( Film Screenings & Lectures )
Orientalism can mean several meanings, but for the sake of this project, Orientalism will be defined as the representation of the Middle East, and North Africa in a stereotypical manner. This results in the exaggeration of the differences between the so-called “Orientals” and the Western societies, leading to a “self vs. other” mode of thought.
The term Orientalism was given a new meaning by Edward Said in his book Orientalism (1978) and has become an important topic of discussion in academia since then.
To put it differently, what the Americans and Europeans see on Tv or read in Newspapers impacts their approximation of the “other” as they start to misunderstand their culture and degrades them to non-humans, violent, and war-riddens. The westerns express their point of view about the orient depending on their aspects of life as they see themselves as “ideal” human beings.