On Febuary 17th 2010, the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art opened their 2010 “Documentary Fortnight” film festival on international non-fiction films and on the 18th, they presented a film by George Gittoes titled “The Miscreants of Taliwood”. This was the third film of a trilogy by George Gittoes, of which the previous two films had also been presented at previous Documentary Fortnights. The MoMA promotional summary advertized the film in a classic travelogue style - “an extraordinary journey to a forbidden zone”. MoMAs promotional material fails to go beyond the cliché to present any insight as to why the curators chose to include this film or why they feel that George Gittoes body work deserved to be included in their film festival three …show more content…
Through his narration we learn that he was in Islamabad during the siege of the Red Mosque. The only relevant background that he reveals to the audience is that young religiously motivated students soon needed to decide between adherences to their religious principles and face possible death, or to surrender to the Pakistan military. Gittoes also shows some brief footage of his Pakistani assistant, Waqar Alam, who is also the cameraman who records all the footage of Gittoes. He plays upon a classic travelogue technique to establish the authenticity and authority of the film maker as a heroic explorer who travels to dangerous and hostile lands to bring back the trophy footage and act as an intermediary between the audience and the exotic locals pictured. Gittoes consciously both heightens and mocks this tradition at the end of the Red Mosque footage sequence where he shows footage in which he is “shot and killed”, using exploding dye packs under his shirt. This also is an early indicator to the audience that that even though it is a non-fiction film, Gittoes is neither attempting to nor pretending to present an objective impartial truth, and that he feels that he can present a greater filmic truth by not attempting to obtain a objective neutral camera viewpoint. While not evident in the movie, Gittoes frankly tells us in the Q&A session that Waqar, who has …show more content…
While filming on location, the actors and crew are threatened by Taliban members to stop filming or they will be shot. The director elects to shut down production instead of risking the lives of everyone involved. Gittoes decides that the cost of funding a Taliwood film, $4,000 US for one film and $7,000 for two, while a large investment of capital for locals, is an amount that as a Westerner, he can easily find, and so he becomes a financial backer for two films. As the financial backer, he has power over the film and the cast and crew of the film industry which is seeing fewer and fewer productions. Gittoes can decide the plot, the script and importantly the film locations, which he uses to push into the tribal areas at the fringes of the Northwest Frontier Provinces next to Afganistan. Locations where he admits is the most dangerous not only for himself, but the film crew as well, who later balk at filming in the Tribal areas but are ultimately persuaded to do so by Gittoes. Since this is done by voiceover, the viewer cannot tell how much was real sentiment and how much was added excitement to create the aura of risk and danger. One of the movie participants, an actress called No-No, is aware of the power that Gittoes has, and views him as a
...ome to us at an interesting time, before the Revolution, 40 percent of Tehran movie theaters were showing pornography. The function of this office is purification as well as promotion for the arts.” The first part notions the Western stereotype of the Orient since the same as the time when it was discovered, but now the people of the Orient realize the stereotypes and are changing the way they see themselves because of these stereotypes. It is only by correcting these assumptions, stereotypes, and misconceptions of the Orient at the heart of society today, the media can Orientalism be fixed. The Eastern people must be allowed to sympathize in movies and films to humanize them and have intimate interactions. Otherwise, the Orient will be continued to be known incorrectly as a place with people who are without reason, screaming, protesting, and in swarming mobs.
For years Western scholars and novelists have been drawn to the story, yet until now there has been no documentary. Ric Burns's film is a first.
These films also use the public’s great anticipation and fear of terrorists in these films to engage people and also the films often cleverly use the publics sensitive fear of modern day terrorism to make the films more serious, ...
He is able to capture the realness of the time and setting through his words, and write for a purpose. As a result, it can be said that he uses this work of historical fiction less as a theatrical stage and more as a platform to introduce the audience to the inhumaneness of Afghanistan. He not only incorporates the Taliban’s grueling “beard lookout men,” who patrol the roads in their fancy Toyota trucks in hopes of finding “a smooth-shaven face to bloody,” but he also displays the horrific and bloodcurdling abuse of women that exists at the hands’ of men and the feelings of great despair and pain that these women face as a result. Living in a state of unbearable fear of the next beating, the next detonating bomb, and the next brutal attempt of the Taliban, the lives of these characters feel almost too real to not be true. Resultantly, the reader is left to wonder whether or not this added literary dimension of realness is actually an introspective study of individuals that Hosseini has long
Orientalism is the way that the Middle East is depicted by its’ friendly acquaintances over in the West. In other terms, it is a “racist discourse which constructs the orient for Western aggrandizement.” The way that the Afghans are depicted in the film alongside Rambo makes the audience sympathize with them. The little boy also looks up to Rambo. He looks up to him a masculine father-figure. Using th...
Ever since the establishment of cinema in the early 1900s, Hollywood has continuously recreated elements of history to reenact for its future generations. In order to clearly broadcast a specific theme or message to relay to viewers around the world, Hollywood executives tend to embellish real life events, in order to provide a “fairytale” aspect to a seemingly not so “happily- ever-after” story from history. As part of this “fairytale” aspect, Hollywood tends to delegitimize as well as provide a more disrespectful and more comical version of societies and cultures in the specific time frame that the film is being set. Through the art of story telling, the movies Mulan and Kung Fu Panda, depict the two sides of Hollywood, the falsifying and mockery making of Chinese people, their society, beliefs and true events of history and that of an accurate portrayal.
