Lately, in one of my classes, I have been focusing on the Israël-Palestinian conflit. It draws up many questions and complexities...which I am not going to delve into right now. Instead, it reminds me of a work I did on 'Orientalism' and Hollywood. This mix of fascination and fear of the Middle East, also identifiable as the ‘Orient’, has been long-standing within the West. The Western media and Hollywood particularly, have placed an intense focus on Arabs and Islam often portraying “highly exaggerated” stereotypes and conveying “belligerent hostility” towards ‘them’. Over centuries, the oriental East and Islam with their associations of barbarism and primitive ‘Otherness’ have been constructed as a binary opposite to the civilized and democratic ‘Occident’.
It seems we always need an Other, to villify, and to makes 'us' feel better.
Since the ‘terrorist’ attacks of September 11, in 2001, in the United States, there has been a heightened Western fascination and paranoia of the Orient, due to the incessant links with terrorism and ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. There is little doubt that in a media saturated-era, the attacks were a “terror spectacle” with images of the crashing planes and crumbling Twin Towers etched into thousands of peoples memories. What was shown live across global news channels “looked like a disaster film”. However, ironically, Hollywood is far from unfamiliar with terrorists and the spectacular. On the contrary, terrorism has long been a focus in Hollywood filmmaking, as well as the vilification of Arabs as incompetent, evil villains. The list of films dealing with such topics is endless...and rarely, is the blame put on the 'Occident'.
I also point out that the Orient “consisted – and consists - of the great civilizations to the East of the West”. Yet, we find there is increasingly a narrowed description of the Orient. We can find that all to often, it indicates the Middle East and discounts China, India, Japan, Korea and other parts of the Far East as also being ‘Oriental’.
It seems we always need an Other, to villify, and to makes 'us' feel better.
Since the ‘terrorist’ attacks of September 11, in 2001, in the United States, there has been a heightened Western fascination and paranoia of the Orient, due to the incessant links with terrorism and ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. There is little doubt that in a media saturated-era, the attacks were a “terror spectacle” with images of the crashing planes and crumbling Twin Towers etched into thousands of peoples memories. What was shown live across global news channels “looked like a disaster film”. However, ironically, Hollywood is far from unfamiliar with terrorists and the spectacular. On the contrary, terrorism has long been a focus in Hollywood filmmaking, as well as the vilification of Arabs as incompetent, evil villains. The list of films dealing with such topics is endless...and rarely, is the blame put on the 'Occident'.
I also point out that the Orient “consisted – and consists - of the great civilizations to the East of the West”. Yet, we find there is increasingly a narrowed description of the Orient. We can find that all to often, it indicates the Middle East and discounts China, India, Japan, Korea and other parts of the Far East as also being ‘Oriental’.
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