The

Lens of Orientalism: An American Blinder

In 1978 Palestinian and American scholar Edward Said published a book that

filled a very necessary hole in Western academics. This book, Orientalism, argues
essentially that through the history of colonialism and imperialism, the western
European nations, most notably England and France, have constructed a skewed
and inaccurate portrayal of Oriental nations. Through popular media, art, and
culture, England and France have built a discourse off which much of the western
world today uses as its subconscious foundational beliefs about Islam, Arabs, and
Middle Eastern cultures. England's extensive colonial history in north Africa, the
Middle East, and Indian territories has forged an Orientalist attitude which crept
through seemingly non-political discourse in the form of poetry and prose. The 19th
and early 20th century Englishman was born into a national right to ideologically
dominate the Orient. The Orient's cultural and ideological subordination has created
an inequity in which the Occident, continuing to today in the more vicious form of
American Orientalism, outweighs the other.

Fast forward one hundred years to the 21st century. The tides and traditions

of colonialism have changed, the usual Oriental doctrine has shifted, and Orientalism
in the western country of the United States has molded a sort of neo-Orientalism.
Occupying the same vehicles of the 19th century Occident, American Orientalism
uses popular media, art, and culture to present an adapted, violent, and terrifying
Orient whose sole purpose is to oppose democracy, equality, and the United States.
~

Orientalism, therefore, is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body

 theory...in which... there has been a considerable material investment.

of

-Edward Said (6)

It must...be true that for a European or American studying the Orient there

can be no disclaiming the main circumstances of his actuality: that he comes up

against the Orient as a European or American first, as an individual second, (Said
11). As one of Said's most influential and important concepts put forth in
Orientalism, a scholar, a writer, a traveler, a person who is a member of the Occident
cannot, willingly or unwillingly, come into contact with the Orient or of colonialism
and imperialism without the knowing that he is, historically, the dominant. This
influential idea which extends to the majority of 19th and early 20th century British
literature, poetry, and art is a necessary tool to extracting meaning.

This notion comes to mind when reading Felicia Dorthea Heman's The

Homes of England. Hemans is not typically known as an explicitly colonial poet or

writer, her words, as seen in The Homes of England, have only an underlying
whisper of Orientalist discourse. The stately Homes of England, the merry Homes
of England!, the free, fair homes of England! (lines 1, 9, 33). In these three lines
which head three of the five stanzas of the poem, Hemans makes her stance toward
England, including its colonial baggage, clear. England is 'merry', 'stately', and best
of all 'free'! It is a country with its native people free to not only think, write upon
Britain, but to ignore its colonial ties to, say, India. Hemans, unlike some early 19th
century writers, chooses to leave out all hint of Britain's outwardly reaching grasp,
emphasizing the free nation of England. And upon the latter, England most certainly
is. But fair? That it certainly is not. To say that the supreme spread of England and

Queen Victoria's empirical ideology around the globe, and especially the Orient, is
fair would be to completely ignore the group being marginalized. What would an
Indian living in Delhi at the time say about this poem? For one, as a subject of the
English rule, the Indian would not have a say nor would his/her say carry any
influence. Furthermore, would an Indian subject say that the stately and blessed
homes of England, representing the fortunate population who are not under British
rule but a part of British rule, are fair? Are the social and economical contrasts
between Britain's domestic economy and India's domestic economy and society
fair? And most importantly, why is a 19th century British poet, with all the
wherewithal to debate these questions, ignoring these contrasts? The answer lies,
partially, within Jonathon Culler.

In chapter 8 of Literary Theory, Culler describes the notion of 'group

identities' in literature. Identification also plays a role in the production of group

identities. For members of historically oppressed or marginalized groups, stories
prompt identification with a potential group and work to make the group a group by
showing them who or what they might be, (Culler 115). This statement is
intriguing, but what it does in regard to Heman's The Homes of England is it
highlights the lack of role of the oppressed, marginalized people in 19th century
English poetry and literature. As one might deduce, the oppressed in English
literature is the Orient, and those within the Orient who have been colonized by
Britain. The narrator in The Homes of England never ceases to remember where
he/she is from, never ceases to forget what his/her country has done and is doing
(colonizing), and never recognizes a moral or ethical conflict between the West,

East, colonizer, colonized, or Occident, Orient.

