Edward Said "Orientalism"
...exican and because what I just mentioned above happened to our culture. Our culture was destroyed by the Spaniards (Europeans) they imposed a new religion, destroyed our temples, and forced us to learn a different language. So if we think about it we the Mexicans have no culture of our own and we had to assimilate to the culture that was imposed to us by the Europeans. I believe the Europe and the United States never have good intentions all they want is to get power, domination and therefore a better economic status. For example in Mexico many people have the assumption that the U.S and Europe act like they really care about the problems of nations in need. They make believe that they will help any nation to improve their lives but with out a doubt they feel significantly superior of those nations and always expect something in return I believe that every nation or culture has a different worldview. Edward Said argues that “Europeans looked upon the people of the Orient and Arabic states as "gullible" and "devoid of energy and initiative European propagandists played an important role with the conquering of foreign lands.”(2) There is no doubt that the West felt significantly superior to the East. This theory not only holds true to the Arabic and Asiatic states, but also for colonized countries in South America and Africa. Europe used their technological might and arrogant attitude to exploit the globe. However, to gain support of domestic citizens, European countries and U.S. make people believe that those nations were living in darkness they picture the most despicable scenario so they can cover their intentions; and people will think of them as the heroes or the friendly nations. Also, Said argues that “the representations of the Orient are not what really are and that Europe and the U.S. see the Orient trough a lens that distorts reality”(3). His work highlights the inaccuracies of a wide variety of assumptions in which the oriental is the person represented by such thinking. The man is depicted as famine, weak, yet strangely dangerous because poses a threat to white, the woman is both eager to be dominated and strikingly exotic. Said states, “The oriental is a single image, a sweeping generalization, and a stereotype that crosses countless cultural and national boundaries (3). For instance, sometimes I tend to generalized them and I do have a negative perception of what people from Asia and Middle East are, all that I have learned about them is by the media... Today, most people would probably agree that the largest volume of distorted information about Middle East comes from the media, whether in newspapers, magazines or on television. In terms of the number of people who are reached by such information, the media has more of a widespread impact on the West views of the Middle East. Everything that media displays about those countries make me believe that they are inferior and culturally backward, peculiar and unchanging. I believe that is the image of the Orient that most people have. I never been to the Middle East and I never heard the term Orientalism before but now that I think about it I feel really bad of having negative assumptions of the middle East, but in a way I don’t blame my self I think that the ones to blame is the media.. Every time I watch the news I heard about terrorism and when they speak about it they talk about people from the Middle East or Asia. Curiously, the media always use generalizations about Arab and Muslim thinking them we speculate and make our own conclusions generalizing about the Muslim world and so engage in the same stereotyping that is rejected by Said. Said argues that “Orientalism can be found in c...