Stereotypes In Not Without My Daughter

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Media has a great role in shaping audiences ' perception of members of a particular social group. The way it can appropriately represent these groups is more pressing. This article examined the types of racist images and stereotypes used for Iranians in the drama film 'Not Without My Daughter ' and the way these stereotypes contribute to the prejudicial understanding among people. The main focus of this article was to concentrate on the negative aspects of orientalism portrayed in this film. Said 's concept of orientalism and Van Dijk 's ideological square was used in its analysis. The film makes a distinction between the Orient and the Occident by portraying the East as primitive, backward and communal and the West as individualistic, modern …show more content…

It is an ideology fabricated by the West, Its main factors are the "periodic exclusion of the East from the Western gaze and the continual repudiation of the East in favor the moral and cultural coordinates of the West (Martin & Koda, 1994, p. 9). According to Said (1978), orientalism is a product of the imagination of those people who come to know themselves, their culture and territories as European and later as the West. Said (1978) defines orientalism as a style of thought based on " ontological and epistemological distinction between the 'Orient ' and the 'Occident ' (p.3). According to Martin and Koda (1994), the West 's failure to achieve full comprehension of the East is the reason for the inscrutability attributed to the East. In fact, it is through orientalism that the West sees its culture as complete and uses it to see itself as whole. Andreeva (2007) believes that placing the Orient against Europe helped Europeans to define their own self-identity in juxtaposition to orient the …show more content…

Our academic disciplines, journals, movies, and our whole cultural system is highly affected by the inevitability of the conflict between 'Islam ' and 'West ' (Adib-Moghaddam, 2011). This " clash regime" is a cultural artifact which is positioned in different strata of society because it is made up by a system of interdependent discourses that disperse into society and form a powerful 'clash mentality (Adib-Moghadam, 2011, p.5). This clash regime has constituted a main part of today 's national and international political culture (Adiv-Moghaddam, 2011, p.5). Therefore, European culture gained its own strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient (Said, 1978). According to Macfie (2002), one of the convictions that is widely held in orientalism is the belief that Islam unlike other religions, is inherently violent its followers believe in the doctrine of Holy War or Jihad. Springer (2009) believes that violence is a gross stereotype which is associated with the depiction of the culture in the context of 'war in terror '. African, Asian and Islamic cultures are said to be highly violent. Thus, any discourse that suggests violence should be viewed as contextually specific, because it is bound to particular places in which the culture of violence is formed. Therefore,