The Discursive Representation of Islam and Muslims in Movies

Introduction

Orientalist discourses intensified in the wake of September 11 attacks. This can be seen in the way a series of global events that took place in the last two decades are presented as a form of East and West conflicts. These events have been talked about, pictured, discussed, critiqued, and offered as such in literature, the media, and common parlance. Beginning with the attacks of September 11, followed by the subsequent American invasion of Iraq, and even with the Arab Spring, the use of the Orientalist discourses have dominated the way the contemporary world talks about these issues. Policies and imperialist interventions continue to frame themselves using Orientalist rhetoric to gain the support of people. This could be seen in the way the politicians have mobilized the rhetoric of protection against an outside threat, often an Islamic terrorist, in order to win the favor of their supporters. The rhetoric has been used even to win the vote of Britain for the Brexit: an economic deal between the United Kingdom and Europe that has nothing to do with any countries in the East. In their campaign, some right-wing propaganda included a flyer with a map that consists of a white background, with a map of the United Kingdom and Europe, in addition to Turkey, Syria and Iraq, in order to invoke the fear that terrorists from those areas will gain access to the United Kingdom rather soon. The American elections have also seen a prominent rise in Orientalist discourses, often targeting Muslim immigrants, who are escaping war zones to find a safer place for their families. The Arab Spring, leading to the war in Syria and the subsequent immigrant crisis, is filled with examples of how Orientalist discourses still govern how the world is presented. Even before that, the War on Iraq campaign first claimed Saddam Hussein to have weapons of mass destruction capable of damaging the United States, and when they were not found, the war was quickly turned into a “War on Terror.” The Orientalist tradition of the threatening unknown has been especially useful in this case. The unknown remains unknown when it is blown out, and has to stay framed in mystical Orientalist terms. Even positive and democratic movements in East have been presented in an Orientalist fashion. The Arab Spring was on the media as a social media revolution, implying that the coordination of demonstrators in Arab countries is the success of a Western democratic tool, downplaying the very potential for political action by people oppressed and silenced for decades. The Syrian refugee crisis quickly changed in right-wing discourse and propaganda into an immigrant crisis, evoking the sentiment that ‘they’ are coming to take ‘our’ jobs, which in itself shows the extent to which a binary division is mostly useful as a geo-economic division that only benefits the internal hierarchy that aims to maintain it. The effect of Orientalist discourses is immense and direct on social and political life. Humanitarian crises are prolonged in the name of security against an enemy that does not exist as an objective truth, but as an element in the construction of a narrative.

In the light of above discussion, the films selected for analysis are samples of three general categorisations of truth and fiction. The first sample, the films on United Flight 93, claim directly to be representing an event that is real, or in other words, historical. Three works have been selected: United 93, Flight 93 and Portraits of Courage. While the event they are trying to depict is as real in the American conscious as can be, they still claim their events and characters are fictitious. The second sample is The Hurt Locker (Katheryn Bigelow, 2008), which claims to be based on the writings of a journalist who has accompanied a bomb-disposal squad in Iraq. The fictional adventures of the squad are presented against a background which is offered as real: Iraq. The last sample is of an Orientalist film which lays a full claim to being fictional. The Kingdom (Peter Berg, 2007) is set in Saudi Arabia in the style of a Hollywood action movie: a team of special agents go to Saudi Arabia to locate a terrorist and repay for the death of their colleague. It links itself to September 11 in the prelude, situating its entire fiction as a natural explanation of the violence that has caused the attacks. What this analysis aims to do is to show that the quality of being an Orientalist does not lie simply in offering a negative image of the Orient, but has to operate a truth/fiction configuration, and manage a distance between the audience and the screen, which allows them to accept the background of these fictions as a real. The works analyzed are largely situated in the midst of the proclaimed East/West conflict, and also situated between the Real/Fiction binary. Some of them are closer to the documentary, some more fiction.