In reality, the accumulated knowledge set by Orientalism hardly embrace the wide range of diversity among the cultures of the East. Nonetheless, numerous literary works, arts, media and even scientific reports continue to portray the Orient based on the descriptions and artificial images set by the Orientalist discourse (Film). Such descriptions infuse stereotypes into people’s attitude and behaviors toward the Orientals. This is because people who do not have direct experience of the Orient tend to form their thoughts and imagination based on the indirect experiences provided by books, media, films or other secondary sources. In particular, Said mentions in his interview about the generalizations made on Oklahoma bombing incident to exemplify such stereotypes in people’s thoughts (Film).
In fact, it is through orientalism that the West sees its culture as complete and uses it to see itself as whole. Andreeva (2007) believes that placing the Orient against Europe helped Europeans to define their own self-identity in juxtaposition to orient the
The Other is used to show how a person, a group or a nation is different from the dominant ones physically or psychologically and this term creates stereotypes of The Orient. Europe has long relation and tradition with Orientalism because it created both European and
“Susano-o sprang out, drew his sword, and proceeded to cut the Yamata-no Orochi to pieces… the Yamata-no Orochi was now slain and Kushinada-hime was safe.” (Yamata-no Orochi Paragraphs 4 and 6, line 1) Susano-o, a man from a different land, freed the daughter of an elderly couple from the Yamata-no Orochi out of bravery. He also did it to prove he was worthy enough to marry Kushinada-hime. Persephone and Kushinada-hime are in the same position where they have to be sacrificed to a monster/villain. “He came upon an elderly couple and their daughter, Kushinada-hime. All three were crying sadly for she was to be sacrificed to the monster Yamata-no Orochi.” (Yamata-no Orochi Paragraph line )This scene depicts when Susano-o finds Kushinada-hime and her parents crying together because Kushinada-hime is to be sacrificed to the monster Yamata-no Orochi.
Orientalism and the study of the Middle East and North Africa The Middle East is a term called by the westerns . They called the area between the East and The West the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) . The Westerns tried over years to study the orient and to show how the people in the Middle Eastern countries a very primitive live and they do not have civilization. also they westerns tried to influence the Middle East and North Africa to spread their culture and achieve their imperialistic goals . Also they tried to show that Muslims who live in the Middle East are terrorists .
Orientalism is one of the discourses in the film which would be analysed under the category of gender. Orientalism is one of the main themes that is analysed which is a discursive practice in M.Butterfly. Orientalism has three aspects , one of them is history , which is the changing of cultural and historical relationship between Europe and Asia that has a 4000 year old history , secondly , academic discipline ,which is how the West studies various of things about Oriental cultures and traditions ; and thirdly , ideological suppositions , which are how people have fantasies and images about how the Orients are (Said, 1985). Orientalism is something that the West stereotypes and assumes by making statements of things and this is an example why it is a part of discourse because , Foucault (as cited by Mill, 2004) stated that what you say or do is not literally the meaning of it . The image of the East is clearly stereotyped by the West and it is a dream and fantasy of the Occident, which was an image that is also constructed by the West of the East's reality.
Therefore the identity of West is determined in comparison with the Rest. ‘Orientalism’ was emerged as a field of study, which is the way to see and imagine the difference of Eastern people and cultures in comparison with the West. That study includes the study of religions in parts of Asia also. Since the Rest has been seen as backward and even at times a dangerous mindset and in the 19th and early 20th centuries, in the European paintings the Rest was used to be
He debated that a long custom of idealized figures of Asia and the Middle East in Western practice had governed as a tacit rationalization for European and the American past and royal ambitions. Just as boldly, he criticized the practice of upper class Arab who incarnate the US and British orientalists’ notion of Arabic culture. The main notion of Orientalism is that of the Western insight about the East is not originated from figures or realism, but are from hostile norm that foresee the entire “Eastern” civilization as radically alike to each other, and centrally distant to “Western” community. This rational judgment builds “the East” as contradicting to “the West.” Such Eastern erudition is shaped with fictional scripts and
Many scholars, who claim they are Orientalists, have tried to understand and analyse the Orient. Furthermore, those Orientalists would like to represent the Orient to the Occident in their own ways. In the previous chapter, it discusses that this representation loses its accuracy and can distort the truth. Furthermore, representation to a certain degree is a categorisation since it attaches some labels to the Oriental man and the Oriental woman. Among those labels, the butterfly is a common image of the Oriental woman.
People belong to different cultures that is why their way of perceiving world is different. They learned different things and experienced different aspects of life, which shaped their perception of world and people. (Nisbett: 2015 Introduction). In this chapter things which build European’s and East Asian’s way of thinking will be presented to help to understand the major differences in communication and perception of the surrounding world by both - Europeans and East Asians. This background knowledge is necessary in cross-cultural communication.