The Imaginary Orient

It is very interesting to read Imaginary Orient and see how it relates to Gerome's, Delacroix's and Ingres work because although their "imaginary orient" is a place that exists only in their minds, it was assumed by the vast public to be a real place. I actually find this quite ironic because in many ways, the "imaginary orient" still exists in today's world. It is a place that as Said philosophizes is a Western representation of a Orient created by the West, for the West. It is a construction of an imaginary place that is the West's projection of the "Other" a place where things such as female sexuality and idleness are part of everyday life.

I found this to relate to a passage of Chinua Achebe's "Thing's Fall Apart" where, Achebe is representing again a Western viewpoint, of an imagined Africa. This passage is taken from the last paragraph of the book, right after the District Commissioner has been taken to the body of Okonkwo, who has hung himself in a tree. The District Commissioner goes on to describe the many things he has learned as a white man in Africa, he writes,

"One of them that a District Commissioner must never attend to undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such a attention would give natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress this point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Everyday brought some new material. The story of this man who killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph at any rate. There was so much to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger."

The West, throughout the decade has "imagined" many cultures to be less than their own, inferior or backwards. And today when you look at the media, you see it extremely prevalatnt. For example, remembering back to the days after September 11th, anything or anyone who looked Middle Eastern seemed to pose a threat to all things American. And in many ways, I think the way people reacted was because of fear, not only did the events of September 11th seem to come out of nowhere, but to the majority of Americans, the people, the land, the culture, the history, was unknown. I think I remember some article saying that the majority of Americans could not place Afghanistan on a map. And that all changed in one day, a place that was relatively unknown to many people became an instant enemy. And a lot of what we saw and what we see now has to do with the media and I feel like, people as a whole, including myself, were generally uneducated on the whole issue. It was not till a year after September 11th, my first year in college, that I learned the background, the history and reasons September 11th. And I never even realized the effect of the media, and how bias it is until I took a mass media class, where we watched a movie about Al Jazeera. And seeing how Al Jazeera showed the same events the West covered but looking at it from the "other side" it became clear how much was either strategically or unconsciouncely edited from Western News. And things today have not changed much. And in many ways, have not changed much since the 1800's, the imagined orient of Gerome's mind is just as imagined as the Middle East is today, and like Gerome, whose photo like paintings were so real people took them to be truth, the photographs of today are the truth, because even with Photoshop and selective cropping what is seen, is taken to be true.