Rana's Wedding

Rana’s Wedding and Private


Today was the last class of the year and we watched perhaps the best films of the semester. I am extremely grateful to have been able to take this course. I learned to break down my own barriers in my judgments of another person, and the dehumanizing effects of Orientalism.
I really enjoyed Rana’s wedding because of its lightheartedness. It was the first film that I felt humanized the life of the everyday middle-eastern girl. The film was lent an authenticity in its production.
The second film we watched was Private. It told the story of a Palestinian family living on the border between Israel and Palestine. The family’s home was occupied by the Israeli army. The film was filled with wonderful performances. The film was haunting in its portrayal of Israeli occupation. The class couldn’t help but draw parallels to the Holocaust. This sickening tale of humanity, shows how quickly creating an “other”, can lead to history’s greatest crimes being recommitted.
After taking this course, I leave with a greater appreciation of the middle east and a greater understanding of the importance of education.

The Clash in the eyes of an African-American

The Clash in the eyes of an African-American

This class was my first formal education on the culture of the Middle East. I had studied the governmental policies of Iran and Egypt, but I had never looked at the culture of the people.
Over the course, I have recognized many parallels between the treatment of Arabs and African-American. The exploitation of the culture in media, the trinity of stereotypes and the treatment by Europeans all have interesting parallels. I wrote my first post with this idea in mind. And throughout the course, the idea never left my mind. I was particularly affected by the idea of the media image of Black people and Middle Eastern people. Both are exploited for profit, the women are either incredibly over sexualized or incredibly angry, the men are brutish, lazy and greedy. These stereotypes or used to enforce racist government agendas, from lack of proper funding for education to illegal wars that devastate entire nations.
I do not know if the two communities will ever relate to each other and fight against the negative images that both receive. After all, both of us are educated about each group through the media. The only entity that can ever unite us is education. Without education I will forever be the rap video vixen, and my Arab counterpart will be the colonial harem.

Is there always an other?

Is there always an “other”?

We often asked this question in class. Will there always be an other? And the answer is yes; there will always be another being or population to construct our identities against.
The act of creating an other isn’t the evil, however. The evil lies in the creation and manipulation of the ”other”. Whether it be for economic, social or sexual purposes, when this image and idea is manipulated, the construct of the other becomes the most damaging.
The east has always been quite different from the west. The language, dress, religion, food, and general culture are vastly different from that of European and American nations. However as westerners, we must remain vigilant in the fight against ignorance. There are many nuances of eastern culture that the west may never understand. But we must fight to respect them. We cannot become cowboys of the world and go tearing down institutions of the east, simply because they are different. Because just as the east is different from the west, England is different from France, New York is different from San Francisco, Harlem is different from Midtown. We are all blessed with the gift of diversity, a gift I cherish every time I eat a gyro, dance salsa, or watch Britain’s got talent. Its okay to have “others”, because we are all human, and all different, but the humanity of every being must never be denied.

Susan Boyle

In a class based on Edward Sad’s classic Orientalism, one would expect all discussions to be directly related to such. I expected all classes to be directly related to middle-eastern topics in order to understand the course’s main goal. However, a short YouTube sensation changed everything. Susan Boyle, an English woman, who meets few of the basic standards of beauty, challenged all of the public stereotypes. She provided an interesting add-on to our conversations about the other. How quickly do we make another being “the other”? I found it interesting that the public creates a familiar stereotype for women. In order to be considered attractive and worthy of attention, there has to be some sort of sexual element to their personality. Susan came out immediately and let lose any sort of sexuality she had. A pronounced virgin (though later debunked), she was void of any attractive qualities. And then she sang…. The beauty of her voice shocked a worldwide public. So many of us create borders and judgments about people very quickly, and Susan Boyle was the one of the first time that we could all publicly look at ourselves.

Is Orientalism Real

Is Orientalism Real?
Last week we watched a film titled Loose Change, it detailed the attack on the World Trade Center that subsequently led to the Iraq War. The construct of the Arab enemy who terrorized major American centers became an icon of the Iraq War. Orientalism is the construct created by Westerners of Eastern image and stereotypes. And Orientalism is the leading foundation for the Iraq War.
Orientalism is real, every single day an American soldier dies, or an Iraqi child is killed, and Orientalism is proven real. When humanity is overlooked for the sake of wealth and in the name of the White Man’s Burden so to speak, Orientalism is as prevalent as it ever was.
The more relevant question would be, can we ever change the status quo, can we ever rid ourselves of the Oriental constructs. Is it human nature? How do we stop hating one another? Will we ever be able to really understand each other?
As long as Orientalism is real, none of these questions will ever be answered.

