| We have seen images of pyramids in movies, in school books, and even on the Las Vegas strip. A metonym not just for Egypt but the romanticism of the desert a la Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik, Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Brendan Frasier in The Mummy, the pyramids ooze exoticism. Yet, the exotic stereotype is loaded with ambivalence, an overused image of a far-away place that magically blends difference, adventure, romance, colonialism, and otherness. This is made possible by the abstraction and the decontextualization of the photograph. Perhaps it is not that difficult to guess that this image is from a Boeing television commercial. |
