Contemporary Tourism and Postcolonial Orientalism in “Eat, Pray, Love”
Modernity has always been infatuated with the idea of progress — the continuous growth, constant expansion, and the belief that more is better. Because of the ever-growing development of technology, communication, travel, politics, and economics, it has left the world in a continually unbalanced state, split between the developed and developing. However, in an era that dwells on technological progress, these unbalances can often feel overwhelming when everything is moving so fast and forward. With this, the more the world grows, the bigger the need for slowing down, and one of the most prevalent methods of slowing down come in the form of leisure tourism.
In order to move forward, sometimes one must slow down. The main problem that this essay will address is the misuse and misinterpretation of the idea of slowing down in today’s society. Often times, when someone wants to take a break from the hustle and bustle of the metropolitan city, one finds that an escape to the wilderness and to mother nature will replenish the soul. The issue with this is that it has reached to the extent where tourism and travelling has now been colonized by spiritual fantasy, where nature as well as technological detachment is romanticized. In this critical essay, an American film adapted from a book written by Elizabeth Gilbert — Eat, Pray, Love — will be analysed through the lens of postcolonial theory, focusing on Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism and Homi Bhabha’s Hybridity, as well as slight references to Edward Said’s Orientalism. This essay will only use the Hollywood adaptation of the book, and although the essay cannot exhaust the entire film, it will focus mainly on the way India and Indonesia is represented in the film.
Eat, Pray, Love is a movie directed by Ryan Murphy and released in 2010, adapted from Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 memoir of her travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia. In a nutshell, the storyline begins with Gilbert’s unhappiness and desperation to escape her depression. Liz is described to be the modern woman who once had everything that others could possibly dream of having — a high-school sweetheart turned husband, a home in the Upper East Side, and a successful career — but somehow, Liz finds herself struggling to feel happy, lost and confused at what she really wants in her life. Liz exclaims her desire to love again, to feel passion, and to “marvel at something.” To do this, she set out to explore “pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and on the Indonesian island of Bali, a balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence.”[1] This visual adaptation of the book is more than what meets the eye, and apart from Julia Roberts’ flawless performance, the film presents issues that concern Orientalism as well as contemporary tourism. Contextually, the film was entirely produced and directed by a crew of dominantly white people.
In his essay, Erik Cohen claims that contemporary tourism itself is a “modern Western cultural project,” and that “the industry was developed, owned and managed by Westerners; modern tourists were predominantly Westerners; Westerners shaped the principal tourist routes and destinations, styles of travel, of accommodations and of auxiliary services.”[2] Cohen then writes about Dean MacCannell’s 1970 proposal which states that “moderns depart on sightseeing tours in a quest for authenticity, which they miss in their own phony, alienated world,”[3] reverting to the perception that under the impact of globalization, the world’s natural and cultural diversity is slowly fading away. Although written decades ago, MacCannell’s proposal is demonstrated quite explicitly in Eat, Pray, Love, as Liz’s initial motivation for her travels is to find some sort of realness that is missing in her contemporary lifestyle.
This idea of escaping to the Third World to slow down from the capitalistic life is constantly perpetuated in the media and in films, most of them being more problematic in that it promotes the idea that the Third World is designated to be a sanitizing place of sanctuary. In essence, the Third World, portrays what Western anthropological academics understood to be “a region of great age, and what had to be left behind.”[4] Hence, why in these medias and films, there are always stark distinctions between the First and the Third World; the First still being portrayed as metropolitan, modern, and rational, and the Third as the native, traditional, and ethnic. In fact, categorized as the Orient, the Third World emerges as an “underdeveloped space, in need of saving, but also an untouched, magical world, a place where time and space somehow stood still.”[5] This representation of the other is also displayed through advertisement, prints, social media, films, books, and the rest of the stimulating world; reinforcing Orientalism in our everyday lives.
A pioneer in the study of Orientalism, Edward Said, repeatedly assures that “the line separating Occident from Orient is less a fact of nature than it is a fact of human production, which [he] have called imaginative geography.” Said writes that these two opposing roles are “integral components of the social, and not the divine or natural world.” Interestingly, without the Orient, there would be no Occident, and vice versa,[6] and in Eat, Pray, Love, the distinct Orient is characterized through its comparison with the Occident, their differences shown evidently through their behaviours, traditions, and ways of thinking.
