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Write a 8 pages paper on images in the visual media consistently misrepresent non-western culture

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Write a 8 pages paper on images in the visual media consistently misrepresent non-western culture. The introduction to Edward Said’s book Orientalism is essentially an argument in three parts illustrating the various means he plans to use in order to support the key arguments he makes in the remainder of the book. namely, to first show how the Orient has become something that is not a “free subject of thought or action” through the more imaginary concept of Orientalism and second to demonstrate how the “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (Said, 1979, p. 3).&nbsp. Opening with an argument regarding the use of the term Orientalism, Said makes three observations.&nbsp. The first one centers on the idea that the term ‘Orient’ refers not to the truth of the region, but rather to an idea that has been developed in the minds of Europeans that tends to group all individuals of the Middle East and East as belonging to a single cultural and religious sector.&nbsp.

Although not based on actual truth, this concept is naturally present in the European culture in the form of academic and other social institutions, the established vocabulary, the imagery utilized and the colonial styles.&nbsp. Secondly, ‘the Orient’ has been established as the Other, allowing the Europeans to define themselves as a colonizing country against the inferior culture they had themselves defined.&nbsp. Finally, building off of the ideas proposed by Michel Foucault, these distinctions made between Orient and Occident as well as the vocabulary, imagery and other sanctioned discussion and instruction regarding it, has confined the Orient, making it impossible for Europeans to consider the Orient without finding it necessary to first actively combat these limitations on thought or action.&nbsp.

These concepts can be traced in the ways in which the Muslim society, and Iraqi people as a whole, has been portrayed in the media, especially since the Twin Towers were attacked in New York on September 11, 2001.