Loose Change

Loose change is a conspiracy film about the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. It was written and directed by Dylan Avery and became an internet sensation. Prior to watching it in class, I had seen it online and dismissed the film as ludicrous. However, two years later, as I watched it in class I didn’t focus so much on the supposed conspiracy as I did the critique of the government. As I was watching the film I became very angry at the arrogance of the Bush administration.
The bush administration used stereotypes and xenophobia to manipulate an already divided nation into a war. The documentary addressed many unanswered questions. From practical problems such as the location of the debris of the plane that hit the pentagon, to questions of political connections. As an American who takes pride in my country, and loves my country, I was insulted by the sheer betrayal of our rights.

Not Without My Daughter

We watched a 1991 film starring, American sweetheart Sally Field, appropriately titled Not Without My Daughter. In the film Sally Field, her Iranian husband played by Alfred Molina and their daughter set out on a proposed two-week vacation to Iran. Once they set foot on Iranian soil that are greeted by a crowd of fully clothed people coming to aggressively hug and kiss the three of them. In the film this seen is visually alarming; Sally Field looks terrified as she is swarmed by an army of black cloaks. Within weeks, her husband changes for the worse. His Iranian roots come to light, and after five years of marriage, a trip back home was all it took for him to become an abusive maniac, or at least that’s how its portrayed in the film. The film is portrayed with a xenophobic anger; the women are all constantly victimized by the villainous bearded dark-skinned Iranian men. Little attention is given to Sally Field’s character’s manipulation of her daughter and the racist rhetoric of the film. The film ignores any manic behavior from Molina prior to his arrival; it just reinvigorates the stereotype of the heathen oriental. They may try to cover it in American appearances, but at some point that heathen blood takes over.

The Continuation of Colinialism through Caricature (Orientalism Essay)

Tiffany Ward
Orientalism & Occidentalism
February 2009

“Arrayed in the brilliant colors of exoticism and exuding a full-blown yet uncertain sensuality, the Orient, where fathomable mysteries dwell and cruel and barbaric scenes are staged, has fascinated and disturbed Europe for a long time” (Alloula 3). In the world of colonialism, imperialism and Orientalism, caricatures must be created for the continual survival of such systems. The heathen, barbaric, violent Arab, the seductive, lustful, submissive, harem and the greedy, ravenous, chauvinistic ruler fill the world of oriental caricatures. They were created with the intention of colonizing an “other” world. From their inception centuries ago and into the 21st century, these stereotypes have been effective in continuing western colonialism and resistance to tolerance.
In the creation of Orientalism, white men shaped a hierarchy of power which they controlled. “[The] principle was to make sure that no Oriental was ever allowed to be independent and rule himself” (Said 228). The rhetoric used within Orientalism serves the ultimate purpose of excusing and explaining colonialism. The Orient is a region filled with people to be controlled. In The Colonial Harem, a volume of “educational” postcards featuring eastern women, photographers portray women within a similar framework. “Barbarism substitutes the weight of premature paternity and maternity. Young girls do not play with dolls but already rock flesh-and-blood babies in their arms-when they are not feeding them from their barely formed breasts” (Alloula 40). Even the young women are delegated the image of the unrestrained orient. Their images needed to be studied and reproduced in photographs just as they needed to be colonized, according to the Occidental thought.
During the 19th and 20th centuries the Oriental character of the heathen Arab became alarmingly prevalent in film. In Jack Shaheen’s 2001 novel, he surveyed more than 900 film appearances of Arab characters, of those, only a dozen were positive and 50 were balanced. Shaheen writes "Seen through Hollywood’s distorted lenses, Arabs look different and threatening” (Shaheen 9). The Oriental image continued to be propagated despite the increased access to the eastern world. A more developed period only brought another art form to exploit these caricatures. The portrayal of Arabs in film was one-dimensional and unrealistic, yet it was the news media that greatly distorted their humanity. TV’s Promised Land is an examination of the American News Media portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The film features a montage of news clips featuring the familiar image of evil suicide-bombing Palestinians juxtaposed with good, humane Israelites. While the news will feature reports and specials on different events in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it is unjustifiably one-sided. Promised Land presents examples of these stories and the common thread is the lack of humanity and victim hood spared to the Palestinians. The families interviewed are always Israelites. This denial of humanity is a modern continuation of centuries-old Orientalism.
In the western world, Easterners were often viewed with a sense of sensuality. “The popular image of slave girls, harems, and concubines…continued to horrify and titillate Western critics of the Muslim world throughout the colonial period” (Alloula xv). Eastern women became the markers of exoticism in the western view of the Orient. They were constantly placed into the stereotypes of erotic yet submissive harems. “[Women] have long been [used as] phantasmic representations of Western designs on the Orient” (Alloula xiv). Westerners created an image of the Orient based on the features of its women, yet the women themselves were viewed simply as “slave girls, harems, and concubines”. These stereotypes were necessary to create the image of the Other. These women were viewed as vastly different from European women of the time; their dress, dance, and display of sexuality greatly differed from that of the conservative Victorian woman. “[Orientalism] set the stage for the deployment of phantasms. There [was] no phantasm, though without sex” (Alloula 3). The “open” sexuality of the Oriental women provided a validation of their otherness.
During the process of colonization the sexualitization of the Orient served the purpose of justifying European colonial interference. The construct of western-defined eastern femininity was seductive yet submissive. “[The Harem was] the ideal figure…hidden, yet available, core, always throbbing with restrained sensuality” (Alloula 74). This ideal harem desired and needed control, and in the minds of the Europeans, the harem needed to be controlled by them. “The British…had attempted in India and Africa to collaborate with the women under the pretext of liberating them from oppression by their own men” (Alloula xviii). While, the British and other colonizers may have been misogynistic in their goals and actions their ignorance of Eastern traditions allowed them to solely demonized Arab men.
The Oriental man with his multiple wives and excessive wealth became the emblem of Arab masculinity. According to Occidental thought women were ignored by the by Arabs, because of their belief in polygamy. Early westerners created this thought, starting with the Greeks. Herodotus wrote an account of the Persian Wars, and discussed the Arabs lack of appreciation for women. “The Asiatics, when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troubled themselves about the matter” (Alloula xiv). As early as the 5th Century, ignorance of different cultural customs was interpreted into degrading rhetoric. In the modern version of storytelling; film, this rhetoric continues on a visual level. One of the repeated caricatures of Arabs is the image of the absurd wealth and greed. The repetition of these characteristics dehumanizes the Middle Eastern man.
Heathens and harems fill the literature and cinema of colonialism and Orientalism. Europeans were mystified after reading tales of the Middle East, and thereafter roused to colonize the people. Now, Americans “leave movie theaters with a sense of solidarity, united by their distance from these peoples of ridicule” (Shaheen 15). The old ideas founded during that original colonial period are as relevant now as they were then. The sensualization and dehumanization of the Middle East was used to excuse and perpetrate the 20th and 21st century manifestations of colonialism.

