Orientalism and Self-Orientalism in the Media - Essay Example

Orientalism and Self-Orientalism The twenty-first century and the challenges of the new global economy re-introduce the long debate on the cultural on the “West” and the “Global South.” These debates include the way in which these two categories are constructed, their interactions and the cultural implications of their interaction, and the situation of the East West dynamics within the realms of colonialism and Western imperialism. In his groundbreaking book Orientalism, Edward Said initiated the discussion for these concerns by highlighting the manner in which discourses from the West concerning the East (or the Global South which is another term referring to all other countries apart from the elite west) created a form of cultural hegemony and domination. These western discourses often present cultural and ideological justification for colonization of the “Third World” countries and European imperialism. This paper presents a comprehensive examination of Orientalism, including its’ complex and multifaceted creature capable of evolving into other forms such as self-Orientalism, especially in media texts (Freire, 2000:145). The paper also presents several reasons why the self-Orientalism and Orientalism are not important anymore in the discussion of media from Global South by non-western organizations. Critics of the West argue that the region, through a Eurocentric viewpoint, has positioned itself at the centre of the world, exploiting other communities and countries through imposing cultural transformation and change either through Orientalist discourses parallel to imperialist objectives or colonialist movements. The West further fictionalizes the image of the “orient” in scientific terms by using social sciences such as philology, anthropology, and history, as well as launching propaganda that encompass cinema, painting, literature, and other art fields in effort to actualize this fiction. The orient image created first by scientific terms then socially, thus become engraved in the memory of both the Easterners and the Westerners (Rivero, 2006). These internalized Orientalist discourses and viewpoints cause Westerners to perceive and see Easterners from the image created in their memory. On the other hand, Easterners express and represent themselves from the perceptions of the West and fictionalized image of the West. Therefore, the East tries to shape and conceptualize itself into the “orient image” fictionalized by the West to gain acceptance, subsequently reproducing Orientalist discourse by reproducing and fictionalizes its East discourse to form hegemony in its own symbolic terms. Oriental science, Oriental studies, or Orientalism refers to the wide range of Western-based research fields, studying the religion, cultures, people, and languages of the people from the Far East and Near East communities. Orientalism as a term was used in describing the Eastern studies of the Europeans and Americans shaped by the mental ideologies of industrial capitalism era between the 18th and 19th centuries (Said, 2003:76). From this viewpoint, Orientalism largely refers to the discriminatory, prejudice-filled, and isolating opinions and perceptions of the Western and European people on the Eastern cultures and people. Some critics argue that Edward Said used Orientalism in a negative sense in his book of a similar title. According to them, the term Orientalism is a fictionalization of the cultural, intellectual, and scientific background of the West with the aim of supporting colonialist actions of the imperialist-based West and the infiltration of different regions in the world. Yet others argue that European merchants, missionaries, scientists, soldiers, and travellers created massive text collection concerning the East in their travel writings, poems, paintings, researches, and stories by reproducing and fictionalizing the East based on their own perceptions. Consequently, majority of these orient images fictionalized, researched in universities, exhibited in museums, written as stories, resulting to a fictionalized orient image replacing the real image of the East (Silverstone, 2007:103). In this regard therefore, Orientalism is the reproduction and perception of the East by the West with their ideological and cultural institutions, as well as doctrines, words, and images created by such institutions. Conventionally, it is acceptable that exploiters do not allow the exploited to speak or express themselves. Rather, they speak on their behalf, representing the exploited in their own created language, and others them. However, those who speak on behalf of others and those ‘othered’ to prevent them from speaking create their own others. Such “others” include workers, women, poor people, foreigners, needy people, and so forth. As such, the orient image created by Europeans by ‘othering’ prepared legitimate grounds for exploiting the East and the reproduction of hegemonic structure (Nederveen, 2009:50). Applying similar methodology, a sample model was formed for the East, creating its own symbolic East by producing another form of itself within itself, for Europe’s exploitation by dominance. Other