Essay.
13. To what degree is Edward Said's Orientalism still relevant to the depiction of Eastern culture in Western Media?
In this essay I will be looking at Edward Said's theory of Orientalism in Western media, in particular, in film. Orientalism is a way of seeing Middle East people and culture through the Western view. The West has been dominant and powerful in the construction of the image of the East. This essay argues that Western film industry has strengthened cultural stereotypes by which the East is viewed as threatening and inferior. In this essay I am examining an American action thriller The Siege (1998) that gives violent and terroristic representations of Arabs and Muslims, a British comedy drama East is East (1999) that is based on negative representation of Muslim man with strong religious believes and an American action drama Kingdom of heaven (2005), the film that involve a sensitive subject on religious conflict between Muslims and Christians. However, it has been argued, that is offers a fair view on these religions that both have good and bad members of each society. The analysis of these films is reference to Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism (1991) and confirms the idea that the Orient is barbaric, mysterious, exotic and powerless. The all chosen films I am going to analyse contain negative stereotypes about Islam and Arabs/Muslims. They also have examples of Islamophobic discourse.
According to Said (1991) Orientalism is ‘the system of thought by which dominant economic, social, cultural, and political powers establish spheres of ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’ and it is through such discursive practices that religions, races, cultures, and classes are represented’ (Aneli, S.R. et al, 2007: 23). It tries to an...
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...arkable experiences (Said, E., 1991: 1).
I agree with Schimm (2010) that elements of colonialist narrative are present in this film. The land is represented as it is belongs to Balian who points out that he wants to make it better. The people living on this land are also represented as belonging to him (Schlimm, M. R., 2010). However, they are happy and thankful for what the colonizer did. There is Said’s Orientalism discourse that the Occidental is capable to do more and better for the people than the Oriental (Schlimm, M. R., 2010). The Occidental is more intellectual, stronger and skilled than the Orient is portrayed.
According to Schimm (2010), the film became appealing to audiences due to its message of religious tolerance. The scenes of religious diversities have distracted the audience from embodied colonialism and Orientalism (Schlimm, M. R., 2010).
...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.
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 colony is not only a possibility in the geographical; it is a mental dominance that can imperialize the entire self. Entire continents have be domineered, resources completely dried, and at colonialism’s usual worst, the mental devastation of the indigenous culture has left a people hollow. Indigenous culture is no longer that. In the globalized world, no culture is autonomous; culture cannot breathe without new ideas and new perspectives, perspectives that have traditionally come from the people who have lived within the culture. But, the imposition of dominant cultures has certainly benefited from culture’s own vulnerability, as global similarities now exist throughout most different, yet not separate cultures. Postcolonialism is imperialism with a mask on, nothing less. As Franz Fanon puts it “that imperialism which today is fighting against a s true liberation of mankind leaves in its wake here and there tinctures of decay which we must search out and mercilessly expel from our land and our spirits.”
Orientalism, which became famous as a term after Edward Said’s book written in 1978, explains a power relation between the Orient and the Occident inspiring from the Foucault’s The Archeology of Knowledge and
Orientalism is never far from what Denys Hay ahs called the idea of Europe, a collective notion identifying ‘us’ Europeans as against all ‘those’ non-Europeans, and indeed it precisely what made that culture hegemonic both in and outside Europe: the idea of European identity as superior one in comparison with ass the non-European peoples and cultures (7).
Islam, a religion of people submitting to one God, seeking peace and a way of life without sin, is always misunderstood throughout the world. What some consider act of bigotry, others believe it to be the lack of education and wrong portrayal of events in media; however, one cannot not justify the so little knowledge that America and Americans have about Islam and Muslims. Historically there are have been myths, many attacks on Islam and much confusion between Islam as a religion and Middle Easter culture that is always associated with it. This paper is meant to dispel, or rather educate about the big issues that plague people’s minds with false ideas and this will only be touching the surface.
Course Reader. 289-300 Said, Edward W. "Introduction to Orientalism." Course Reader. 303-312 Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein.
... assertions that no European or American scholar could know the orient are criticized largely by Landow, however, in his view, whatever the European and American have done have resulted to acts of oppression. Moreover, Said is considered as a person who never took tie to welcome other scholars’ views which he would use to feature in his analysis. According to Landow, he considers this as the greatest single sin committed by a scholar in orientalism (Landow, N.d).
The film Lawrence of Arabia illustrations the experiences of a man’s exploration of places he has never been before, both on the globe and within his own mind. The leading role is sent to the Middle East during World War One, his experiences there are display disputes that are still prevalent in today’s world. The issues dealt with by the Arabians in the movie and the continued problems in present day Middle East are consequences of European domination. This control is executed through the idea of imperialism or, a countries attempt to expand their power, usually done by means of colonization, in an effort to strengthen their own countries livelihood. The conquest of Arabia by the British was the beginning of the political issues today in the
According to Said, one definition of Orientalism is that it is a "style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and the 'Occident'." This is connected to the idea that Western society, or Europe in this case, is superior in comparison to cultures that are non-European, or the Orient. This means that Orientalism is a kind of racism held toward anyone not European. Said wrote that Orientalism was "a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient." This Western idea of the Orient explains why so many European countries occupied lands they believed to be Oriental.
In the essay, the writer acknowledges the misunderstandings that come from media images by explaining the contrasts between these images and the teachings of the faith to support her claim that fear is the reason for this misconception. The conception that many people have of Muslims is that they are terrorists, anti-Semites, and fanatics. This conception exsists because television news and newspapers support that stereotype. The broadcast of such stereotypes encourages fear and accusations of the Islamic relegion's teachings. The writer explains that Islam teaches peace, tolerance, and equality. She further states that Muslims shown in the media have violated these teachings ...
Feibleman, James K. Understanding Oriental Philosophy: A Popular Account for the Western World. New York: Horizon, 1976.
We live in an age and time where media influence is at its highest. The media has an impact on us as an audience through every possible medium including both television and print media. As scientists find and cure diseases, as America finds a new country to invade, as the European markets fluctuate, there has been one constant subject prevalent in the Western media- Islam. 1.6 billion people in the world are of the Muslim religion (Desilver 2013), making it the world’s second largest religion, second to Christianity. Even prior to the events of 9/11, the religion of Islam has been under scrutiny by the media. Edward Said, infamous for his works on Orientalism has greatly contributed to our understanding of the Western misunderstanding of the Eastern based religion. Said has defined Orientalism as the Western’s style of domination, reconstruction, and authority over the Orient (Said 1978: 3). Orientalism has observable effects in the most forms of media. As a result, and irrational fear of Islam and those that practice the religion began-Islamophobia. As defined by the International Civil Liberties Alliance, Islamophobia is “a term which is widely used by NGOs and frequently appears in the media, tends to denote fear, hatred or prejudice against Islam and Muslim” (ICLA 2013). This project will attempt to understand what the audience perception is about Islamophobia in the media. It will aim to uncover the ways in which television channels amplify common misperceptions about Islam. As a Muslim myself, this is an area that has always been of interest to me, and like many audiences I have been able to witness the dimensions of Islamophobia s depicted by the western media. After the events of September 2001, the fears of Islam and ...
Said, Edward. ?Orientalism.? Literary Theory: An Anthology. Edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers Inc. 1998.
In this way, Salman Rushdie presents the derogatory picture of India throughout the novel preferring the superiority of what is European and inferiority of what is not. By presenting the orientalist perception of India, Rushdie attempts to attract the western readership. In spite of the fact that he himself is an Indian, he could not avoid the attraction of western readership. For this reason, sometimes, his position becomes ambivalent.