Page 185 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

P. 185

ORIENTALISM

a sense of the Orient. Said argues that Orientalism is to be found in
both historical and academic accounts largely arising from Britain and
France, and more recently the US. It is not to be understood as a form
of racism; rather, it arises from the intention of understanding disparate
and different cultures. Orientalism is a discourse.
As a discourse, Orientalism says little about the Orient. Said argued
that through a discursive conception of the Orient, the West was able to
construct an image of its own identity. That is, the West was the negative
of ‘Oriental’, comprising what the ‘Other’ did not. In this sense,
Orientalism involves a binary opposition that finds the West as central in
modern, enlightened thought, and the Orient as the mysterious and
often dangerous Other. Like all oppositions, this binary relies on a series
of cultural constructions that in this instance can be understood as
biological essentialism, as well as racial, religious and cultural prejudices.
The concept of Orientalism is useful for analysing media. Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom provides an example where the white
(Western) American hero is understood as noble, brave, strong, sexual
and of consummate ability. In contrast, Oriental characters in the
movie are either helpless victims awaiting the arrival of the hero or
villains who enslave their own people.
Said (1985) argued that contemporary versions of Orientalism are
to do with Arab and Islamic cultures. Certainly this concern seems
apparent in the reporting on events such as the Gulf War as well as the
US’s post-September 11, 2001 ‘War Against Terrorism’. Here, the
generalisation and grouping together of religious and national cultures
that are collectively perceived as a threat to world order require critical
consideration.
The use of the concept of Orientalism need not be restricted to
discussing national or religious cultures. Some, such as Brennan (2001:
95) argue that the same concept can be applied to the category of
youth. Here youth are cast as the helpless Other and the world of
adulthood collectively imagined as responsible, enlightened and able.
With the amount of intellectual discourse devoted to youth studies, it
may be pertinent to revisit Said’s call for ‘a plurality of terrains,
multiple experiences and different constituencies’ (1985: 105). Youth,
like the Orient, is often only captured through a discourse that relies
on generalisations. It is the implications of these generalisations that are
central to the theory of Orientalism.

See also: Discourse, Ideology, Race, Representation