“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 understood in relation to the Occident was thoroughly examined in 1978, when Palestinian-American professor and author Edward Said fundamentally reframed the concept of Orientalism. Orientalism sought to expose the framework behind 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…
How Arabs Are Being Represented in Entertainment: Are Orientalist Tropes Still Pervasive?
March 22, 2023
