Islam, Media & the West

Emily Faeth
Islam, Media, & the West
October 8, 2007
Paper 2: Orientalism

An Orientalist is anyone dealing with the Orient. However, Orientalism has become “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said, Orientalism 3). This still holds true today, as Westerners, and in most of my examples Americans, find their own identity by setting it against the “Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (Said, Orientalism 3). The Arabs are seen as everything that we are not, nor would ever want to be. An array of media provide a constant reinforcement of these stereotypes, as explained in Shaheen’s article about the portrayal of Arabs in Hollywood where the “moviemakers’ distorted lenses have shown Arabs as heartless, brutal, uncivilized, religious fanatics” time and again (Orientalism 171). This Orientalist viewpoint of the ‘East’ is a system of representation across disciplines such as art, literature, and film that allows Westerners to know themselves through the ‘other’. Both Said and Shaheen look at groups of texts to make their point without describing in a vacuum. By looking for and seeing the larger picture neither loses a “sense of the density and interdependence of human life, which can neither be reduced to a formula nor be brushed aside as irrelevant” (Said, Orientalism xxvii). Orientalists use large, abstract categories that are used to group people together that are dangerous because they do not convey the humanity that exists behind those words. By acting as Orientalists, we lose perspective on the other and are able to simplify the individual lives that we should be more invested in. I agree with Said that the victors are the ones who write history, and that the winner’s interpretation begins the hegemonic bias that people forget to question after so long. In this case, the ‘winner’ is the West.
Said’s Orientalism argument is both a critique and a continuation of the Clash of Civilizations. Although I felt that the Clash offers a good basic structure of why the ‘East’ and ‘West’ are at odds, I think that Said is correct in saying that there is a “profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of coexistence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purpose of control and eternal enlargement of horizons” (Orientalism xix). In this passage, Said sets up that his Orientalist argument is the antithesis of the Clash of Civilizations. Said critiques why the Clash argument exists; he believes that it is for greater Western control over the Arab and Muslim worlds while he is trying to understand the ‘other’ for humanistic purposes. In my view, Orientalism offers more of a complex understanding of why Westerners see the ‘East’ in the light that we do. While the Clash offered a basic historical answer, I do not think that history which happened as far back as the Crusades provides enough of a reason for the Clash. Issues that Said discusses, along with Shaheen, of daily media that is constantly reinforced in our society gives more of a realistic idea of why each side of the Clash is at odds with the other today.
Orientalism could easily be interpreted at giving the role of audiences no agency, which I originally thought was unfair to smart audiences who should have the ability to think for themselves. However, as Shaheen picks apart film after film in order to prove how each of them offer a horrendous view of Arabs, it is easy to be persuaded that this repetition and reinforcement of stereotypes cause audiences to stop questioning the misrepresentation of a people. El Rassi points out that this is even visible in Star Wars, in which the bad guys are portrayed in typical Arab stereotypes despite being aliens from a different galaxy (45). These stereotypes are harmful because they are so ingrained that audiences become complacent in thinking of Arabs and/or Muslims as the ‘evil other’ in any media outlet, including the news. This typecast that is set can become the only way that Westerners look at Arabs and/or Muslims in the real world, thus immediately presuming that any dark skinned man next to you in an art gallery is actually a terrorist (El Rossi 76). As Shaheen discusses, innocent Arabs suffer by being repetitiously portrayed in Hollywood as vilified antagonists in the “celluloid mythology [that] dominates the culture” (174). By thinking of Arabs as a hegemonic enemy, regardless of whether that group is remotely similar in reality, Westerners can rationalize condemning all Arabs to play the villain on screen and off. In seldom seeing Arabs’ normal routines in any of our various media outlets, “we have a limited series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as, among other things, to make that world vulnerable to military aggression” (Said, Covering Islam 28). Although some may dismiss Shaheen’s discussion of films because they were created as ‘entertainment’, it is important to not de-legitimize the media we are engaging in and consuming
Said’s Orientalism argument gives individuals more of a chance to survive than the Clash does when it creates two binaries in a very large and diverse world. Said discusses humanism, which he says is “centered upon the agency of human individuality and subjective intuition, rather than on received ideas and approved authority” (Orientalism xxix). I agree with Said that we are now a people who are tempted by sound bites and fragments of videos that we see repeatedly, despite our access to unlimited knowledge on the Internet. Said argues that the ‘West’ prefers “blanket solutions to messy, detailed problems are immediately preferred to anything else, especially when they recommend forceful action against ‘Islam’”, thus losing any detailed perspectives on such a diverse population (Covering Islam liv). One danger of such views is that while you are not forcing people to believe stereo types of the ‘evil Arab’, these very stereotypes can become a self-referential view for those being cast as the eternal ‘others’ to Westerner’s idyllic view of themselves.
It seems easier to be complacent with a simplified view of the world, but I believe that Said had hope that the world would grow tired of this simplistic and wrong view. Said had a personal interest in having Westerners think about the binary that had been in place for many years due to his roots in both Islam and the West. This personal objective may have been what gave him such a passion for the subject and the objection to the Islam v. West monolithic argument that is so central to the Clash. His advocacy for coexistence is apparent in much of his writing, such as when he wrote that “every domain is linked to every other one, and that nothing goes on in our world has ever been isolated and pure of any outside influence” (Said, Orientalism xxiii). Said complicates the existing binary and participates in an exchange of ideas with a humane goal of understanding the ‘other’ that the Clash so insistently returns to yet never seeks to comprehend.