In My Forbidden Face, Latifa explains how the Taliban are waging a cultural war against Western values. The Taliban’s goal in Kabul is to secure the environment where purity of people, especially of women, may be sacred again. However, in the book, Latifa discusses many issues that the people from Kabul experience at the hands of the Taliban such as the plight of women and men’s struggles, their views on news, media, and art, people’s education, and their religion. Throughout the book, the methods that the Taliban reinforce are very unreasonable, which leads to violence.
Movies, one can argue, are one of America’s greatest pastimes. Unfortunately, after 9/11, films have become increasingly prejudiced against American Muslims. In movies Muslims are frequently portrayed negatively. According to James Emery, a professor of Anthropology, Hollywood profits off of “casting individuals associated with specific negative stereotypes”. This is due to the fact that viewers automatically link characters with their clichéd images (Emery). For Muslims, the clichéd image is of the violent fundamentalist, who carried out the terroristic attacks on 9/11. As a result, the main stereotypes involved in movies display Muslims as extremists, villains, thieves, and desert nomads. An example of a movie that has such a negative character role for Muslims in film is Disney’s cartoon Aladdin, depict...
The concept of Orientalism is one in which Edward Said, a renowned intellectual with a solid background in the field of Arab study, is particularly knowledgeable. If the concepts surrounding Orientalism are broken down into specific elemental degrees, then Said portrays the American conception of Arabic entities and their inhabitants with a plethora of stereotypes that generate a false depiction of the Arabic culture. This, of course, is only an extremely small portion of the grandiose Orientalist dilemma that is currently quite prevalent in modern day society. Yet, for this paper’s ultimate purpose, this sector will be the sole focus. As Said intimates, the lens that the Americans utilize in order to acquire information about Arabs is one that reflects perceptions falsely. This lens is skewed in order to protect and support certain interests, whether they be American or western based. Movies, particularly when generated through the Hollywood action- based genre, have an false generalization of the way in which an Arabic people are. In some respects, the Hollywood produced movie, Three Kings, is a pertinent acknowledgment of the former. In many portions of the film, the enumerated antics may cause for a feeling of disdain toward the Arab nation. Yet, compared to the majority of the typical Hollywood action-based films, Three Kings manages to break away from these abhorrent stereotypes and provide a more than average acknowledgment of the sheer complexity of the Arab people as individual, separate from Saddam Hussein. Therefore, Said’s primary proposed conception of Orientalism is challenged and the Arab is depicted as a person trying to fight Hussein.
The Arabian Nights.Trans. Husain Haddwy. Ed. Muhsin Mahdi. New york: W.W. Norton & Co., 1990. E Book.
In addition, the employment of Arabic language, especially colloquial Arabic, helps focus the audience on the internal political and social intricacies of the Middle East. The incorporation also highlights the effort on part of the filmmakers to break away from traditional presentations of the “Orient,” by presenting personable accounts of individuals such as Wasim, which helps demonstrate how the stereotypical portrayals of Arabs may have changed in the film industry. The effort made towards more culturally and historically appropriate depictions of the Middle East supports Irwin’s belief that the field has progressed and knowledge has increased, against Said’s insistence that Orientalism has remained frozen in place (Kamiya). However, it is important to keep in mind that Syriana is not representative of all films depicting the Middle East and that other films may depict Orientalism in a different
The experience of marginalized Americans, specifically South Asian Muslims, following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on New York City has been brought into light hundreds of times due to the extreme politicization of the event. However, few portrayals have been as powerful as Karan Johar’s movie, My Name Is Khan. Unlike most Western movies where the entirety of South Asia is deemed a constant threat to national safety, this movie uses a different point of view to show the “other side” of Islam. In this essay, I will examine the role of race in My Name Is Khan, by arguing that the movie lends oppressed minority groups a sense of unity with other minority groups.
Hamid’s fiction deals with varied issues: from infidelity to drug trade in the subcontinent and, in the light of contemporary developments, about Islamic identity in a globalised world. His first novel, Moth Smoke (2000) won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2000. His other novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Decibel Award and the South Bank Award for Literature. This book serves as a testament to his elegant style as he deftly captures the straining relationship between America and Pakistan.
The concept of orientalism refers to the western perceptions of the eastern cultures and social practices. It is a specific expose of the eurocentric universalism which takes for granted both, the superiority of what is European or western and the inferiority of what is not. Salman Rushdie's Booker of the Bookers prize winning novel Midnights Children is full of remarks and incidents that show the orientalist perception of India and its people. It is Rushdie's interpretation of a period of about 70 years in India's modern history dealing with the events leading to the partition and beyond. Rushdie is a fantasist and a creator of alternate realities, the poet and prophet of a generation born at the degree zero of national history. The present paper is an attempt to study how Salman Rushdie, being himself a writer of diasporic consciousness, sometimes perceives India and its people as orientalist stereotypes and presents them in a derogatory manner.
Films and videos are rarely a simple record of what the camera sees. The reaction of audiences may vary according to what part of the world they are from, together with their customs and beliefs, when and where the film was made and set, and the ability of the film makers to lead the audience to a “willing suspension of disbelief” (Films in our lives, 1953) so that when the audience watch the film they are to think that what they are watching is actually happening rather than being played out by actors. Films tell stories about people – the way they live, behave, think, feel and interact. They show us in pictures, actions, words and sound what the world is like, was like, or might be like – or what the director’s particular view of the world might be. The film and video cameras provide us with a lens to look more closely at ourselves and our world (Films in our lives, 1953).