Summary: Deshpande - Elizabeth Blake

In Shekhar Deshpande’s recent essay, “The Confident Gaze,” Deshpande explores the hidden meaning behind National Geographic and their article on India’s 50 year anniversary of freedom from Brittan, something our nations have in common. National Geographic, while being a non-profit organization has a very American view of the development of budding democracies. Deshpande asserts out that the magazine is dangerously close to being a “blatantly ethnocentric” magazine posing as objective journalism. Deshpande discusses the framework their photography provides for a sugar-coated idea of India’s overall well being. ”National Geographic has made an aethstetic of its own photography.” Deshpande insists. “It is slick, it is technically flawless or even adventurous, and it attempts to sanitize and universalize the uncomfortable as well as different elements of other cultures.” Thus creating a palatable story for a group of people who desire to feel socially and worldly conscious while not bringing themselves down.