I grew up in Queens until the 7th grade when my family moved out to Manhasset, in Nassau County. Queens is, as you may well know, very diverse. Manhasset, on the other hand, is not. The town of Manhasset is small and affluent. Most of the people are white Christians, although as the years pass a little more diversity is being introduced. There are several churches and a synagogue. On the main road running through town, Plandome Road, there are shops selling WASP-y things like monogrammed bags, and a few restaurants. The town is basically one road running through with low buildings on either side. It is pretty non-descript. A few minutes away from the main road section of town is the Americana Mall, which is filled with expensive designer stores. Many of the customers stop here on their way to and from the Hamptons. There are only a few restaurants in town because most people belong to either a Yacht Club on the water or a Country Club on one of the town’s golf courses. The high school is beautiful and looks like a college campus; it was built as one of the projects of FDR’s Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.

Emily Faeth
Paper 3

**A friendly disclaimer for anyone who wants to read—I went a little longer on this one!

I have spent the past several months traveling in order to interview a few great authors who have written on topics concerning the Middle East whose work reaches a very wide audience throughout the globe. It’s obviously difficult to examine or attempt to understand an entire population of people by looking only at one person’s account of a situation. Having said that, these authors’ works are true gateways for the world to see what an individual’s life may look like all of those miles away. Through my interviews, I hope to get a deeper understanding of the work and it’s relation to the world that we live in. My questions may be a little leading, but I wanted to bounce my ideas off the authors before hearing their responses.

Interview 1:
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis 1&2
EF: I’ve heard criticisms about the maturity level of your character when you were a child…were you really that wise and insightful?

Marjane Satrapi: I obviously wrote the book when I was an adult and maybe I used words or nuances I wouldn’t have thought of then, but I do think that children who have grown up through tough situations are a little more mature. If you look back to page 98 in my first book, I reason in the narrative about why my class was rebellious, as opposed to simply talking as my childhood self. I hope that moments like this give my readers a realistic insight into what it was like for us to be in school during the Iranian Revolution. I didn’t write this to make me seem like a child protégé.

EF: How do you deal with people reading Persepolis as a history of the way Iran was during the Revolution?

MS: Wow, I’m not sure about that—it certainly is not a comprehensive history. However, I think that people lose perspective on the individuals who are living within wars, and the books do give people a different source on the lives we were leading. I hope that Persepolis gives people an idea about what it was like for children during the Revolution, even if my perspective might not be what everyone went through during the war. I tried to tell my story realistically, and even confessed that at one time I was bragging about my uncle who had been imprisoned to my friends (Satrapi, Persepolis 60-61). I think that I, as the main character, give the audience an idea about how war can be seen through the eyes of a child.

EF: In Persepolis 2, you deal with leaving Iran for Austria. In Vienna you seem to grow up and face the usual adolescent fears and self-discovery while being an outsider in a country whose language you didn’t speak. I do not envy that of you, although I think it must have given you a remarkable way of looking at life. How did it change the way you saw both Iran and the West culturally?

MS: I think that both of the books are largely about my Iranian culture; they show how the culture changed throughout the revolution and give insight into some Iranian views on Western culture. Surely I was not the only one buying black market cassette tapes, or there wouldn’t have been a black market for them (Satrapi, Persepolis 132). I think there are a couple of times when I felt as if I had become an Orientalist while living in Vienna once I got back to Iran. For instance, when I was welcomed home by friends and family I was totally shocked to find my friends’ Western appearances (105). It is as if during my time in Europe, I had bought into the Western and Orientalist depiction of Iranian women constantly wearing hajibs and being absent from daily society. After that, I overestimated how westernized my old friends had become and made a faux pas joke about sex (Satrapi, Persepolis 2 116). Depression ensued because I didn’t know what my place in society was supposed to be, but eventually I figured it out and learned what behaviors were over the top, and what were just expected in private (Satrapi, Persepolis 2 151). Although I don’t want to sound preachy, I think that these insights would have been impossible for many of my readers to understand if I hadn’t told my personal story. My individual story lends itself to what must have been the story for other Iranian women around the country, and breaks down the stereotypes that I myself had started to believe.

Interview 2:
Mazen Kerbaj, The Happy Childhood
EF: Your comic strip is really great and gives us a look at your childhood. Do you think this is how children generally act in a war? I don’t know if you have read Persepolis, but Ms. Satrapi’s characters seem to interact differently with the war around them. I don’t think she ever, for example, paid someone to dismantle a grenade to use as an object of coercion…

Mazen Kerbaj: Well, my strip is more of a funny slice of life than Ms. Satrapi’s graphic novels. I do think that I show some of the fear that I’m sure was part of Ms. Satrapi’s life, and the life of many people who are in the middle of a war. The grenade was my way of accepting this awful fact of life that we had to face everyday, and looking back I was able to find the humor of it. I do recall that both Ms. Satrapi and I talk about kids comparing their own family’s war traumas with one another. The violence occurring in Lebanon was acknowledged in the world, but I think lending the unique voice of a child does something else to people’s image of the war. In many ways, our coping mechanisms during the war are universal—kids acting out to escape the reality of the situation even though we, along with our parents, were scared every single time we had to run to the basement.

