The politics of representation is defined as “The competition over meaning among groups…” (Wenden). Different cultures are represented in a certain way, either in language, in print and electronic media. Pennington’s article addresses this by using a contemporary example of Katy Perry’s music video of her song Dark Horse. Pennington argues that the music video is replete with racial overtones in idealizing Oriental Egyptian culture. Pennington’s argument is that Perry’s video frames men of color and causes “cultural appropriation,” among other things. This is in tying with the idea of the politics of representation because, according to Pennington, the video misrepresents Oriental culture to fit western stereotypes.
Pennington takes issue with several things in the video. The men of color in the video are represented in various ways as hypersexualized beasts who are objectified and destroyed when they have served their purpose. She argues that “This, in turn, helped produce narratives in which colonized men were often reduced to little more than sexual beasts.” She (Perry) is symbolized as a goddess, which she sees as a subliminal glorification of the white colonizer who knows better than women of color, but especially in taming the unrestrained sexual desires of the man of color. These problems would be fixed by the artist or the production company coming clear and saying what the symbolism was in the video.
The politics of representation in Pennington’s article, unlike the other readings, is viewed as more subtle, perhaps inadvertent. It is possible that most of the interpretations Pennington has made on the Dark Horse video are farfetched. That being said, Katy Perry did herself no favors in choosing such questionable symbolism.