In chapter 8 the concept of “orientalism” was discussed based on Edward Said’s view of this concept. He describes this term as a discourse of power and having authority over orient/East by Western culture. The orient also helps Western culture to identify itself as the dominant, powerful and modern based on the binary system; However, represents orients as submissive, weak and primitives. Based on the reading there are two types of stories regarding to colonialism, the first one shows how the white colonizer accepts the alien culture and “goes native”, where as the other one imposes his dominant western culture on aliens. This issue of orientalism exists in popular culture especially in media where there are so many images of exotic women and men in movies and advertisements to represent the “other”. So many pop singers eroticize their characters in their music videos such as Nicki Minaj, lady Gaga and M.I.A. In Nicki Minaj video she is portrayed, as a samurai who decides to change her look to a Geisha that makes reference to “go native” because being the “other” is exotic. Another example is the 1970’s Coca Cola commercial, which is called “I’d like to teach the world to sing”, showing people standing in lines while dressed in different clothing based on their culture and background and singing in English. Although people are dressed in different traditional clothing from all around the world, singing in English as the universal language makes reference to the fact that English is the language of the dominant over “ others”.
Orientalism in popular culture
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