ABSTRACT
International exhibitions emerged as showcases of modernity and progress, but also as windows onto the foreign, the different, the unexpected and the spectacular. The exoticism that so permeated nineteenth-century culture was also present within universal exhibitions, particularly since the appeal to the exotic contributed significantly to the financial success of these events. Virtually all of the exhibitions included a display of a native village or villages in which men and women purportedly revealed their daily lives while foreign musicians and dancers cluttered the scene. Women played an increasingly important role within this simulated exotic universe that often bore little relationship to existing social realities. Javanese dancers, Amazons from Dahomey, Egyptian belly dancers or the Algerian Ouled Nail were displayed before avid public eyes. But unlike Western women who used international exhibitions as tribunes for their claims and as privileged locations for collective organization, these women rarely chose to be present. This chapter explores the codes that regulated these ethnic shows. Designed less to teach than to distract, these dream shows offered the public a fantasized reality. Within this context, “exotic” women performed roles that conformed to the representations held by the general public. As mediators of distant and mysterious cultures, they incarnated both fantasized fears and ambiguous secret desires. Their presence ultimately reveals more about the characteristics of the Western public gaze and says little about the aspirations of these women.
