A POSTCOLONIAL READING OF FEMALE BODY ODOR IN YVES ST. LAURENT’S OPIUM FRAGRANCE COMMERCIAL AND SAADAT HASAN MANTO’S ODOR  

Oleh:

Wardoyo, Subur

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: The 1st Literary Studies Conference: Configuring and Reconfiguring English Literature in Southeast Asia (SEA), Yogyakarta, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 17-18 Oktober 2013
Topik: female body odor; semiotic sign; signification; hybridity; mimicry; ambivalence; odor– emotional conditioning
Fulltext: 3 A Postcolonial Reading.pdf (732.11KB)

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Are you an Asian male who gets turned on by a perfumed female body odor rather than an unperfumed, smelly, sweaty female one? Do you prefer a white- colored female body to a dark skinned one? These are latent Orientalist issues in our everyday life. Westerners claim that since they are the refined race, it is their duty to civilize Asian women. They introduce such a perfume as Opium to help Asian women have a ‘civilized’ body odor. This paper will describe how body odors build up particular semiotic significations and how Asian males might be affected by those meaning making processes. The data are drawn from the commercial of Yves St. Laurent’s Belle d’Opium and from the male character of Saadat Hasan Manto’s Odor. Odor presents the Asian male’s response as a counter- narrative to the Opium ad which introduces a reversed hybridity. This essay also includes a perfume commercial from Indonesia and Malaysia to see what effects cultural hybridity and mimicry have on the Asian male psyche and how they affect textual representation and signification. This postcolonial analysis of female body odor will borrow heavily from Saussure’s Semiotics, Rachel Herz’s Scent of Desire, and Edward Said’s Orientalism.

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