To continue in the direction of British literature and its ethical dilemmas,

consider Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses. Being published and read at around the
same time of The Homes of England, Ulysses is a poem with similar ethical
considerations to explicate. However, it becomes clear very early that Tennyson
more explicitly addresses colonization and, particularly, rationale for such
processes. Unequal laws unto a savage race, / That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and
know not me. (lines 3-4). No such literal description of the non-Englishman
appears in The Homes of England, for the latter deals with the colonizer, but
Tennyson's 'idle king' is steeped in moral obligation to search out these 'savage
race[s]', he is a vehicle and search committee to seek out the people who need
saving, portraying the exact rationale Britain has used in their colonization of the
Orient. Come, my friends, / 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. / Push off, and
sitting well in order smite / The sounding furrows; (lines 56-59). This portion,
which is found near the end of the poem, represents the king's, or colonizer's, lust
for the exploration, the need to adventure into the airy beyond where one is bound
to hit a part of the world not yet embraced by the colonizer. Tennyson specifically
used the classic Greek epic, obviously reworking the story line, to comment on
Britain's current policies and procedures abroad. However, the ethical and moral
dilemmas have yet to be met head-on in the observed poems of British literature.
Heman's The Homes of England and Tennyson's Ulysses deal (or ignore) with
Britain's foreign policies at the time, never calling into question the modes through
which the English expanded their empire. Heman, Tennyson, and the like continued

to alienate and marginalize the Oriental identity by emphasizing England's.

19Th and 20th century British literature, which was consumed and re-

represented in their culture and ideology, became an Orientalism which ignored,

deemphasized, or tried to mask with British imperialism. Britain, along with France
and other Occident Europeans, became the backbone for further literature and art
which influenced Edward Said to write Orientalism in 1978. However, 19th century
British literature does not accurately resemble what American Orientalism has
become in the 21st century. For through totally different connections with the Orient
has America come to define Orientalism as violent, racist, unethical, and a far-cry
from European Orientalism.
~

I wish I could say, however, that general understanding of the Middle East, the Arabs, and

Islam in the

United States has improved somewhat, but alas, it really hasn't.

-Edward Said, 2003

More so than ever before seen in European Orientalism, American neo-

Orientalism has become a type of evolving plot, or ways in which American citizens
have come to view the Middle East as tumultuous and violent, a land full of extremes
all opposing American ideology.

Since World War II, and more noticeably after each of the Arab-Israeli wars,

the Arab Muslim has become a figure in American popular culture, even as in
academic world, in the policy planner's world, and in the world of business very
serious attention is being paid the Arab, (Said 285). As Said makes a simple
observation about the increased attention being paid to Middle Easter people and
culture in America, one must question whether this could have been said about

European Orientalism. Certainly, and as Said states, there was a considerable

dedication toward Orientalist observation and interest. However, it manifested itself
in different ways than it has in America. Britain and France saw an increased
influence of Oriental atmosphere in paintings and art; they saw it as a sub-culture
soon-to-be dominated and, in turn, influenced by colonialism and imperialism.
Rather, American Orientalism has seen a vulcanization of pockets of violence and
racism bursting through the culture's surface, culminating in an outwardly tense
political climate between Middle Eastern countries and the United States. Thus, if
the Arab occupies space enough for attention, it is as a negative value, (Said 286).

In a 2008 American documentary entitled Religulous, narrator and

protagonist Bill Maher sticks his fingers into the largest religions of the world,
always looking for a thread of doubt to pull on. To put it kindly, Maher pokes fun at
Christianity, Catholicism, and Mormonism, among others. Being a seasoned stand-up
comic, Maher often undercut the otherwise serious existential nature of his
interview topics with comedic prodding. Only toward the end of the documentary
did the tone definitely shift toward a more cynical, nefarious, and, for lack of a better
term, joke-less nature. As one might expect by now, the leaders and followers in this
darker section of the documentary included Anti-Zionists, Muslims, and Jews
religions either entirely or partially involving doctrines relating to Middle Eastern
origins, or, in the case of Islam, entirely centered in Oriental countries. In other
words, Maher becomes, through his documentary, an American Orientalist.

