How Media Struggle with Representing Cultures
© David Hamilton
Aug 9, 2007
The contemporary interpretation of Islam by the West seems to be ignorant of the complexity of this religion. Due to the short nature of news reports, it is easy for one to draw connections between Islam and oil, anti-American sentiment, and a host of other alarming things. A balanced portrayal of modern Islam is difficult to find in conventional media sources, and furthermore, if it was presented, it is likely that audiences would reject what they read, see or hear because of their preconceived notions of this foreign culture. Edward Said makes these arguments and more in Covering Islam, and shows how we orientalize foreign cultures(basically how we recreate what they are in our perceptions of them).
Said’s writing finds its way to communication studies, sociology and political economy syllabi and more because his concepts about the nature of global existence are making their way to the forefront of the social sciences. Covering Islam is in a series of books beginning with the seminal, Orientalism. The orientialism thesis is defined by Charlene Elliott of Carleton University as: “the ethnocentric and stereotypic means of viewing, describing, restructuring, and ultimately dominating Muslim lands in Africa and Asia.” One has to go no further than a local “ethnic” restaurant where there are clear stereotypes being played upon. A great example is chicken balls in Chinese restaurants. Westerners associate this dish as culturally Chinese but it is only traditional in Western Chinese restaurants and would seem very foreign if found in China. The fetishism of the so-called primitive and mysterious East exhibits itself in the West but it seems more and more that the “modern progress” of the West (that contributes so much to the degradation of the environment and social welfare) seems justified by the exclusively bad news about the middle-east generated in Western newsrooms.
Said essentially applies his thesis of orientalism to the situation of Islam. Said makes the argument that because Westerners have little contact with Islam, they tend to orientalize, or create a simplified and flawed understanding of its postulates that is more stylized or stereotyped than it ought to be. Journalists sent to the Middle East may be well equipped as observers but they must actually know the specifics of Islam to report upon it fairly. The context of events in the Muslim world has to be recognized. In telling a story, he argues, one must relate events in a way that the reader can understand it in terms of his/her society. If the meta-narrative of Islamic society is different than that of the West, this has to be taken into account. He illustrates that western journalists often do not understand the events of which they report by making the observation that most journalists do not even speak the local language form where they are reporting. This misunderstanding of what Islam entails, he argues, is not without its repercussions on the rift between East and West.
Because this book was written in 1981, Said writes about the hostage crisis in Iran two years prior to demonstrate the problems in the communication relations between the Muslim world and the West. He writes that reporters and the public found it hard to conceive of this other world – Walter Cronkite would pronounce Arab names seemingly dozens of times without success and viewers were under the impression that Shi’ite meant being “anti-American.” Said warns readers to be sceptical about reporting especially about a culture with which the Western world is generally unfamiliar. It is not an elitist stance on Said’s part but an observation that in the media rich environment that characterizes the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, the human consciousness must generalize to make sense of a world that is ever more temporally and spatially compressed. Said concludes that there may be a change in the preponderance of predominantly negative news about the Islamic world because new generations of Westerners are less tied to the prejudices tied to conquest and domination of other cultures, and there is greater interest in learning about a different culture as an equal to one’s own rather than a “less-evolved” version of one’s own.
Said makes some excellent arguments about how the real Islam is more covered-up in its media interpretation than covered. He draws upon some very sophisticated ideas about how the imagination of locality is changing in the face of global communication networks.
Said goes beyond describing how the news could better be reported to discuss how the West has a sociological condition where there is a collective misinterpretation of Islam in the form of orientalization. As for the discontinuation of this trend, he offers some solutions but on the whole he is rather sceptical that people will forget their prejudices and it is easy to understand his pessimism. Covering Islam is a fascinating book that produces a grim logic for the ubiquitous prejudice in the West against the Islamic world.
