Compare and Contrast Said’s and Hall’s Approach to Presentation

Compare and Contrast Said’s and Hall’s Approach to Presentation

By reflecting on the differences in the two scholars’ approaches, Hall’s work focuses on media issues addressing what the media represents in the current world with an emphasis on the concept of representation in cultural studies. This is explained by how Hall (3) states, “in contrast to this, Hall argues for a new view that gives the concept of representation a much more active and creative role in relation to the way people think about the world and their place within it.” This can also be explained by how much an image normally impacts a different extent taking a direction that the creator never intended during its creation.

The work of Edwards Said, on the other hand, is a collection of various disciplines to create works that will fully describe the people from the Middle East and present it to the world as he demystifies the general notion that has been used to portray them. The way people from Europe and the US have presented the Middle East to the world is distorted with more meaning being attached to hostility, threat, and being hardliners. This is brought to effect by how Said comments that “more generally Orientalism asks, how do we come to understand people, strangers, who look different to us by virtue of the color of their skin?” (Said & Jhally 2).

Both Said and Hall’s approach intends to contribute to representation by focusing on how imagery has been used to give meaning to the concept, which is evident by how much the scholars are capitalizing on the effect of communication. Said is explaining how Orientalism has been used to give a blanket and subjective understanding of the people of the Middle East. On the other hand, Hall explains how the representation of image both within and around it is used to communicate to audiences (Hall 4). Both scholars emphasize the ideology that it is crucial to understand both inside and outside an image to clearly bring out what it represents.

Source:

Hall, Stuart. “Representation & the media.” (1997).

Said, Edward W., and Sut Jhally. Edward Said on orientalism. Vol. 40. Northampton, Massachusetts: Media Education Foundation, 2002.