Moving Past Orientalism

I think that we all have an Orientalist mindset, even if we don’t always realize it. We have perceptions of people from different countries even if we have never been there or have ever met anyone from that country. And, we use orientalism as a lens to create stereotypes about people from the middle east. Orientalism is portrayed throughout our society, in historical paintings, art, literature, films, and media. People wanted to explain others who look different than they do, so that they knew how to conquer them. But, people display these stereotypes that they create as though they are facts.

The same images of monsters, mystery, and women comes up when people research the Middle East, even though these images doesn’t accurately depict their culture or ideals. These images created stereotypes that all Middle Eastern people are mysterious or dangerous.

I think that we can’t avoid looking at media that perpetuates these harmful stereotypes. They are a part of our everyday society, whether we realize it or not.

Orientalism can be extremely harmful because It creates an fake image of what people are really like, without using history and facts. It makes more privileged people look down upon and mistreat people from the Middle East, even though they know nothing about them. It also forces Middle Eastern people to see themselves in a bad light, because they are constantly put down because of how they look to others.

I think that we can move past this by spreading more information about the Middle East, from Middle Eastern people. We have to spread historical information based on facts, rather than perpetuating stereotypes. I think that it’s important that it comes from a Middle Eastern person because they have actually lived through real Middle Eastern experiences. If the information comes from a privileged European person, they might view the Middle East with the prejudice they have gained from media, or their “oriental lens.”