Exotic? Maybe Not Very Much So

Writer: Habiba Elhadidi Editor: Mahmoud Fadel

If you’ve watched Bodak Yellow’s music video, you’ve probably had the same reaction I had when I did: confusion. What is Cardi possibly doing wearing a burqa and riding a camel, in the middle of the desert?! While Bodak Yellow’s representation of Middle Eastern culture is confusing, it would make sense depending on the viewer’s perception of the desert, or more generally, Middle Eastern culture. Another similarly confusing representation of Middle Eastern culture is Disney’s 1992 movie Aladdin. The chaotic souks, the angry guards chasing Aladdin everywhere, the palaces with piles of gold coins, and countless enchanting belly dancers—all of which are supposedly representative of the Middle East. Aladdin’s representation is, interestingly enough, very similar to one that is more than a century older: L’Odalisque à l’esclave, an 1839 painting depicting a nude odalisque, a musician, and a eunuch in a harem setting. The question that arises here is: what is it that causes that shared unrealistic representation? What do Cardi B’s Bodak Yellow, Disney’s Aladdin, and Jean-AugusteDominique Ingres’ L’Odalisque à l’esclave have in common? Orientalism. What these three different artistic pieces from very distinct eras share is that they depict the “exotic” culture of the “Orient.” While the images used in all examples do conjure up ideas about the Middle East and North Africa (i.e. the Orient), the attachment of such imagery to Middle Eastern culture can be attributed to Orientalist fantasies.

So how and where did this “exotic” representation come to be? In other words, what spurred this racialized and fetishized depiction of a culture from a distant land? One can know where it originated by knowing whose “East” these depictions represented. The Orientalist depictions all started from the West. Paintings like L’Odalisque à l’esclave and The Slave Market were the works of Western painters that never got to visit this part of the world, which means the notions of mysticism were already present by the 1830s. Prior to the 19th century, the West had minimal contact with the East, therefore Renaissance and Baroque art had very minor depictions of the region. In 1798, a French army led by Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt. After a three-year occupation, the French government published the first issue of the twenty four-volume Description de l’Égypte (1809–22), illustrating aspects of life in Egypt. It was the most influential of many works that aimed to document the culture of this region, which was previously unknown to the West. A lot of the first nineteenth-century Orientalist paintings, however, were intended as propaganda in support of French imperialism, depicting the East as a place of backwardness that had been enlightened by the grace of French rule. Similarly, British colonial expansion also created similar art that propagated British imperialism. As Edward Said put it: “the Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences”. But if the Orient is a European invention, how was it able to influence the movie Aladdin? Said explains that American Orientalism did not emerge until post-WWII, when Americans started taking an interest in the region and America substituted Britain and France as the dominant Western power. American Orientalism differs from its British and French counterparts by being less systematic and more politicized. The politicization of the “American Orient” is mainly due to the presence of Israel; it wasn’t until the creation of an Israeli state that the anti-Islamic and anti-Arab rhetoric was merged into American Orientalism. This situation led to the spread of demeaning stereotypes, such as the ones in Aladdin, which present the culture of Middle East as backwards, barbaric, and hypersexualized.

Since such countries lacked morality, it was only right for imperialist countries to take over, in order to guide them and show them the way to civility.

The depiction of the “Oriental” cultures as being devoid of morality was by no means in favor of its own people, but it was very much in favor of the imperialist agenda. Since such countries lacked morality, it was only right for imperialist countries to take over, in order to guide them and show them the way to civility. It worked by presenting non-Western people as “the Other.” And little was known to citizens of countries like France and Great Britain; all they had access to was their government’s propaganda, which in turn meant giving all their support for colonial expansion. Orientalist art was a tool imperialistic powers used to justify their colonial activity. By being perceived as the beacon lighting the darkness of Eastern ignorance, colonial powers were able to justify imperialism to their people. It was, and still is, a strategy of cultural and political domination by the West; one that depends on the “disparities in power and access to knowledge production,” as put by historian Claire Gallien, between the imperialist powers and those whom they ruled.

Why is this concept still lingering on, anyway? Take a speech by George W. Bush, former President of the USA, in 2003. In this speech, Bush justified the American invasion of Iraq by saying: “As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence... It would be reckless to accept the status quo. Therefore the United States has adopted... a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East [which] requires the same... idealism we have shown before.” It has been almost two centuries since the start of the French colonial expansion, but the same methods of propaganda were used here. Spread stereotypes to your citizens who have little or no previous knowledge of the foreign culture in question, bring up your plan of invasion, or “intervention”, and then support it by giving the moral reason behind it: spreading knowledge and civility to the people who don’t have it, and finally claim that your invasion is for those people’s benefit. Colonialism has only benefited the colonizers. What previously colonized region of the world did said colonization leave for the better, or even intact? I don’t recall any. This is imperialism: it’s not about helping the less fortunate, but about raiding them because they are less fortunate.

Orientalism is a strategy based on projecting a false image. It is a notion of the culturally superior vs. inferior. Understanding this 200 year old concept could help explain a lot of what has been going on in modern politics; the notion of “we know best, therefore it’s better if we’re in charge” is still very much prevalent. Orientalism creates myths and stereotypes based on the narratives governments and institutions’ ideologies create. It distorts reality and influences the people’s perception of other cultures. And while I’m not trying to imply that Middle Eastern culture is devoid of flaws or entirely progressive, I believe that had these countries been left on their own, it would have been better. In this light, as Saïd reminds us, when we see Orientalist works like Odalisque a l’esclave, and maybe Cardi B’s Bodak Yellow music video—a more relevant and accessible equivalent today—we should ask ourselves whose “Orient” we see, and why?