scholars argue that elites with power and authority use mass communication to spread their own cultures, ethical values, and philosophies with efforts to sustain and reinforce their position, power, and wealth. Hegemony, on the other hand, scholars argue that the media rather than ideological devices, is a possible instrument used by authority holders to transform their cultural practices, mediations, and ideologies into some form of social consent. The fact that the elites are the major manufacturers of beliefs, norms, ideologies, attitudes, and public information, their symbolic authority is an ideological authority (Favero, 2007). Empirical evidence from an analytical study of social groups shows that the form of representation of elites with power and authority differs from the representation of the common people in the society. Consequently, the common people in society receive less coverage in media, represented as inefficient, problematic, needy, and primitive and a potential threat to Western sources such as residences, education, jobs, and places (Hill, 2005:83). However, the elite receive positive and more representation, while the common people receive less and negative presentation when they are the victims or the wrongdoers. One of the government’s ideological apparatuses is the media, thus ideally, it operates on ideology. Similar to other government’s ideological apparatuses, it works towards the achievement of the same goal. Each of these apparatuses contributes to the same goal through idiosyncratic manner to reproduce production relations, or in other terms, to reproduce the capitalist exploitation relations. Political apparatus of the government adjusts the individual, and further allows the new apparatus to fee all citizens with liberalism, chauvinism, nationalism, and other emotions of the same category through television, press, or radio. Therefore, the dominant bourgeoisie covers and hides the media that sustains the capitalist order (Nishihara, 2005:245). In this manner, the dominant class ensures that their ideology stick to the minds of others. In this regard, the powerful and authoritative elites come together based on their common interests, points of view on the world, and social origins. These elites are the unofficial opinion leaders who operate organizations and decision-making, as well as creating the social structure, establishing different hegemonies to sustain and establish them. The structure of the commercial media means that the sector depends heavily on competition and profit conditions of the capitalistic system. Thus, sales are more important than information. Therefore, the commercial media aims to sale more by offering vague and unclear information to tabloids, avoiding engaging in meddling, and filling the information with sexuality and violence (Ueno, 2002:97). Consequently, the primary materials of mass media broadcasting for commercial purposes moves to the other pages of the page news, dominated by the points of view of the Orientalist. Commercial media that adhere to the commercial rules form an industry that depends on advertisements for revenues. In this regard therefore, the media seems to serve to support the government and the elite with power and authority, who use it as a source of news and which generates revenues to protect their personal interests. Despite the preached independence of the media and its responsibility to announce world events based on the democratic doctrine, it is incorrect to claim that the choices of the media are free from bias and objective criteria (Mouffe, 1979:168). The reason for the bias in choices is that selection of staffs occurs among individuals with appropriate qualifications, internalized prejudices, and the fact that the selected staff adhere to set boundaries by organization style, property structure, political and market authority factors. The symbolic elites gain public consent to ensure the perpetuation of the order in favour of the minority elite. These symbolic elites are the manipulators who influence public opinion and emotion through trying to legitimize the dominant order and social values such as sexuality, nationality, religion, and morality. Thus, the holders of power and authority in a democratic society enjoy benefits from media in spreading and maintaining their authority and power (Frere, 2007:93). The positive and more representation of the elite with power and authority highlight the weak side of the common people in the society. Therefore, media acts as an extension of the authority, becoming an important instrument to them. According to another study by Edward Said titled Haberlerin Aginda Islam, there has been a weird resurrection of the Christian church in European and American media (Mora, 2008:6). Moreover, these ideas belong to the era where uttered opinions did not observe any respect for Muslims as well as religious and racial segregation. The Europeans and Americans are the source of the media about Islam. The media creates a conceptual picture of Islam and uses it as opportunities arises and inline with the interests of their societies (Rogers, 1976:62). However, Islamic countries do not voice their disagreement with their