Introduction:
Collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War was a huge event that happened in early years of the last decade of 20th century. Beside of the very advantages that the collapse of this world power presented to Americans, one big disadvantage of that was disappearance of a powerful 'Other' that all Americans got used to define themselves in opposition to it. An 'Evil Empire' that is a threat for American Dream, was the most important means of identifying Americanness after World War II. This turning point made Americans to look for a new 'Other' because this other has existed as an effective part of American history.
By a historical view, it would be explored that United States of America as a country that established by a large number of immigrants from different parts of Europe with various historical backgrounds, had very difficulties to form an identity. In that conditions differentiation was a good path to make at least a temporary identity. Identity that is an answer to the question of "How people understand who they are and how do they differentiate themselves from others?" Differentiation of white Europeans from Native Americans or Indians, from black Africans, and finally from the British colonizers and their troops and even among the white Europeans, differentiation between land owners and landless people was a means to shape an identity. If we consider victory over Britain as the turning point for erecting a new country by building a state, we should say that, establishment of United States of America as a country did not guarantee the integrated nation for a long time. Creating an identity to integrate the whole nation of the United States necessitated making an 'Other' as an important factor to form 'we' in opposition to 'they'.
History of United States has experienced different others based on the socio-economical domestic situation or foreign political conditions, inside the borders of the country, and outside of it. These others were defined based on political and economical grand strategies that were designed by politicians and decision makers. Nevertheless these strategies must be legitimized in the people's minds that this task was done by the cultural means such as literature and art and media. For a long time literary texts such as novels and poems had been legitimizing these policies and in terms of media, newspapers had had and still have this task. In contemporary era, after revolution in communicational technology this phenomenon got more crucial.
During the Cold War, American media were supposed to direct the public opinion to see the communism as an eternal evil and a powerful threatening Other, to define being American mostly as not being a communist. End of the cold war and disappearance of this Other, made American media leaders to create a new Other. For this purpose, Islam was chosen as a revived enemy opposed to Christian world, an enemy that reminded an ancient opposition. It is a branch of U.S. foreign policy that I call it cultural foreign policy that is absolutely consistent with the actual foreign policy and it sounds more influential. Decision makers of both of them are the same and all these national decisions are made around one table that is led by U.S. president and his Secretary of State. Said argues, Western cultural institution are responsible for the creation of those 'Others' (1978).
Dealing with American culture, Hollywood is one of such western cultural institutions. Here I will consider Hollywood movies as both artistic works and media channel for publicizing American ideology. I will analyze three new movies that have produced after September 11, 2001 to examine the representations of Muslim Middle Eastern and third world nations in a bigger process of 'Othering'. In American culture, undoubtedly Hollywood is an influential mean in U.S. public diplomacy either domestically or outside of its geographical borders. These three movies are 'Syriana', 'United 93' that are exactly about Islamic terrorism and 'Borat' that is related to the more general notion of civilized West in opposition to uncivilized East.
National Identity and Othering
National identity in its modern form is a product of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that is a matter of the ways in which people identify with places or are identified with them by others (Baldwin, 1999). All the things that are covered by national identity or nationalism are the cultural relationship between individual and the collectivity as it is understood through territoriality (Baldwin, 1999, p158). Territoriality means that all nations are supposed to be identified with specific territories that are parts of the world but meaningful to them as their historical homeland. On the other hand, this means that nationalisms and national identities are always as much on the exclusion of people who do not fit and the drawing of boundaries as on the imagining of a community and the territory where they can live together (Baldwin, 1999).
According to Chris Barker in 'Sage dictionary for Cultural Studies', national identity is a way of unifying cultural diversity so that, rather than thinking of nations and national cultures as a 'whole', we should understand unity or identity to be the consequence of discursive power that covers over difference. Nations are marked by deep internal divisions and differences so that a unified national identity has to be constructed through the narrative of the nation by which stories, images, symbols and rituals represent 'shared' meanings of nationhood. Thus national identity involves identification with representations of shared experiences and history as told through stories, literature, popular culture and the media (Barker, 2004).
Stephen Daniels (1993) understands national identities as being given shape and content by legends and landscapes. These histories and geographies "give shape to the imagined community of the nation". So creation of cultural homogeneity and the prioritization of certain ways of imagining the community are the ways which in national identity works as a matter of both inclusion and exclusion. This exclusion could be evidenced obviously through immigration policies, through racist violence and through a program of racist political parties (Baldwin, 1999). In this way defining 'us' by defining 'them' and, in turn, disallowing 'them' real or symbolic access to the nation's geographies would be clear. In this sense the notion of 'Other', 'Otherness' and 'Othering' which is used in post-colonial theories got central importance in analyzing the dominant discourse of the world.
