Edward Said Videos.

Brittany Staie
1/23/2013

This videos where not long but very informative on issues from the past as well as some that are still happening today when it comes to Orientalism. These videos defined this as some preconceived notion about the middle east. To me these videos where very interesting because I did have wondered a lot about why people judge other people based on the part of the world they are from, as well as why they have this certain image in their head of certain people. Professor Said did raise some of this issues himself when he was talking in the video. Many people from the middle east are represented in a manner that they are portrayed to be something they are not. Many people get this image in their head from pictures and even movies of how people from the middle east act and perhaps what they even look like. Throughout these four videos scenes from many different and even some famous movies are shown. The media easily attracts peoples attention, and draws people to make conclusions about the middle east that are not necessarily true. Said brings it to our attention that when their was a bombing that looked like a middle east style bombing that he automatically got questioned because people assumed he would know things just from being from the middle east himself. I think that is the biggest mistake we and everyone else around us makes. Sometimes when a something happens such as a tragedy we jump to the conclusion that any one from that area or even descent has something to do with it, or knows something about it just from association. An easy to understand example of this would if you you where wearing a Brad Paisley tour sweatshirt and someone just assumed that you where one of the under age drinkers that got in trouble at that concert at Darien Lake over the summer. Even if you do not drink they are associating as being in that group simply because you are wearing the sweatshirt with Brad Paisleys name on it from that concert. Most of us would probably never do that, but then why do we have all these preconceived notions about the middle east and why do we think that they are so different from us? I am looking forward to this class so that as we go along reading different works and comparing and contrasting the difference between the east and the west and also trying to be able to answer why we allow ourselves to believe everything we see in pictures and hear about the east, as well as why we judge people simply from being from certain areas and/or have families from these certain areas.