About Orientalism by Edward Said - Movie Review Example

In the video, Said makes several points about the way our opinions as Westerners about the East are incorrect. The first point he makes is that we as Westerners tend to think of the East as having a single identity. Whether the individual in question is from Egypt, Palestine, Iraq or India, we tend to think of them all as existing under the same identity. Said makes this point by showing a map that has an overlay of three different men, each wearing a different traditional outfit and each associated with a different region of what we consider the ‘East’.

Even though these people were obviously very different, the graphic has these images come together so that they are all stacked on top of each other. While it may be common for us to try to blend these people together under a single identity, the graphic keeps this error clear by not allowing the shapes to blend so that they look awkward and incorrect. This identity Westerners have created is relatively well-defined and has very little in common with the reality. This idea is based on ancient conceptions of the East and idealized images provided through centuries of artistic expression.

As Said points out, most of the information distributed about the East was information that all referred back to a single source. That single source had given a very limited view of what he understood about a very small segment of the East. In keeping with our ideas that the men of the East are all the same, there is also an idea among Westerners that the women of the East are essentially non-people. Constantly depicted wearing silks and seductive clothing when inside or being completely covered when outside, these women are shown to be nothing more than the toys of the men in depictions in the West.

This is pointed out by Said at several points during the video. In the West, we were given the impression that these women are