Margaux Ancel

Orientalism in Western Art and Popular Culture

The term Orientalism refers to a Western social construct that highlights the relation of power and influence between the East and the West. Edward Said’s essay on the topic presents two main discourses around the imagined Oriental construct, one is the use of the Orient as a mean to differentiate and mystify the non-European cultures, the second is the West’s attempt to construct and strengthen the superiority aspect of their identity in relation to previously colonized regions. Orientalism should thus be understood as an imaginary vision of the difference and the power dynamics between the West and the East. Said describes the terms “Orient” and “Occident” are man-made entities used to define Western culture in relation to the East socially, culturally, academically, and ideologically. Orientalism is thus a style created by the West to implement the idea of “dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient,” as Said describes it.

The place referred to as “Orient” is thus nothing more than an imagined geographic location encompassing all non-western cultures, from the Middle-Eastern regions just south of Europe, to Asia. “Orient” brings together all culture over which the West attempts to exert dominance, thus continuing a culture of colonization. Orientalism should also be looked upon as a style that eroticizes and mystifies non-European and American cultures by using art to demonstrate the difference between the cultures. Many themes reoccur in art, the exotic appearance of Oriental women, the over-sexualized scenes of baths, and the demonstration of violence through depiction of Oriental leaders’ barbarism. The Oriental world is thus depicted based purely on Western interpretation, often fictional, of what the East should look like due to the difference in culture.

These constructs of Orientalism create issues when representing non-western identities within the western world; Asia, India, Egypt among other nations are all combined and defined under these oriental concept and their cultural identities are simply not differentiated. Any non-western women are seen as exotic and most non-western leaders are considered barbaric in the way they handle their nation; as a result, the old stereotypes and myths live on in the modern era and continue to influence they way any eastern foreigners are represented. Jean Louis Gérôme’s The Slave Market, exemplifies both the Western’s imagined vision of the Orient and the use of the exotic as a selling point for art. The painting depicts a female slave in the nude, in typical western style, being sold to merchants who are shown inspecting her in a very provoking way. These aspects of the painting are meant to both entice the Western viewer’s interest with the erotic, and to cause a reaction with the beautiful almost white female being sold like cattle.

Orientalism is the exotic, the exciting, the romantic, and the unknown; it attracts the attention of the Western world with to the mysteries that surround these foreign lands. Yet it is also entirely fabricates those foreign identities in order to make Westerners feel like a more powerful, civil, and advanced culture. The Orient appears as an escape for Westerners from the very stern and traditional
society, into a land of adventures.