parodying the unsettling mystique attributed to Middle Eastern women.
This orientalist film trope undoubtedly contributes to the prevalence of ethnic fetishization in the world.
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- Sep 2023
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hese tropes remain as relevant as ever in the Western popular imagination.
As we saw in class with Dr. Strange, Aladdin (2019) and other materials, Orientalism as a trope is still live and well within popular culture. It feels insane to me that some academics try to criticize the study of pop culture and belittle its merit. If we do not study and bring awareness to racist misrepresentations of cultures we are opting in to ignorance and prejudice.
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Said shows how Orientalist writings and ideologies actively shape the world they describe, and how they perpetuate views of Middle Eastern people as inferior, subservient, and in need of saving.
This passage reminds me of the phrase "history is written by the victors." For example, If you view conflicts in Iran, Syria, etc. through an American lens you will likely believe our military involvement is justified in the fight to protect democracy and prevent terrorism. In reality America's Middle Eastern involvement has been heavily scrutinized and called ineffective and outright unnecessary. Those in power wield the power to distort reality.
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His family was exiled from Mandate Palestine during the 1948 Nakba,
"Al Nakba" translates to catastrophe/disaster in Arabic. "Nakba" was the forced removal of roughly 75+ percent of Palestinians after the 1948 Arab vs. Israeli war.
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What’s more, these justifications contain the central assumption Said critiques in his book: that Southwest Asian and North African peoples need to be saved from themselves. The price of this so-called salvation is the agency and self-determination of these populations.
Orientalism seems to me to be a huge contributor to the proliferation of the white savior complex.
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