Hello everyone,
My year here at UBC is effectively coming to the close, with April being just around the corner. Regardless of that, ASTU had been progressing and exploring new topics since we last met.
Recently the idea behind neo-orientalism, have been discussed. Neo-orientalism proposed a series of new questions for me, so in today’s blog, I thnk I just want to expand more on current examples of neo-orientalism, and how although they may seem to be “hidden”, they’re actually quite obvious if we pay close enough attention.
A couple of weeks ago I discussed Orientalism and it’s role in current films. In which I noticed that as a society we’ve grown increasingly more oblivious to what’s going on around us. A lot of these movies (Sex and the City and Eat, Pray, Love) are blockbuster hits, are people just choosing to ignore orientalist notions proposed and come to accept it’s ignorance as part of Western life? What about Katy Perry’s depiction of what Japanese culture is to her, where she essentially just grouped together a series of ideas of what she thought Japanese cultural to be like, and made a performance out of this? When is this ever ok, and how do we continue to see this and being alright with it?
Sometimes the notion of the “foreigner” in order to be accepted in western culture has so be changed in which it has to adopt western ideas, as to make itself seem less threatening. But the idea of the “Orient” in retaliation is this grouping of different cultures to make them seem less threatening.
Another importnt point to bring up when talking about neo-orientalism, is it’s role in making the West seem like a progressive place and in doing so makes the “orient” a backwards place; a place in which the west can use to measure it’s own progress and modernization.
In GRSJ 102 we discussed a code enacted by Hérouxville, Quebec which was being indirectly targeted at Muslim countries. In which they said that seeing men and women together is not surprising, and women can wear whatever they choose to wear, and when you come to Canada they also have to celebrate Christmas, and Halloween is the only acceptable time to cover your face. The Netherlands as well had a controversial immigration step, where if you chose to immigrant you had to see two men kissing. Now, in my opinion, these are ways in which Western countries are measuring their level modernity, while simultaneously grouping “oriental” countries together and calling them backward.
Neo-orientalism is a new topic for me, but I do feel like it’s an accurate way if saying how the world is being viewed today. We have to be paying more attention to the world around.