The copyright of the article Orientalism in the Media in Philosophy is owned by David Hamilton. Permission to republish Orientalism in the Media in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
http://philosophy.suite101.com/article.cfm/orientalism_in_the_media
© David Hamilton
Aug 9, 2007
The contemporary interpretation of Islam by the West seems to be ignorant of the complexity of this religion. Due to the short nature of news reports, it is easy for one to draw connections between Islam and oil, anti-American sentiment, and a host of other alarming things. A balanced portrayal of modern Islam is difficult to find in conventional media sources, and furthermore, if it was presented, it is likely that audiences would reject what they read, see or hear because of their preconceived notions of this foreign culture. Edward Said makes these arguments and more in Covering Islam, and shows how we orientalize foreign cultures(basically how we recreate what they are in our perceptions of them).
Said’s writing finds its way to communication studies, sociology and political economy syllabi and more because his concepts about the nature of global existence are making their way to the forefront of the social sciences. Covering Islam is in a series of books beginning with the seminal, Orientalism. The orientialism thesis is defined by Charlene Elliott of Carleton University as: “the ethnocentric and stereotypic means of viewing, describing, restructuring, and ultimately dominating Muslim lands in Africa and Asia.” One has to go no further than a local “ethnic” restaurant where there are clear stereotypes being played upon. A great example is chicken balls in Chinese restaurants. Westerners associate this dish as culturally Chinese but it is only traditional in Western Chinese restaurants and would seem very foreign if found in China. The fetishism of the so-called primitive and mysterious East exhibits itself in the West but it seems more and more that the “modern progress” of the West (that contributes so much to the degradation of the environment and social welfare) seems justified by the exclusively bad news about the middle-east generated in Western newsrooms.
Said essentially applies his thesis of orientalism to the situation of Islam. Said makes the argument that because Westerners have little contact with Islam, they tend to orientalize, or create a simplified and flawed understanding of its postulates that is more stylized or stereotyped than it ought to be. Journalists sent to the Middle East may be well equipped as observers but they must actually know the specifics of Islam to report upon it fairly. The context of events in the Muslim world has to be recognized. In telling a story, he argues, one must relate events in a way that the reader can understand it in terms of his/her society. If the meta-narrative of Islamic society is different than that of the West, this has to be taken into account. He illustrates that western journalists often do not understand the events of which they report by making the observation that most journalists do not even speak the local language form where they are reporting. This misunderstanding of what Islam entails, he argues, is not without its repercussions on the rift between East and West.
Because this book was written in 1981, Said writes about the hostage crisis in Iran two years prior to demonstrate the problems in the communication relations between the Muslim world and the West. He writes that reporters and the public found it hard to conceive of this other world – Walter Cronkite would pronounce Arab names seemingly dozens of times without success and viewers were under the impression that Shi’ite meant being “anti-American.” Said warns readers to be sceptical about reporting especially about a culture with which the Western world is generally unfamiliar. It is not an elitist stance on Said’s part but an observation that in the media rich environment that characterizes the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, the human consciousness must generalize to make sense of a world that is ever more temporally and spatially compressed. Said concludes that there may be a change in the preponderance of predominantly negative news about the Islamic world because new generations of Westerners are less tied to the prejudices tied to conquest and domination of other cultures, and there is greater interest in learning about a different culture as an equal to one’s own rather than a “less-evolved” version of one’s own.
Said makes some excellent arguments about how the real Islam is more covered-up in its media interpretation than covered. He draws upon some very sophisticated ideas about how the imagination of locality is changing in the face of global communication networks.
Said goes beyond describing how the news could better be reported to discuss how the West has a sociological condition where there is a collective misinterpretation of Islam in the form of orientalization. As for the discontinuation of this trend, he offers some solutions but on the whole he is rather sceptical that people will forget their prejudices and it is easy to understand his pessimism. Covering Islam is a fascinating book that produces a grim logic for the ubiquitous prejudice in the West against the Islamic world.
The copyright of the article Orientalism in the Media in Philosophy is owned by David Hamilton. Permission to republish Orientalism in the Media in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
http://philosophy.suite101.com/article.cfm/orientalism_in_the_media
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