The 2018 film Beirut was shot mostly in Tangier in Morocco: part of the reason it received backlash for its inaccurate, Orientalist depiction of the Lebanese Civil War and 1982 Israeli invasion. In his book, Said observes a spate of harmful and sometimes contradictory stereotypes of so-called Oriental peoples, who are described as lazy, suspicious, gullible, mysterious or untruthful.

Like “the Orient”, this term reduces a variety of peoples to a discrete set of traits and temperaments. The term “Oriental” was often used to describe any person or group of people east of Europe, usually from Arab and/or Islamic countries. Orientalists often describe parts of Southwest Asia and North Africa with the intention of representing the entire Orient, and a wide range of moral attitudes, religions, languages, cultures and political structures are folded into one.Īs such, the idea of the Orient functions more as an abstract antithesis the West defines itself against than as an accurate descriptor of a region. Consequently, the geographical vagueness of “the Orient” works to conflate a vast and diverse array of landscapes, peoples and cultures into a single, unchanging unit. Orientalists might write about countries as varied as Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq with little distinction. Indeed, the Orient doesn’t have a stable set of geographical bounds.

While the term has been used to describe countries in East and South Asia, Said mainly focuses on how it’s used in relation to Southwest Asia and North Africa, or the Middle East. Barenboim-Said Foundation (USA) What is “the Orient”?Īccording to Said, the Orient is a “semi-mythical construct” imposed on a set of countries east of Europe. Edward Said shows how Orientalist writings and ideologies perpetuate views of Middle Eastern people as inferior, subservient, and in need of saving.

Orientalism by Edward W. Said