Additionally, what Sara Ahmed identifies as the “orient in orientation” constructs a narrative between the Orient and the Occident — one in which the Orient needs saving, and the Occident is the saviour. Patterns of this behaviour can be seen throughout Eat, Pray, Love, particularly seen through Liz’s interactions with the Indian and Indonesian locals. When watching Eat, Pray, Love, it is clear that the film relies on the pre-existing stereotypes of the diverse cultures of India and Indonesia, instead of providing the audience with new knowledge. India and Indonesia, the third and fourth most populated countries in the world respectively, are represented in such uniformity in Eat, Pray, Love.
Weeks before her solo trip, Liz spends much of her time learning Italian in preparation for her four month stay in the country. In the book and film, Liz explains how beautiful she believes the Italian language is, the ancient language of love. In fact, still hopelessly in love with the Italian language, she continues learning it even when she is in Italy, even having a tutor which becomes her friend during her stay. However, we do not really see much of her trying to learn Hindi and Indonesian, equally beautiful and intricate ancient languages. As a matter of fact, the only Indonesian Liz is seen to speak is terima kasih, which means thank you, meanwhile, Liz is capable of speaking Italian quite fluently.
INDIA
As soon as she lands in India, Liz immediately takes a cab that leads her to the ashram, which, as we come to learn, is managed by a middle-aged white woman. Liz is welcomed by the busy, small streets of India, with more people barefoot than not, and hungry kids asking for money (see Figure 1)[7] — a very different introduction from what Italy had given her; a slow, peaceful, and romantic sunrise. She does not really spend much time outside of the ashram, which leads to the film only showing the small Indian villages, as opposed to India as a whole — with its metropolitan cities included. The film fails to acknowledge India as a whole, instead only represents it through the stereotypes of its country.
On the first day of her stay at the ashram, Liz meets seventeen-year-old Tulsi. Not long after knowing each other, Tulsi immediately tells Liz that she is being forced into an unwanted marriage by her family, claiming that “it is the custom” of Indian culture. Liz was then invited to Tulsi’s wedding, where no smile could be found on Tulsi’s face the entire time. Liz sits watching Tulsi as her female family members prepare her for the wedding, and later stays for the celebration, standing on the outside of the party like the spectator entertained by an Oriental show. The way in which Tulsi is represented in the film highlights on her helplessness as a young, brown female in a conservative and traditional community.
Tulsi is only one of the two friends that Liz actually made in India, one of them being a fellow American, Richard from Texas, who is on the same journey of spiritual awakening as she is, someone who she gets to know during her stay in the ashram. On one of Liz and Richard’s hangouts in the village near the ashram, they sip on a local soft drink, Thums Up, sitting near men showering publicly, using buckets to water themselves, next to a group of cows being cleaned by their owners (see Figure 2).[8] But before Liz and Richard drinks on the Indian soda, Richard tells her not to drink it straight from the bottle, explaining that the “first rule in India is never touch anything but yourself,”[9] highlighting the lack of hygiene that the country seems to have. A developing country like India here is displayed to be a place of sanctuary, yet unsanitary all at once.
A few weeks after her stay in India, Liz loses hope when she does not see a change in her perspective and feels frustrated that everyone around her seems to be enjoying their time far away from the civilized world. It is this time that Richard confronts her and tells her, “Here’s the deal, you’re going to stay here until you forgive yourself, you hear me? Everything else will take care of itself.”[10] Richard’s statement implies the extraordinary, healing powers that India has that will transform Liz into a more balanced being; all she has to do is accept it and let the place heal her. Additionally, when Liz went to the ashram in New York with her then boyfriend, she could not take it seriously, however, it is different when she came to the ashram in India. This highlights that in order for her to find the “authenticity” and balance that she was looking for, she had to fly to a place believed to be far away from the civilized world.
When looking at the two characters she befriended in India, it is not difficult to identify the stark differences in how they are represented. Tulsi; the young, Indian female forced to give her life up in the name of family and tradition, and Richard; the wise, older Western who is voluntarily seeking enlightenment, and ends up getting what he wants.
