Otherization of Oriental Woman in Cinema

Introduction

Western history has always established itself through the East. The West objectified the knowledge of the East in discourse. It is possible to see these discourses, which were established through written works, in all mass media today. There is a language of discourse that the West has shaped for the East, from news in the newspaper to films. This language is also used by the East itself. While the East was shaped with the stories, novels and paintings of the travelers in the past, today, it is possible to rebuild the East every day through all kinds of media discourse, especially news and film media.

Said, who reversed the studies of Orientalism and developed his theory, showed that Orientalist studies were not at all innocent and that knowledge of the East was built. Said was influenced by Michel Foucault's discourse theory and, with a Foucauldian approach, tried to uncover the discourse that the West had built for the East. The discourse established by those who have the power is building knowledge. When discourse analysis is performed, an information network based on inequality appears. Since the dominant discourse is established by the West, the Orientalist discourse language of the West is widely used today, even in the East.

Western Orientalist discourse is established by “otherization”. “Other” includes a dualist conception: us and them. In this understanding, the identity of another is always needed to establish the “other”. This marginalizing discourse takes place in many areas from art to politics. While the East is shown as dirty, sensual, crowded, irrational, the West has a clean, simple and rational feature - even if it does not appear to exist. Especially in the West, it was possible to see these examples in the field of painting and literature in the past. Today Western cinema, especially Hollywood, approaches the East with orientalist discourse.

Especially after the September 11 attacks, there has been an increase in films in the West involving Middle East or Middle Easterners. Not surprisingly, in these films, the Muslim world in general and the Arabs in general are shown to be associated with terrorism. On the other hand, apart from racial and ethnic marginalization, sexist marginalization also manifests itself. But the issue of sexist otherization has a complicated structure. Muslim women in the Middle East face a sexist marginalization after racial and ethnic marginalization. While Muslim women have the difficulties of being a woman as in all cultures, their cultural features are used by the West in the political field. In other words, the West uses the cultural features of women in building information about the East and even making political interventions. This creates a very problematic area. Because it is seen that there is a homogenizing language of science even in the academic field. In this homogenized language, all Oriental women have almost the same cultural processes.