Reproducing Orientalism With Cinema: Aladdin (2019)

Introduction

Cinema represents all socio-political and economic changes, transformations and conflicts in society, which are social dynamics. Therefore, cinema has a close relationship with the dominant ideologies that exist in every era. While this relationship sometimes comes to light as a conflict with dominant ideologies criticizing the flaws in existing systems, it sometimes appears as a means of reproducing the dominant discourse, as in the movie “Aladdin”, which is the subject of the study.

Ideology is accepted as false consciousness and illusion of truth (Eagleton, 1990). Ideology, as a method of producing social reality, covers up social tensions and class differences and functions within the context of reproduction of the dominant ideology. The concept of dominant ideology appears as a symbolic system that helps to reproduce a political order that serves the interests of ruling groups and classes (Erdoğan & Alemdar, 1994, p. 197).

Imposing the dominant ideology on individuals takes place with consent. Sovereign discourse resorts to various ways to gain the consent of the people under its control (Bully 2013, p. 61-62). Undoubtedly, the most important means of mass media are the ways in which this society is used to get its consent. At this point, cinema is positioned as a means of cultural representation that restructures social life and reality with different elements within the framework of some ideologies, forming a common mind set in societies, maintaining and strengthening the existence of social institutions (Karakoç & Mert, 2013, p. 284)

It is accepted that cinema is the a mass media that can have the largest impact on societies due to its nature and as Rotha stated, there are main reasons for the effective use of cinema as a propaganda tool of dominant ideology.

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  Having a structure suitable to be shared by the masses,

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  It has a convincing competence due to its simple power in terms of explanation and expression competence,

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  It can reach people in countless ways without a certain time limitation with its repetitive mechanized quality for millions of people (Rotha, 2000, p. 40).

In the context of all these factors, regardless of the cinema narrative, it is never far from value judgments, ideological or even political tendencies (Güçhan, 1999, p. 176). The relationship between cinema and Orientalism emerges at this point. Orientalism is considered a way of thinking that Western civilizations use to define and systematically make sense of Eastern societies. Orientalism is an approach which reveals itself in many fields. Art, which is affected by social perception and life, and even nourished by it in many cases, can be shaped in line with the orientalist perspective. The orientalist approach emerges as the Western study of the East and it attempts to understand it as it is, reproducing it according to its own perspective and trying to establish superiority over the new “other” it produces. The West needed another to define itself, and this other became the East (Doğan, 2016, p. 13).

In this context, the movie “Aladdin”, produced in 2019, will be analyzed in order to determine how the orientalist perspective is reproduced through cinema and how the eastern image is”otherized”. In the study, the Critical Discourse Analysis method was preferred in order to analyze the backgrounds of the ideologies in the movie and to evaluate all the forms of reproduction within the social and political context.

Orientalism

Orient in the European languages is the place where the sun rises, orientalism, which derives from the Latin word Oriens, means Eastern science as a concept. Although it is not possible to find clear information about when the concept of orientalism was first used, the recognition of the concept of orientalism as an academic discipline in 1539 in Europe in Paris, the first Arabic Department at the College de France and at Cambridge University in England. It was with the establishment of the Department of Oriental Studies. (Kaya, 2010, p.7). At first, the concept of orientalism was defined positively. In this context, the purpose of orientalism was perceived as the knowledge of the folkloric knowledge of the East and ensuring academic discipline until the 18th century. However, with the 19th century, this purpose changed as the West's desire to create an East that serves its own ideological purposes on the basis of the education, development and civilization of Eastern countries (Kaya, 2010, pp. 8-9).