“Oh, you guys party in Egypt? Women, too?” is a question I’ve had repeated to me innumerable times when I have been abroad. “Your English is so good! How come?” is another one of my favourites. These retorts were never spoken, however, with ill-intent. But, they did underline a recurring point of contention: how are Arabs being represented in the media? The West’s portrayal of Arabs in literature (and media), for decades, has been mired in inaccurate representations that have pigeonholed a whole region into a one-dimensional set of characteristics lacking nuance. How the Orient has been defined in relation to the Occident was first thoroughly studied in 1978 when Palestinian-American professor and author, Edward Said coined the term, Orientalism. Orientalism sought to define the framework for the Occident’s portrayal of the Orient. Said argued that in the post-enlightenment era, the Occident created its own image of the Middle East, positioning people from that region as “the Other.” The skewed representation of Arabs by the West – which persists to this day to varying degrees – has historically been embedded in a “colonial discourse”; it is one with deep-seated tropes…
How Arabs Are Being Represented in Entertainment: Are Orientalist Tropes Still Pervasive?
March 22, 2023