Barker argues that notion of 'Other' is closely linked to those of identity and difference in that identity is understood to be defined in part by its difference from the 'Other'. Such binaries of difference usually involve a relationship of power, of inclusion and exclusion, in that one of the pair is empowered with a positive identity and the other side of the equation becomes the subordinated Other. The master is inseparable from the slave; the identities of men are interlocked with those of women and (Barker, 2004:139).
In post-colonial theory, it can refer to the colonized others who are marginalized by imperial discourse, and identified by their difference from the centre and, perhaps crucially, become the focus of anticipated mastery by the imperial 'ego'. This colonized subject is characterized as 'other' through discourses such as primitivism and cannibalism, as a means of establishing the binary separation of the colonizer and colonized (Ashcroft et al, 1998). The Other can be compared to the imperial centre, imperial discourse, or the empire itself.
The term of 'Othering' was coined by Gayatri Spivak for the process by which imperial discourse creates its 'Others'. Othering describes the various ways in which colonial discourse produces its subjects. In Spivak explanation, Othering is a dialectical process because the colonizing Other is established at the same time as its colonized others are produced as subjects (Ashcroft et al, 1998).
All these concepts would be interrelated in Edward Said's (1978) notion of Orientalism which could be considered as the central axe of post-colonial theory which addresses how representations of the East made by those from the West have been involved in the identification of cultural differences and making of a set of unequal power relations(Baldwin, P168). Based on Said's theory, Orientalism is a way of thinking about, talking about and representing the world that makes sense of it, and makes statements about it, based on a division of it into two parts: West and East as the West's 'other'.
Said says without examining Orientalism as a discourse, it is not possible to understand 'the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage and even produce - the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post Enlightenment period' (Said, 1978:3 in Ashcroft, Ahluwalia, 1999)
The significance of Orientalism is that as a mode of knowing the other. The Orient is not an inert fact of nature, but a phenomenon constructed by generations of intellectuals, artists, commentators, writers, politicians, and more importantly constructed by the naturalizing of a wide range of Orientalist assumptions and stereotypes. The relationship between the Orient and the Occident is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony (Ashcroft et al, 1998).
The contemporary Islamic Orient is all the more important because of its rich oil resources and its strategic geo-political location. More importantly, through the popular media Islam has become a major item of news and a consumable commodity for the mass of the population (Ashcroft, Ahluwalia, 1999).
Muslims and Arabs are essentially covered, discussed, and apprehended either as oil suppliers or as potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human destiny, the passion of Arab-Muslim life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Islamic world. (1997: 28) (Ashcroft, Ahluwalia, 1999).
Islamic 'Other' after Communist 'Other'
Two events, after the end of Cold War, concentrated public minds on Islam as the causes of them. The first one was explosion of a bomb in World Trade Center in 1993 and the other was an explosion in Oklahoma City. World Trade Center explosion was labeled by foreign terrorism and Middle Easterners were introduced as the main agent of violence. It was for making a clear structure of "we-they" that directed American aggressiveness out of themselves towards a 'they' that was not American. This 'they' for almost half a century was a communist that hate American Dream and the ways for achieving it, but a new foreign threat became needed. At that time news programs introduced Islam and fundamental Muslims as symbol of 'otherness' that is responsible for this terrible attacks against American heartland in New York and Oklahoma (Semati, 2006).it is interesting that the agent of Oklahoma explosion was a white American radical that did that terrorist act against his own homeland.
Jack Shaheen (1989) believes that American TV portrays Arabs as 'sex Maniacs' and 'terrorists' (semati, 2006). Historically, Western newspapers see Islam as a threat for Christian West (Suleiman, 1988, Said 1981). (Semati, 2006) and after September 11, American media traced Islam and Islamic fundamentalists as the 'threatening other'. In this way, terrorism is represented as essentially Middle Eastern problem that most of its victims are Americans, while anti-American terrorist operations have been mostly in Latin America with 369 cases and Europe with 458 cases not in Middle East with just 84 cases (Semati, 2006). They put Islam inevitably beside the words like 'extremism', 'fundamentalism', and 'radicalism' and so on. In this way a new Arabophobia was encouraged in that differentiating racist discourse that was covered by nationalistic and religious and governmental justifications , but this Arabophobia was an exact example for 'cultural racism'. The point is that neo-racism uses 'differences' for its acts instead of inferiority of others. Because claiming of superiority and inferiority are not acceptable in contemporary era and they have to find a justification.
SYRIANA
Four interlinked stories are narrated parallel to each other. The first story is about the character of Bob Barnes who is an agent of the "Central Intelligent Agency" and expert of Middle East, Iran and Lebanon. His story started with a Bomb explosion in Tehran and his new mission is assassination of one Arab prince called Prince Nassir who is well educated, open minded and reformist.