Interview 3:
Joe Sacco, Palestine
EF: I know that in Palestine you have a page dedicated to Edward Said and say that his The Question of Palestine is one of the reasons that you went to the Palestinian Territories to begin with (177). Said himself wrote the introduction to your book and says that your book is honest because you lived among “history’s losers ” and that you are drawn to these forgotten people (Sacco vii). What was the pressure like to show these people as they are and not how you wanted them to be, especially knowing that people such as Said had been there before you?

Joe Sacco: When you hear these peoples’ stories, it is easy to portray them as I did. You can’t see a person as ‘the other’ when they have opened their homes and their lives up to you. Although I grew up also learning more about Israel than Palestine through the Western media, these people were suddenly not the failures of the Oslo Accords but people who are trying to get by in their lives, struggling every day. I had concerns when I was seeking out these stories, but that is something I did in my journalism days and felt was important to get the story. The very nature of my trip, to go to the Territories to discover what people were going through is not Orientalist, and I think Said understood that. You mentioned a part of the book when I was sitting in Larry’s apartment…I also say that I sort of wished I could be content to just sit and read Said to get my views, but in the end I felt the need to go out and see it all for myself (Sacco 177). I think this comes across in my work, and for that reason the fact that I’m a Westerner and not Palestinian is sort of irrelevant. I’m sure I had a different experience there because I am a Westerner, but I’d like to think that I did a fair job of describing the lives of these extraordinary people.

Interview 4:
Naif al-Mutawa, the 99
EF: On page 48 of the “Origins” comic Dr. Ramzi says, “We have become a great people in a great world that has become overrun by greater indifference. To regain the hope—and the past we have lost will require more than guns and bullets and money and lust.” The narration goes on to talk about “our hope” for this one people. Do you think that this is perpetuating a Clash of Civilizations in the world by forcing people of one faith together, regardless of nationality or any other identifying trait? Do you ever wish that everyone could just work together?

Naif al-Mutawa: Yes, of course I want that. But we do not live in that kind of world. Without comic books like the 99, our children are only looking up to white comic heroes like Superman. Don’t get me wrong, I loved reading those books as a child, and I have spent many years in the US soaking up the American culture. My comics are even said by a few to be too based on relying on the individual, like Western comics, instead of God for the help needed to survive. To me, the 99 is about God because the basis of the comics is on the 99 attributes of God. However, within the comic bookd, I believe we have found some ways of balancing both positive aspects of the Western comics with the culture and religion we value here in Kuwait and around the Muslim world depicted in the comics. You mentioned the first edition, “Origins”. In that issue alone we find Dr. Ramzi on several continents; the 99 is partially about bridging the divides that exists within our current world. I think that coexistence in this world is a beautiful thing, so I would disagree with anyone saying that I was Orientalist or even perpetuating the Clash you asked about. I would never suggest that the 99 be a substitute for the Qur’an, but I think that it could be an aid in teaching children the values we respect in people and God.

Interview 5:
Salam Pax, The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi
EF: It’s pretty clear from your blog that you’re an educated man. Do you worry that your blog will perpetuate stereotypes about people in the Middle East?

Salam Pax: ::chuckles:: You should talk to people from your country. Many people in America and Britain accused me of being a fake CIA website or something of the sort because of my references and stuff. So no, I think I may even challenge the so-called Orientalist view of my part of the world. I also think that, if people would ever look back at me in the big scheme of history, they would talk about the different perspective I was able to give people on what was happening here.

EF: Your blog has given many people insight into a war that most of us in the West have only seen on television and through other controlled media sources. How do you think your individual story changed the way Westerners view the war in Iraq?

SP: I do think it’s important for people to get information from alternative sources on the ground from locals who actually understand the culture around them. For instance, many of the Western journalists here rely on locals to get their stories, and they’re tainted by translation and other variables. I think there are a few reasons why the West responded so positively to my blog. First, it is in such a typical Western blog format, and in English—both of which make the blog accessible. In the blog I show a little about our everyday lives here in Iraq. I definitely have my opinions, and a blog is the place to voice them, so I don’t know how much I would want people t o only look to my blog as their main news source—especially since our internet is so spotty with the electricity cuts, they probably would be days behind on what’s happening here! But I do think that having an Iraqi telling his side of what is happening changes the way people think about the war. I’ve even read other blogs of people praying for me as well as American soldiers, which I think is a phenomenon that has never happened before this type of technology was possible.

Works Cited
Fattah, Hassan M. "Comics Battle for Truth, Justice, and the Islamic Way."
The New York Times. 22 Jan. 2006. 26 Oct. 2008
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Pax, Salam. "I became the profane pervert Arab blogger." Guardian.co.uk. 9 Sept. 2003.
26 Oct. 2008 .