Walt Disney; the Occidentalist

In class today we watched the Disney classic Aladdin. As a child, I never really liked Aladdin; I was more partial to films such as Beauty and the Beast and Snow White. However, as I aged Aladdin drew my interest, and became an interesting topic for discussion. My friends and I read and chuckled at a countdown of the 9 most racist Disney characters, the sheer racism that was fed to so many American children for the past century, was beyond disturbing.
During class, another student brought up a question that I often think of when discussing stereotypes and race in media. After watching 30 minutes of ridiculously over-sexed and offensive caricatures, she posed the question, “What should my response be to this? I can’t help but laugh at some of the characters; one in fact reminds me of family member.” Often I wonder this, as well. How do we reconcile comedic interpretations of ourselves without causing offense?

Countdown of most racist disney characters: http://www.cracked.com/article_15677_9-most-racist-disney-characters.html

The Reality of Orientalism

In the western world, Easterners were often viewed with a sense of sensuality. “The popular image of slave girls, harems, and concubines…continued to horrify and titillate Western critics of the Muslim world throughout the colonial period” (Alloula xv). Eastern women became the markers of exoticism in the western view of the Orient. They were constantly placed into the stereotypes of erotic yet submissive harems. “[Women] have long been [used as] phantasmic representations of Western designs on the Orient” (Alloula xiv). Westerners created an image of the Orient based on the features of its women, yet the women themselves were viewed simply as “slave girls, harems, and concubines”. These stereotypes were necessary to create the image of the Other. These women were viewed as vastly different from European women of the time; their dress, dance, and display of sexuality greatly differed from that of the conservative Victorian woman. “[Orientalism] set the stage for the deployment of phantasms. There [was] no phantasm, though without sex” (Alloula 3). The “open” sexuality of the Oriental women provided a validation of their otherness.
The Oriental man with his multiple wives and excessive wealth became the emblem of Arab masculinity. According to Occidental thought women were ignored by the by Arabs, because of their belief in polygamy. Early westerners created this thought, starting with the Greeks. Herodotus wrote an account of the Persian Wars, and discussed the Arabs lack of appreciation for women. “The Asiatics, when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troubled themselves about the matter” (Alloula xiv). As early as the 5th Century, ignorance of different cultural customs was interpreted into degrading rhetoric. In the modern version of storytelling; film, this rhetoric continues on a visual level. One of the repeated caricatures of Arabs is the image of the absurd wealth and greed. The repetition of these characteristics dehumanizes the Middle Eastern man.