Maher meets with a dutch politician of Moroccan descent and Muslim named

Fatima Elatik. With little in the way of small talk, Maher immediately questions

Islam's religious intentions in regards to a 2004 assassination of Dutch film director

Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh, who was directing a film in the Netherlands considered to
be deeply offensive to Islam and its followers, was stabbed to death in public by a
Muslim. The assassination sparked counterattacks on Muslim schools and mosques,
and was thus filed away into Islamic terrorism discourse for Americans, like Maher,
to use in Orientalist argument at their leisure. The people who usually do the killing
end up on the Muslim side, suggested Maher, citing a clearly inaccurate and
ethnocentric way of thinking (Religulous). In response, Elatik says, I don't want you
to get the image that when there's something that upsets the Muslims or that they
don't like, they kill it. The argument was futile, for Maher's mind was made and the
documentary predestined to be biased. The next scene cut to a large group of yelling
Muslims gathered outside the Danish embassy in London. The group, upset over the
cartoon depictions of Islamic prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper, was not
shown with a sympathetic viewpoint, not by Maher or the news station that
narrated the clip. Rather, Maher used the clip in the pejorative and racist fashion
Said says arises in Orientalist discourse. I've discovered a huge arsenal of images
used by the media, says Said in an interview. All giving the impression of the most
utmost negative, evil emanation. As if the main business of Muslims is to threaten
and frighten Americans (Palestine Diary).

Following the stock footage of angry Middle Easterners, Maher interestingly

and confusingly chooses to interview a Pakistani rapper by the stage name of Propa-
Gandhi. Propa-Gandhi is of Pakistani origins but lives and makes his career in
Britain. When Maher questions Propa-Gandhi about Salman Rushdie's controversial

novel The Satanic Verses and the subsequent death threats Rushdie received from
the Islamic fatwa, Propa-Gandhi fell on the fence between whether the death threats
were warranted or not, Salman Rushdie was there to provoke...insult...and he did it
intentionally, right? replied Propa-Gandhi. It's easy for [Maher] to say things are
black and white, but they're more complex than that, there are emotions, passions,
philosophy involved (Religulous).

Maher set out to film a documentary with an insensitively Orientalist lens. He

portrays Muslims and Islamic beliefs in the same way much of American media
doesviolent, undemocratic, and inevitably to be blown up by bomb or viciously
attacked by knife. In the closing moments of the Middle-East segment, Maher says to
his cameramen, I just don't buy it that [Muslims] are in a state of denial. I think they
just are to an outsider (Religulous).

What has been illustrated thus far is America's nefarious deviation from

European Orientalism. Like Jean-Leon Germone's painting The Snack Charmer

pictured on the cover of Said's book, European Orientalism of days passed, whether
Said himself would care to admit it, is more of the airy, mystic ideology than its
contemporary counterpart in America. For all kinds of reasons, the situation in
Europe seems to be considerably better. In the United States, the hardening of
attitudes, the tightening of the grip of demeaning generalization...the dominance of
crude power allied with simplistic contempt for...'others' has found a fitting
correlative with the looting...of Iraq's libraries and museums (Said xviii). Here, Said
is alluding specifically to George Bush and America's war for oil in Iraq, but it is
implicitly emblematic of all contemporary American Orienatlism. Historically,

America has accepted and used these generalizations in common discourse. The
human side of the Arabic world is rarely to be found, says Said. The net result
is...automatic images of terror and violence (Palestine Diary).

When the 1995 bombing of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma

City, American media was allowed the capability and maneuverability about the
Oriental discourse of racist images and phrasing. [The bombing] came without
warning and according to a U.S. Government source, it has Middle Eastern terrorism
written all over, said one national news channel (Palestine Diary). In the
subsequent search for the perpetrator(s), the Federal Bureau of Investigation
requested up to ten Arabic speakers in their search, undertaking an American
Orientalism in which the Muslim, the Arab, the Middle Easterner becomes suspect
number one in violent occurrences (Palestine Diary). Additionally, the national
media released a statement reading that the FBI were looking for three men of
Middle Eastern origin, and that the FBI was specifically treating the Oklahoma City
Bombing as a Middle Eastern threat (Palestine Diary). Said himself, who was
touring Canada presenting lectures, received a flood of American media calls
questioning him on the possible motives behind this seemingly Middle Eastern
attack (Palestine Diary). Of course, hindsight is clear and useful, and the soul
attacker at fault turned out to be an American named Timothy McVeigh. And though
an intense investigation into terrorism is necessary, Said recognized that American
ideology and media stressed a loaded bias, a racist viewpoint, Never the same
generalizations of say the Oklahoma City bombing, but the Islamic Jihad had come to
America...and then the teachings of Islam became synonymous with terror

(Palestine Diary). The American media is not the sole vehicle and enforcer of
contemporary American Orientalism, Hollywood has funded and produced anti-
Middle Eastern prejudice through works like Alladin, adaptions of Arabian Nights,
and films where huge numbers of Muslim bodies as a result [of American
Orientalist ideology] (Palestine Diary).
~

