Today's people fall into the advertising network more and more every day with the developing technology. The modern world is exposed to many written and visual images in this area. All these images contain a whole of meanings. Advertising, which is one of the concepts that affects and transforms society, is also a collection of messages. While conveying his messages, the facts that create and transform society, cultures, and identities, and creation processes occur in this context. The created advertisements, the concepts of self, and the “other,” East and West, have existed since the formation of human history and have been influenced from time to time, and the Orientalist, re-orientalist perspective has shown itself in the advertisements. The underdevelopment of the East is a discourse aimed at religion, language, and races. The West spreads its Orientalist discourse to the world through mass media. This research investigates the orientalism effects in media and communication regarding how the media and communication field is affected by Orientalism.
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The dictionary meaning of the word Orientalism is Eastern Science, and its other meaning is to seek information about the East. Although Orientalism stands before us as a branch of science, defining it as a kind of “engineering of Eastern cultures and civilizations” is possible. In other words, Orientalism is a process developed by the West in order to dominate the East, to restructure it according to its interests. The name of the long-lasting process has fueled the Muslim-Christian divide for centuries and defined the East through the West's eyes. Orientalism is a historical phenomenon that was disciplined centuries ago and integrated with colonialism and missionary.
For the West, the East has been a subject of interest and curiosity for different reasons for centuries. East's culture, philosophy, art, religion, history, etc. It is seen that it is a material for orientalist research in a wide range of fields. Studies on the East / West attract attention as proof that the two communities have mutual communication at all times. Sometimes these studies are done to get to know the enemy better, sometimes for reasons such as curiosity and interest in the East or creating a mystical, mysterious, exotic East. It is possible to gather the studies in this field under orientalist studies heading in the most basic sense.
Societies' imaginations of 'I' affect their perception of 'other' in an absolute way as there is a connection between the self's perception and the other individual or society that sees the other as an opportunity and wealth. Moreover, a connection between the other's perception of the individual or society sees others as “hell.” The fact that a community that sees itself ontologically at the center of the universe does not hesitate to see others, that is, the “other” as “barbarian,” “pariah” is closely related to the self-concept (Kalın, 2007: 7).
In this context, the East of the West's perception expresses the whole of real or imaginary images it has formed about another civilization and shows how the West has an “I” vision and self-consciousness (Kalın, 2007: 17). Therefore, the history of Orientalism also presents the history of Western consciousness.
Edward Said, in his Orientalism, He states that the Westerners, while dealing with the East, act from their views and assumptions, make their dreams speak, and draw a fabricated view of the East that suits the West's interests. While looking at the East, Western consciousness looks at itself from the opposite and expresses itself consciously or unconsciously. Orientalism, which we can define as the West's imagination about the East, is a field that we can encounter in every point of the Western mind world from art to science, from literature to politics.
Even though the exact date of Orientalism's origin cannot be revealed according to many researchers, some researchers attribute the emergence of the concept to the establishment of Arab Chairs in various Western universities by the Vienna Council in 1312. The concept was accepted as an academic discipline starting from the last quarter of the 18th-century to the 19th century. It is seen that the studies on the East continue their existence in various fields and different tracks (Bulut 2004: 1-10).
Until the 18th century, the aim of Orientalism was: While the West was to create an East that is entirely different from itself, at the end of the century, the Western countries took on the mission of educating, developing, helping, and civilizing the Eastern countries. It seems to have aimed to create an East that serves its ideological purposes. Revealing the differences of this established East becomes a way to benefit from the blessings of the East. Thus, it is seen that the East has become supported in order to be controlled by the West.
While some East / West views view orientalist studies positively, some do not accept the objectivity and accuracy of these studies and adopt a negative attitude towards orientalist studies. In the 1970s, studies that looked negatively on orientalist studies became apparent, especially with Edward Said, Said's book Orientalism was both the name father of the word, and after this study, such studies were intensified.
TV series, movies, advertisements, and books are essential media tools that shape life and reflect cultural factors. These tools should be evaluated and made sense in the context of their societies. As a means of carrying ideologies and messages, advertisements have often become one of the current order's building blocks. Advertisements and films, which are one of the devices that society used as support in change and development, have been the order's help.