transformation to a consumer market because of modernization, development, and industrialization. This condition encourages the Orientalist viewpoint on the undeveloped Global South and the developed West. The discourse from the postcolonial era spread through the electronic media, intensifying the clichés instrumental in the perception of the Global south. Films, television, and other facilities of the media force such information to become some form of moulds, which then become uniform (Buruma and Margalit, 2004:36). Consequently, the cultural clichés and the uniform process increase and produce the effect of the Global South dream in the nineteenth century: imaginatively mysterious, academic, passive, dangerous, threatening, primitive, and suitable for conquer. Experts on the subject define Orientalist discourse as empowering the effect of the West as a scientific and systematic discipline that has publication, customs, associations, rhetoric, and language who seek to transform the global south to actualize this. Others try to provide explanations on how the imaginatively fictionalized East replaced the real East with time. They argue that the Orientalist discourse seeks to introduce a certain status and establish the process of the Western subject to appear different from the colonialist discourse. Incorporating the social gender discourse and the colonialist discourse, the Orientalist discourse represents the Eurocentric viewpoint (Yan and Santos, 2009). Moreover, the internalization within the global south and east communities propagates the reproduction of the fictionalized East and its own East. They further argue that some cultural, social, economic, and political realities are behind most works, from the most ordinary production to the lowest quality films. The representation of Orientalism internalization appears in two forms. The first form is through the reaction against the image of the Orientalist of the east. Scholars derived the term Occidentalism to counter western prejudice towards the global east (Hjarvard, 2008:57). The term refers to the prejudice of the global south towards the west. The second form reveals itself as a form of perception with Orientalism parallel to the requests of the west, placing the east in line with this particular perception, and considering perceiving the close relations with the west as a privilege. From the films and columns by columnists, makes it possible to identify the Orientalist viewpoint. In the newspaper Radikal, Mine, a columnist, published a certain article on July 27, 2005 and their weird citing the primitiveness of the “dark skinned people”, describing their primitive eating habits and so forth (Escobar, 1995:75). This is examples of Orientalist native intellectual that despise their own people and culture, taking the role of the conveyors of the discourse of Eurocentric Orientalist that literary hates all things from the global south. Another example of such Orientalist native intellectual is a column feature by Bekir Coskun in the Hurriyet newspaper on May 3, 2012, the columnists criticizes the common societal man using insulting expressions similar to an elitist approach. The media that holds the responsibility of bringing the society together thus discusses this criticism in a constructive way by inferring an effect cause relationship, therefore benefiting the society by providing positive changes. Authors embracing Occidentalism, on the other hand, present a different perspective but in a similar view. An example is a column by Sevket Eygi in the Milli Gazete on April 4, 2009 (Haynes, 2007:96). The columnist blames the current problems of morality, religion, and virtues of the east and the rest of the global south on the West. However, Orientalism and self-Orientalism has had significant relevance in media discussions. This may be a result of the manifestation of the problem or the civilization of the word. In order to examine the two possible alternatives, it is important to discuss both the concerns. After colonialism, majority of the colonized countries tried creating and maintaining different identities largely by differentiating themselves from the ‘Other’, the West (Harada, 2006:26). In this regard therefore, majority of them opted for self-Orientalism, the process of absorbing and adapting the Western hegemony to transform to into an ‘Other’, also reverse Orientalism or auto-exoticism. According to scholars, Orientalism benefits from the mystery of the exoticism of the ‘Other’, but self-Orientalism tends to exploit the gaze of Orientalists to transform into an ‘Other’. Therefore, the relationship between self-Orientalism and Orientalism characterized by profound complicity as they mutual use each other to make them essential. Orientalism describes the different methods of investigation and schools of thought concerning how the West came to know and perceive the East. Scholars such as Edward, these discourses and the resultant knowledge have enabled the West to maintain and legitimize its dominance over the other uncivilized. A repeated and common feature of the oriental analysis is the confirmation of the theory that the orient community is mysterious, exotic, primitive, and