The other story is about a new oil corporation company by name of 'Connex Killen' corporation, which is the 5th largest oil company with 37000workers in 160 countries with a GDP larger than Denmark or Pakistan that will have 23rd large economy.
The third story related to power struggle between two Arab princes in an imaginative Middle Eastern country which name is Syria but in terms of structure of system and geopolitical situation is more similar to one of the rich emirates of margin of Persian Gulf.
And fourth story is about the socio-economical situation of life and ideological beliefs of the Muslim poor workers that direct them to participate in terrorist organizations and suicide operations against the American institutions.
Here I want to consider the representation of Muslim Middle Eastern in this film that will be a great part of the discursive concept of Othering or Otherization.
Syriana, in spite of its logical and to a large extent realistic view towards global issues, has done a good job in Othering because of its very realistic view. The Othering started before beginning the film by putting the voice of Azan on the sign of Warner Bros Pictures as the producer of the film. It want to say at first moment before starting the movie that it is about the Muslims, not us, it is about the others.
In Syriana, Middle Eastern Muslims are represented in three ways. The first group are king or princes or wealthy millionaire people that live in luxurious palaces, mostly in Europe, giving very sumptuous parties, spending money of oil very much and easily while lacking of political and economical knowledge about the current global conditions and new technologies. They are able to buy everything they like from Chinese to Americans, from technological instruments to services of American or European consultants and even their child. In terms of number they are very few but all the power sources are in their hands, they can use this power according to their ideology in pro-American or Anti-American ways. It is a stereotype called 'fool wealthy Arab' that suggests rich people with only physical concerns for enjoyment of earthly life without thinking of future.
The second groups that consist major part of the Middle Eastern population are unskilled workers that are mostly immigrant from Pakistan, India, Indonesia and other poor eastern Asian countries. These Muslim workers who suffer of misery in their life, to a large extent are talented to be members of terrorist organization under advises of Islamic preachers and sermons. This group forms the stereotype of 'potential terrorist'. Individuals without any pleasure and hope in their current life that do not have any thing to loose in this world unless their life. For the members of this stereotypical group, collective spirit is much more powerful than the individualism. These people can easily be affected by religious and Islamic justification to act against the interests of the capitalist world powers who are seen as the causes of their misery. It seems rational to purchase the eternal salvation and cheerfulness buy selling a misery life for God.
The third group that is less than a stereotype because of its rare emergence should be named 'powerless reformist' which representative is Prince Nassir. A well educated person in Harvard who has liberal trends to reconstruct his country based on liberal democratic values. A parliamentary system which in everyone, either men or women have right to vote, to be candidate, right for education and complete citizenship. This 'powerless reformist's are condemned to fail or in better words to death.
UNITED 93
'UNITED 93' is a story of the fourth airplane which name was 'United 93' and in September 11 terrorist attacks despite of being hijacked, did not succeed to reach to its target. A movie that is completely about the September 11, 2001 events and is very effective in evoking the audiences' sentiments even foreigner audiences.
This movie has been filmed in a way to inspire that is a documentary realistic film based on the reality. Film starts with showing the praying four Arab Muslins in a sunrise of the September 11, 2001. The style of their praying and their appearance implies that they are Shiite Muslims from Middle East. Their skin color inspires that they should be from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria or Iraq that are seen as the main campus of Islamic terrorists. Their names are Ahmad, Ziad and Said. Their red frontlets show their beliefs and religious values. Believing in martyrdom (Shahadat) to devote the earthly life for gaining an eternal happiness. In opposition to these coward terrorist that do not have any kind of human feelings to allow a wounded man to be cured, Americans are represented who are all innocent victims of terrorist operation. American society is shown as a pluralist society which in different races and ethnicities are living and working with each other peacefully in various occupational positions without any difficulties. If there is any problem, they are from foreigners who do not like American principles.
The 'Othering' process starts in the scene that shows Boston Air Traffic Control Center when the officer mentioned that the accent of hijacker was not American, it was a foreigner.
Repeating the Islamic slogans such as "Allah o Akbar" during the aggressive acts, encourages a sense of Islamophobia among the audiences. Contrary to the terrorist hijackers, Christian hostages betakes to Jesus Christ. This could signify on a religious war between Christianity and Islam, a benign Christianity and a fundamentalist Islam.
All in all, Paul Green grass had made a very influential film that despite of simple structure of film and its cinematic weakness, is able to evoke anti-terrorist sentiment that could be logically generalized to anti-Islamic attitudes to form a strong and dangerous 'other' that is able to do suicide terrorist attacks against American liberal way of life.
BORAT
'BORAT' that has been categorized in the comic genre among the Hollywood movies narrated an unfair story of the confrontation of West and East or Occidental and Oriental world. Despite of the last two discussed movies, Borat does not use the Middle Eastern Muslims in opposition to the Christian westerners. It could be seen as a continuation of the Cultural Cold War after almost 16 years that represents the legacies of the communism in the nations under its domination to suggest that decline of human modern values in such a system was inevitable and complete.