INDONESIA
Moving on to Indonesia, the scenery continues in serenity as Liz is pictured riding a bicycle in Ubud, Bali, smiling as the breeze washes over her and endless trees surround her. Bali is introduced in the film as a vast land of paddy fields, completely earthy and secluded (see Figure 3),[11] still following in India’s footsteps as Ubud and the ashram are two places represented to be sites of tranquillity and natural (see Figure 4).[12]
In Indonesia, Liz meets Ketut, a Balinese fortune teller whom she had already met previously from a different Balinese trip. Liz goes to Ketut everyday to learn everything from him, and in return, Ketut gets to practice his English with her. On Liz’s first visit to Ketut, his hostile wife tells Liz that “everybody needs a husband,” when Liz reveals to her that she is single. Ketut’s wife and all the other Balinese females in Eat, Pray, Love are represented in a certain pattern; traditional homemakers and men-dependant — the complete opposite of Liz. That is until Liz meets Wayan.
Wayan, a traditional Balinese healer, is introduced to Liz when she falls from her bicycle and hurts her leg. Liz’s relationship with Wayan comes to plays an important role in recognizing the issues projected in the film. In Eat, Pray, Love, Liz learns that Wayan is a single mother who struggles with buying a house due to her short income. After Wayan’s divorce, she becomes an outcast and she tells Liz that in Bali, divorces are frowned upon, and that it is not easy being a single mother because everyone expects a woman to be with a man. As a successful, white journalist, Liz pities her, just like she pities Tulsi, as both women share the same helpless story.
Because of this, Liz sets out an intervention to help Wayan buy a house without Wayan’s own knowledge. For her birthday, Liz sends out emails to all her contacts and kindly asks everyone to generously donate to help Wayan build a house. In the email, she writes that “In Bali, after a divorce, a woman gets nothing — not even her children,” and to gain custody of her daughter, Tutti, Wayan had to sell everything. Liz then writes that “these little group of people in Bali” have become her family, and she believes that “we must take care of our families, wherever we find them.” At the end of the email, she finalizes with; “when you set out in the world to help yourself, sometimes you end up helping…Tutti.”[13] The next few days flew by and Liz had raised almost $18,000 from all of her friends and family. When she tells Wayan, a speechless Wayan thanks her multiple times, and jumps in joy saying that with the money, she can have a pharmacy, a library, and of course, a home.
Liz’s charity case to “saves” the imperilled, desperate, brown female reminds the audiences of Tulsi. Both Tulsi and Wayan, is portrayed to be two helpless women in need of help from someone from the outside.[14] Liz and all her wealthy, American friends who helped to donate resemble the white saviour who goes on missionary trips to help villagers in the Third World. Suddenly, Liz — the woman who was at first suffering from the lack of appetite, faith, and love — becomes the selfless, white heroine.
Virtually, the rest of the Balinese pictured in the film acts like colourful props. With nameless, anonymous women carrying fruit baskets on their heads, men playing with their roosters, and merchants selling local produces, these people are portrayed to be very near — if not intertwined — with nature, and far away from technology. These cultural human props serve the function of convincing the audiences that Bali is a magical, nostalgic land. In Bali, we do not see people doing anything modern or contemporary; no ATM card machines, no cars, and not even smartphones. Perhaps, this is what Said means when he writes that the Orient is thought by mainstream academics to be “confined to the fixed status of an object frozen once and for all in time by the gaze of western percipients.”[15] It is safe to say that this highlights the feminization and exoticisation of Bali, a place which tourists imagine to be a lovely but pre-modern site.
Furthermore, the concepts of White tourism mentioned previously are displayed significantly in Bali. On the night Liz goes out to the Beach Shack, a bar where all the expats and tourists hang out, not one local can be spotted. Bars and nightlife, something that does not fit into the Indonesian stereotype, is filled with non-locals and Westerners. Moreover, when Liz and Felipe — the Brazilian lover — goes shopping in the local market, we see that all of the visitors and tourists are white, which complies with the ideas proposed by Cohen and MacCannell.
One thing to also consider is the fact that most of the scenes in the Western countries are based in its metropolitan centres — Manhattan and Rome specifically. Whereas in India, Liz is mostly seen to be in her ashram, far away from its capital, New Delhi. In Indonesia, Liz travels only to Bali, the country’s most touristy city, and in Bali, she stays in Ubud most of the time, a part of the island where there is more green than there is human.