lack the capability to govern their communities (Varisco, 2009:61). Nonetheless, Orientalism is not simply a rationale for colonialism. Of more importance is the manner in which it unknowingly or knowingly justifies colonialism and imperialism despite the initial manifestation. In terms of Foucault, Orientalism is a manifestation of knowledge and power. According to Foucault, the discourse is strict social knowledge area or a strictly policed cognitive system that delimits and controls the means and mode of representation in any given society. In other words, the discourse is a set of statements that identify the world in complex terms not recognized by simple objective data analysis. Consequently, the representation of the recognition in the discourse is ideologically loaded, though independent of individual judgement and will (Servaes, 2008). In this regard therefore, Said refers to this discourse as a system of thought where the elites with dominant authority and power create spheres of truth and knowledge, representing discursive practices such as classes, races, cultures, and religions. However, discursive practices incorporate power and social relations, but history is inseparable from discursive formation. Conceptually, the idea of representation often depends on the notions of faithfulness to originality. Nonetheless, representation incorporates an array of other things apart from the truth. Apart from the common subject matters, the definition of representation depends on common tradition, universe, and history of discourse existing within existing fields (Bau, 2010). Therefore, representation is simply a phenomenon emerging from intellectuals, commentators, writers, travellers, politicians, reporters, and others working in similar discursive formations. Said, insofar as Foucault perspectives are concerned, may consider various ‘Western’ texts from different intellectual disciplines such as literature, linguistics, media, politics, and history that belong to the single discourse of Orientalism. The unifying factor among these apparently different is the similarity in ideology and culture intrinsic to discursive practices that enable the production of knowledge concerning the Orient (The Guardian, 2012). The practices make it extremely difficult to think beyond their realms, thus the perception that they are exercises of control and power. Nonetheless, it does not necessarily mean that a discourse is limited to either inflexibility or lack of admission to internal contradictions. In normal circumstances, the Orientalist modes of representation and thought may survive the contact with the reality despite the obvious odds and differences. This may be because the need for a consistent discourse deters the realization of objective analysis and commitment to the reality or truth. The more the discourse becomes strong the longer it will live, and the more likely its achievement of consistency within the confines of its borders. This is possible because of the adaptations and repetitions of its motifs. Another viable explanation for the persistence of Orient mode representation is perhaps the concept of manifest and latent Orientalism (Macfie, 2002:8). Manifest Orientalism simply refers to openly spoken ideas concerning the civilization, government, literature, and history of the global south produced at different periods in the timeline. On the other hand, latent Orientalism refers to the almost untouchable and unconscious positivity that incorporates the principal facts about the Orient, such that the assumptions of oriental backwardness are unquestionable despite the disagreement with historical interpretations. One of the most important aspects in Said’s Orientalism is the comprehensive explanation of the methods that constructs ‘the Others’ by the West conceptually as its despotic, irrational, inferior, barbaric opposite, or alter ego. Ideally, it is a form of underground and surrogate version of the ‘elite’ West. Another aspect of significance may since the West is dominant; it may be able to present the ‘truth’ to other non-Western cultures concerning the Orient more efficiently than the Orient themselves (Mouffe, 199:7). In this regard therefore, the ‘truthful representation’ helps the imperialist and colonizer to justify their actions, as well as eliminating the resistance of the ‘Other’ as it transforms how the ‘Other’ views themselves. This intertwining of the ‘truths’, omissions, and lies concerning the Orient create a complex framework of discourse that received enormous discussion in the past. The elites from the West used the media as a channel to perpetuate their propaganda ideologies and discourses. Non-western organization responded by creating and producing discourses that responded to the prejudice of the West towards the larger global south, or Occidentalism (Casey et al., 2007:37). This presented heated debates in the media, with both sides contributing their perceptions and ideologies. However, the dominant position of the West ensures that their Orientalism and self-Orientalism perceptions replace the reality, despite the efforts of non-organizations in the global south. 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