A Worldly Divide

Edward Said's critique on how people look at Orientalism has a lot to do with the dichotomy between the East and the West. Western opinion on Orientals is that they are exotic, strange and devious people. These negative words associated with Orientals cumulate into making them the Other. We see people from the East as exciting and different from us, which is problematic as it creates a sort of Us and Them/Other divide.

Reading this article made me think of a John Oliver video I watched recently on white-washing in Hollywood.

It talked about how there is no excuse for the extreme lack of people of color in movie, since even when there are roles perfect for non-white people, the part is still given to a white person. One of my favorite examples he brought up was the movie Prince of Persia. Persia, the former name for Iran, is a Middle Eastern country. Yet the movie has Jake Gyllenhaal, a white man, as the lead. With this movie, they had the chance to cast an Iranian actor, but instead they went with a well known white dude.

As a society, we are so focused on not letting in people unlike ourselves (look at any Republican presidential candidate's opinion on immigration) that we miss the fact we are all essentially the same. I don't mean to sound idealistic and disregard valid cultural differences and traditions, but when there exists concepts like Orientalism and clear divide between two cultures, I think its important to take a step back and realize that between cultures and continents we're really not all that different.