Who would have thought Saudi Arabia could be fun? That people from a place so

different, so foreign from where I come from and what I believe could be so similar,

To only portray the American misnomers, prejudices, and wrongful

hilarious too. -Anthony Bourdain

ideologies would be liken to only portraying one side of the story. It is important to
offer counterexamples and methods in which the American can shuck the Orientalist
lens. Looking beyond one's ethnocentrism is difficult unless one recognizes the
presence of it. Removing the lenses is an introspective process and yet requires
looking outward, and in this looking outward one recognizes their previous faults
and opens themselves to a new way of thinking.

Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations is an American television show based

more often than not in parts of the world other than America. Bourdain moves from
country to country to taste the food, taste the culture, and to give Americans
watching a taste of something they may not be able to taste by their own means.

In the show's fourth season, Bourdain opens up one episode for audience

suggestion. One episode where a fan will travel with Bourdain to an area of their
choice and lead him (along with the viewers) to a chosen part of the world.
Bourdain chooses a young woman named Danya Alhamrani, who takes Bourdain to

Saudi Arabia. Is there a country in the world about which Americans are more
ignorant or less sympathetic about than Saudi Arabia? asked Bourdain. I think I
picked Saudi [Arabia] because of all the choices [of destinations], I figured Saudi
[Arabia] would be a hard thing...there [are] a lot of preconceptions to over come
(Bourdain). Bourdain was well aware of the fact that he was, indeed, an American
coming up against the Orient. An American in modern culture coming up against a
drastically different placein religion and culture.

The episode becomes a microcosm for both the way in which America has

come to see the Middle East (here, specifically, Saudi Arabia) and exemplifies ways
in which America can take forward steps toward a more equal balance between the
Occident and Orient. Bourdain is worried about the ban of alcohol and about eating
reptiles and other animals (like camel) that he, as an American, is not used to. But he
moves past it. He tastes reptile. He eats camel. Above all he finds that his tour guide
and native Saudi, Danya, does not fit the typical character of a female Saudi that he
anticipated. Danya challenged me to go and see how ordinary Saudi's live their
lives, said Bourdain. Danya had never eaten iguana. She had never ridden a camel.
She is not a submissive byproduct of the Islamic regime. Danya and her friends were
funny, they made jokes, they lived normal lives that one may not be able to see in
public Saudi Arabia. Once inside [Danya's house] I [felt] like I could be
anywhere...the midwest for instance (Bourdain).

The episode used typical Middle Eastern B-roll (filler film, images that don't

go along with the moment to moment narrative of the story/episode currently) of

women in head to toe black Thobes, of curious-looking Middle Easterners pondering

the reasons why they are being filmed. The episode takes notice of the daily call to
prayer, where Muslims stop to observe Adhan, or the public praying five times a
day, and Bourdain removes his Orientalist lenses for a moment, for a while
everything stopped. Vendors closed shop. No matter where they were, people took
time out and prayed, Bourdain observed. For a Westerner, it's a reminder of where
you are. Removed from what you see on TV, from what you may already think or
assume. If you put all of that out of your head, put all of it in a vacuum, it's lovely and
impressive. The tone of the episode begins to shift. Bourdain, as he typically does
when confronting other cultures in his show, opens up to the experience. He is no
longer an American coming up against the Orient. He is a human surrounded by
friends. Most importantly, Bourdain observes that in order to make a positive step
forward, to look at the Orient through a more understanding and objective lens, he
must accept the differences. It's not like what you see on the news about Saudi
Arabia isn't true or partly true, it's that that's not the whole picture. It's always a
bigger, more nuanced, more complicated story, said Bourdain in the wrapping
scenes of the episode. Who are the Saudi's? I won't insult them by trying to sum
them up...I don't, I've come to believe, have to agree with you to like you or respect
you.

American Orientalism is a cousin to the 19th century European Orientalism as

observed in Edward Said's 1978 book. Because of different experiences in Oriental

countries, America has developed and defined the Middle East by what it is notit
is not white, it is not a democracy, it is not, dominantly, Christian. The Middle East's
difference from America means that American Orientalism has become a violent, at

times hateful, and isolating lens through which Americans have dug their heads
deeper into a hole of ignorance. It is only through time, experience, and
understanding that American Orientalism will slowly decay and eventually will no
longer blind the eyes of America.