In Eat, Pray, Love, although Italy is also presented through a slightly Orientalist lens, it is still depicted as a borderline Western site, as it is the only place out of the three locations that Liz was able to truly mingle with the locals. The Indian and Indonesian locals, which unless they are somehow Westernized, are represented in such a way that brings forth their imposed muteness — what Said describes to be the silent Other.[16] One of Orientalism’s main themes which circles on the belief that the Orient cannot represent themselves, therefore they must be represented by others, is a recurring theme throughout Eat, Pray, Love. In fact, not one Indian nor Indonesian character is heard to be speaking in their respected languages. Whereas, in Italy, it seems like Liz submerges herself into the Italian language, and most of the Italians she meets speak a mix of Italian and English. Essentially, throughout the film, we hear more Italian than Hindi and Indonesian combined.
In his book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Kwame Anthony Appiah writes that although globalization equally produces and resists homogeneity.[17] As globalization drives the world to be the same, it highlights difference at the same time, but not in the sense that the Third World is far behind the First. According to Appiah, when globalization latches onto developing countries and cities, yes, there will be more English speaking citizens, more people drinking Coca-Cola, more Western pop music playing on the radio, but there will also be reinventions of new forms of differences; like new slangs, new hairstyles, and overtime, new religions. This, for Appiah, becomes the apparatus which resists sameness and homogeneity in the age of globalization.[18] These cultures adapt only the Western life styles which will benefit them.
Appiah writes that “cultures are made of continuities and changes, and the identity of a society can survive through these changes, and the identity of a society can survive through these changes.”[19] With globalization, different cultures are able to exchange traditions, take away, as well as resist different customs to further better their own communities. With this, perhaps Appiah is arguing that the Third World will never be exactly like the white, First World, because there will always be a difference of culture and traditions that separate them, and this should not be seen as a negative thing. The matter of the fact is, unlike portrayed in Eat, Pray, Love, most of India and Indonesia is cosmopolitan in their own ways.
Drawing back to Cohen and MacCannell’s, the Western travellers’ quest for authenticity comes back to them in disappointment and pride. The disappointment comes from their inability to find true “authenticity.” When travelling to the Third World, what the tourists expect is a natural and cultural place untouched by the outside, modern and technological place. Instead, what they get is postcolonial hybridized cultures, modern in their own ways. Then, the pride and self-superiority comes from when the Westerners realize that due to the remains of colonial authority and the rapid increase of capitalistic conditions, lots of Western lifestyles are adapted in the Third World. This extends the impression that the Third World is always trying to catch up with the First World, a game in which they are already in the position of losing.
With this, the film Eat, Pray, Love also brings forth the post-colonial discourse of hybridity, popularized by Homi Bhabha. As hybridity’s main opponent is the dominance of a single, monolithic culture, the term’s main concern is to challenge the notions that identities and cultures are fixed, stable, and bounded entities. In simpler terms, for Bhabha, culture is not a static entity, and that it is not an essence that can be fixed in time and space, but is constantly in a state of flux and transformation, and more importantly, in interconnectedness. Bhabha is interested in the mixing-up of cultures, that of the colonizer and the colonized. He writes that “it is in the emergence of interstices — the overlap and displacement of domains of difference — that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated.”[20]
In this sense, the ways in which India and Indonesia are depicted in the film inherits what Bhabha would mean as static cultural essences. We see most Indians and Indonesians are seen to be sitting on the floor, as opposed to chairs, as well as eating with their hands, as opposed to using cutlery. This calls the attention to the cultural backwardness of the two countries depicted in the film, when realistically, most Indians and Indonesians today sit on chairs and eat with cutlery. These locals seem to be stuck in time, static in their traditional practices, centuries away from the metropolitan. Truthfully, this convergence of the old and new that is present in both cultures embrace the beauty of hybridity and cosmopolitanism — as being in more than one place at a time.
