic person attacked, accused, deported and killed. It is a dangerous position to be in. And it is not a passive position.

       People, in the end, return home from even the most exotic holiday, back to a less unsettling, exciting and dangerous setting - which they usually prefer.  And what was initially seen by them as alluring and exotic becomes an experience they once had, and eventually an image on a fridge, and something to be boasted of, in a self-glorifying memoir. Human beings are like that. We reach out for what we see as beautiful because sometimes we feel empty inside, and our disrespectful touch depletes it, and makes it wither on the vine. From The Wide Sargasso Sea, under a Bitter Moon, we must be careful about how we are seen, and how our identities are constructed, and by whom. And we must be thoughtful about what, and how, we also in our turn allow ourselves to see.