Cartography anyone?
The following is a reflection I wrote after viewing THE WEST WING on February 28th, 2001:
Many people say that television network news [information] has become something barely more than entertainment. Conversely, then, we can also say that network entertainment is becoming more informational... sermonizing and teaching us various ideologies as it goes along.... And sometimes, it does something right....
At the media education conference held in La Coruna in 1995, Marieli Rowe evoked a spirited response at her series of workshops when she used an 'upside down' map to illustrate perspective, point of view and ideology -- something I am sure most media literacy teachers do...
For anyone watching THE WEST WING on February 28, 2001, you will have noticed the scenario with C.J. and Josh meeting with the "Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality". Members of the organization demonstrated that the Mercator projection map, first published in 1569, encouraged European imperialism, and because it is still used in US schools today, promotes an "ethnic bias against the Third World."
For about 4 minutes, viewers were instructed in the history of the Mercator map which showed Greenland as the same or bigger than Africa, whereas Africa is 14 times larger than Greenland, etc. While I didn't appreciate being lumped with C.J. in her rather naive amazement at not realizing or knowing about this disparity already (after all she's the communications person for the Most Powerful Man of the Greatest Nation on Earth), I had to remember the mental gymnastics I had to do the first time I saw a map held up with Australia at the top, and realized that it was all perspective, not reality, being represented. Until someone points it out to you, sometimes you just don't see. (A couple of years ago I was able to obtain a cloth map with Australia at the top of the world, just under Antarctica, and it hangs in our media studies center... always a conversation-starter!)
I then went to my handy CD Rom Encarta Encyclopedia and learned more about Gerardus Mercator (a quote from the article follows).
There are two reasons I am sharing this on-going education experience with you:
I wish the writers of the WEST WING could have had a media educator on board as a consultant for this episode (maybe they could have then used the Australian map instead of just turning the regular one upside down), but all in all, they did a pretty good job at raising awareness about just visual representation (size matters...), POV and the part ideology plays in our lives.
Mercator’s famous map of the world, drawn on the projection that carries his name, was published in Duisburg in 1569. The projection is very useful to navigators because straight lines between any two points on such a map show a constant compass direction for the course of a ship. Mercator worked on maps of Europe and other parts of the world. In these maps he used new information to correct many inaccuracies in the maps of the ancient Alexandrian geographer Ptolemy, which for hundreds of years had been the standard source for mapmakers. Mercator was the first to use the word "atlas" for a group of maps. See also Map.
Rose Pacatte, fsp
Pauline Center for Media Studies
Email: Mediastudies@pauline.org
The PAULINE CENTER FOR MEDIA STUDIES is a project of the Daughters of St. Paul of the US-Toronto Province. The Center was founded in 1995 to promote media literacy education in view of integrating human and Gospel values in the world of communication through community-based media education programs.