In agreement with Appiah, the concept of hybridity argues against the “essentialist claims for the inherent authenticity or purity of cultures,”[21] which is fundamentally what the film portrays. As a result, the idea of cultural un-contaminated-ness is in fact an illusion separated by the thin line between fiction and reality, because at the end of the day, when the West is travelling to the East, they are connecting the metropolitan centre — from which they come from — to the distant location, therefore, contaminating the culture. This leads to the culture impossible to not be influenced by and mixed with other cultures, hence, the absence of “cultural purity”.
Eat, Pray, Love fails to recognize the hybridity which is present in the Third World, and instead spotlights on what Appiah writes to be “cultural purity,” a preconception of what the Third World looks like — untouched, organic, and far away from technology. This leads to the construction of the version of the Third World that is racially motivated to be “nostalgic” that the tourists today find appealing. “Behind much of the grumbling about the cultural effects of globalization is an image of how the world used to be — an image that is both unrealistic and unappealing,”[22] writes Appiah. Appiah also mentions that “cultural purity” is a utopia as well as an oxymoron. He writes that the odds are that we all live a cosmopolitan lifestyle, in which every aspect is “enriched by literature, art, and film that come from many places, and that contains influences from many more.”[23] “Cultural purity” does not exist, it is — as Appiah suggests — a utopia for those who refuse to believe that cultures around the world are interconnected with one another. India and Indonesia are painted as places where “cultural purity” still exists. In reality, as both places excel at preserving the traditional cultures and practices, they also excel in technological expansion, and are much more developed than depicted in the film.
Ultimately, the film situates the West in the superior position through its consistent othering, shedding light on the privileges that comes with being a white woman. Again and again, the film fails to acknowledge India and Indonesia as they are, instead, represents them in a way which brings them back in time, as opposed to the twenty-first century. India and Indonesia are represented with an Orientalist gaze to its highest manifestation, as seen through the people, environment, and everything in between. India, represented to be a place where spirituality is abundant, and Indonesia, represented to be a place of immense nature. This form of representation encourages for the colonial stereotype to continue developing, contributing to the centuries-old imperialist, monolithic construction of the Orient.[24] Eat, Pray, Love allows us to reflect on the remains of colonial authority that is overlooked most of the time in the world of tourism. Said believes that the formation of stereotypes must be diminished in order for the othering of the colonial subject to end. However, realistically speaking, “a complete negation or disavowal of stereotypical representation might not be possible,”[25] even if decolonization is possible. Although hard to accept, Said’s bold statement makes sense when we are constantly stimulated by medias which aimlessly promote cultural stereotypes.
NOTES:
[1] “Eat, Pray, Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert, accessed February 15, 2021, https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/books/eat-pray-love/
[2] Erik Cohen, “The Changing Faces of Contemporary Tourism,” Society 45, no. 4 (2008): 331, DOI: 10.1007/s12115–008–9108–2.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Edward Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” in Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays, 202. London: Granta, 2001.
[5] Sree Putcha Rumya, “After Eat, Pray, Love: Tourism, Orientalism, and cartographies of salvation,” Tourist Studies 20 no. 4 (2020): 455, DOI: 10.1177/1468797620946808.
[6] Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” 199.
[7] Image taken from Ryan Murphy, dir. Eat, Pray, Love. 2010. New York: Columbia Pictures, 2010. Online.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Murphy, Ryan, dir. Eat, Pray, Love. 2010. New York: Columbia Pictures, 2010. Online.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Image taken from Ryan Murphy, dir. Eat, Pray, Love. 2010. New York: Columbia Pictures, 2010. Online.
[12] Ibid.
[13] In the email, Liz also writes that in Italy, she had learned that the word tutti means everybody. Hence the metonymy of the last sentence of the email.
[15] Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” 201.
[16] Ibid., 202.
[17] Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Contamination,” in Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, 101. London and New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
[18] Ibid., 102–103.
[19] Ibid., 107.
[20] Homi Bhabha, “The Location of Culture,” (London: Routledge, 1994), 2.
[21] Ibid., 58.
[22] Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Contamination,” 111.
[23] Ibid., 113.
[24] Sumit Chakrabarti, “Moving Beyond Edward Said: Homi Bhabha And The Problem Of Postcolonial Representation,” Interdisciplinary Political And Cultural Journal 14 no. 1 (2012): 10, DOI: 10.2478/v10223–012–0051–3.
[25] Ibid.