Borat is the name of main character of the movie who is a well-known showman of the Kazakhstan TV that decides to travel to United States to make a program for introducing the American culture to his people. During his travel he involves in various kinds of interaction with different parts of American society that because of lack of right perception of the world, these interactions get a shocking foolish forms that make laughing jokes for the audiences. These foolish behaviors includes such a strange acts for Americans from kissing men in the street and underground to falling in love with a female singer (Pamela Anderson) by seeing her photo in a magazine, from disability to turn on the TV to not knowing how to use the bathroom, from talking about his wife as whore and having sexual relationship with his mother and daughter to appear completely naked in front of the people in a music hall. All those stories that make every reflective and even ordinary audience more embarrassed because of its immorality and inhumanity instead of making them laughed pursues a main target that is confrontation and humiliation of Orient with the occident.
Borat is not merely a comic film which in a fool man does silly jobs to make the audiences laughed. Film shows that Borat as a symbol of Kazakhstan people does not now anything about social life and human social behaviors in his own society and his difficulties reaches to a critical point when he travel to U.S. as the greatest symbol of civilized western world.
Someone can ask why Kazakhstan is chosen for this purpose. What are the differences between Kazakhstan and other parts of the Soviet Union such as Georgia, Armenia or Turkmenistan? By looking at the main challengeable issues during the Cold War, military bases for launching missiles to set up artificial and communicational satellites of Kazakhstan could be found a real challenge. This movie can be interpreted as a cultural revenge of a nation whose territory was basic for the power of 'Evil Empire'.
It is a kind of humiliation of a nation or in more general word, humiliation of the people who are living in less developed third world countries to create an identity for Americans in front of a unsocialized and uncivilized Other.
It could be seen not only the meeting of the. It is more general to encounter civilized world where in 'We' (the Americans) inhabited and uncivilized third world where in 'They' as our 'Other' are living. 'We' have responsibility to socialize them, teaching them how to live in a modern world (as film shows all the Americans patiently try to tolerate Borat's rude behaviors and hopelessly want to help him to learn some social treatment, although all their attempts failed) and at the same time 'They' are helping us to identify ourselves.
Conclusion
Samuel P. Huntington in his theory of 'Clash of Civilizations' argues that in the aftermath of the Cold War, the invention of a new enemy, a new 'other', would be necessitated. According to Huntington's view, the future will be dominated by clash of civilizations. Huntington's argument is that, until the end of the cold war conflict had been based predominantly upon conflicts within Western civilizations. In the post cold war period, he argues that conflict is no longer going to occur in the West but between the West and non-Western civilizations. Among the non-Western civilizations, Islamic civilization worries Huntington the most, and his argument is that, although the West and Islam have a long history of conflict, it reached its zenith in the Gulf War, which was a clear manifestation of civilization conflict (Ashcroft, Ahluwalia, 1999).
Although his theory could be absolutely right, but his theory now is the background of the all American minds that has evidenced one of it's the most painful implication in their real public world. For Americans, the September 11 attacks were a kind of invasion against their liberal principles from the hostile terrorists that had been growing up in the 'other' uncivilized part of the world. President Bush right after those attacks started to use that event in a new process of 'othering':
"Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other" (Bush, 2001).
This 'they' mentioned by Bush included the countries that later on became known as 'axis of evil' to remind a new era, after Cold War that had a great 'Other' as 'evil empire'.
"Terror sponsors: Iran, North Korea, Iraq .States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred" (Bush, 2004).
We can see there is a close relation and non-deniable consistencies between actual foreign policy that is exercised by official politicians and cultural foreign policy that is done through media and cultural channels to reconstruct and form the public minds in direction that guarantee the real foreign political and economical interests.
References:
Ashcroft B., G.G., Tiffin H., Post-Colonial Studies, The key concepts. 2004, London, New York: Routledge.
Ashcroft B. and Ahluwalia, P., Edward Said. Routledge Critical Thinkers 2005, London and New York Routledge.
Baldwin, E. et al., Introducing Cultural Studies. 1999, London, New York: Prentice Hall Europe.
Barker, C., The Sage Dictionary of Cultural Studies. 2004, London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi: Sage Publication.
Semati, M., Asr-e CNN va Hollywood: Manafe Meli, Ertebatat Farameli [The Age of CNN and Hollywood: National Interest, Transnational Communication]. . 2006, Tehran: Nashr-e Nay.
Shaheen, J.G., 'American TV portrays Arab as Sex Maniacs, Terrorist'. Democratic Journalist, 1989. 36.
Suleiman, M.W., 'The Arabs in the Minds of Americans'. 1988, Vermont: Amana Books.
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