The Process of Sexualization

During the process of colonization the sexualitization of the Orient served the purpose of justifying European colonial interference. The construct of western-defined eastern femininity was seductive yet submissive. “[The Harem was] the ideal figure…hidden, yet available, core, always throbbing with restrained sensuality” (Alloula 74). This ideal harem desired and needed control, and in the minds of the Europeans, the harem needed to be controlled by them. “The British…had attempted in India and Africa to collaborate with the women under the pretext of liberating them from oppression by their own men” (Alloula xviii). While, the British and other colonizers may have been misogynistic in their goals and actions their ignorance of Eastern traditions allowed them to solely demonized Arab men.

To Die in Jerusalem

Today in class we watched an HBO documentary To Die in Jerusalem. To Die in Jerusalem is a story of two victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both were young women, with strong family backgrounds. On March 29, 2002 Ayat al-Akhras, an 18 year old Palestinian woman killed herself in a suicide bombing. The other victim was an 18 year old Israeli woman, Rachel Levy. In To Die in Jerusalem, the mothers of both women meet each other.
The film is successful in its attempt to humanize both victims; however the story is mainly focused on Rachel Levy’s mother’s struggle. This film shed light on the ignorance of so many of us, and the dehumanizing view we have of Palestinians. In the film, this point of view is unfortunately represented by Rachel’s mother. Adverse to her goal, Ayat’s mother and family are actually humanized in this film, and Rachel’s mother is in turn villianized to some extent. Her ignorance of the circumstances that drove Ayat to want to kill herself, and her unwillingness to understand detract from the compassion that one feels immediately after hearing her story. She is vengeful, resentful, and angry. In the beginning her feelings are justified, however once she decides she wants to meet Ayat’s mother these feelings intensify, and her compassion disappears.
This film speaks to those of us who are unaware of the many difficulties in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It is eloquently made, and provides us with a humanizing insight into the Palestinian side of the conflict.

Tonight's news...

Media Discussed:
• Stuart Hall: Representation and the Media
• Edward Said: On Orientalism

This week we viewed another set of films discussing the representation of stereotypes in media. Once again we watched films that organized a series of images based on the media portrayal of “angry and violent Arabs”. During class discussion it was argued that had any other race been represented in such a way there would be an outrage. And as shown in last weeks post I agreed.
However I thought back to the local news segment I had watched the night before. There was another crime shown where the suspect was presumed to be an African-American male. A non-descript description was given; tall African-American male, mid to heavy-weight and accepted. Daily we hear of the violent crimes allegedly committed by African-American males without question. I bring this thought process into this week’s blog because I would like to discuss how American media didn’t just begin to become racist after 9/11 or even the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. I would like to for us to keep that in mind when we offer blanket statements about media racism. Just as we don’t question the motive, or likelihood that it was an African-American male who committed the crime broadcast on CBS news last night, we don’t question the likelihood that “Muslim extremists” are responsible for any sort of terrorist attack domestic or international. Racism in American media is something that needs to be challenged by everyone of every race on behalf of all people who are misrepresented.

Another Black Face

This week in class we viewed two documentaries focused on eastern people from the western perspective. Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Reel Bad Arabs dealt specifically with media in the United States.
Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land, was written to give a voice to the Palestinian side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As an American I am often told by the American media to relinquish any doubts about Israel’s guilt. Because of this denial, many questions remained. I understood the origins of the conflict, but was misinformed about the reason for its continuation into the last century. While the film used an overly-biased to tone to compensate for the onslaught of Pro-Israel news stories, it was thought-provoking. This films aim to break down American Pro-Israel propaganda, instead became a propaganda piece for Palestine. And while I didn’t leave the classroom with a better understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I was given the tools to ask better questions.
The latter film Reel Bad Arabs inspired my title for this post. Black face in the early 20th century was cartoonish, demeaning, and over-simplified caricature of the black American used in films and plays. Black Americans were simplified into three characters; the brute, the hypersexual mulatto, and the mammy. This century and the seventy years leading up to it brought in another caricature; that of the Oriental. The oriental or Middle-Easterner is simplified into three characters; the terrorist, the seductive woman, and the greedy Arab. Reel Bad Arabs used a collection of scenes from popular American films featuring Middle-Eastern characters. Beloved American films, children’s classics, and American classics were filled with hateful derogatory images. Stereotypical Arabs were awkwardly placed in films such as Father of the Bride 2, simply for a humorous effect. If this were any other American ethnic group, there would have been an uproar of protest, not laughter.