Searching for the East in the Shadow of the West: Layla M as the Portrait of an Oriental Woman in Modern Orientalist Discourse

Introduction

The radical discourse of Islam began to take place powerfully on the world's agenda with the attacks against American targets on September, 2001. The interventions of the United States and its allies to Afghanistan, Iraq and different regions of Islamic geography by showing the actions of radical Islamist organizations as reason have generated many discussions. As the continuation of this process, developments in the Arab geography and civil commotions started at 2010 and continued until today are started a vague new process. Concepts such as the east-west contradiction, the conflict of civilizations and Islamophobia have entered into the main topics of intellectual debates by the reasons of terrorism and armed interventions of the Western world in the Middle East. With the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, the Middle East, which has been associated with political instability since before now, was back on the world's agenda with its huge problems. The issue of illegal immigration and refugee, which is one of the most crucial of these problems and turned into a humanitarian drama, fueled the discussions on racism, discrimination and religion by the policies of Western Europe. Discussions with a Euro-American perspective within the framework of aforementioned political developments brought the topic of orientalism back to the center of intellectual debates again. Accordingly, the threat of the chaos in the Middle East to Western Europe by illegal immigration, refugees and sometimes terrorist actions led to discussions about marginalized reflexes of Western societies. In this context, the conditions of Muslims in Europe and their attitudes in the new conjuncture were discussed on various occasions. In this regard, Dutch director Mijke de Jong Un's remarkable film Layla M. (2016) brought this subject to the agenda of the discussion with the perspective of a European director. The film, which represents the radicalization of a Dutch Muslim young woman of Moroccan origin, tabled a current issue within the boundaries of the Eurocentric paradigm with its orientalist discourse. Accordingly, in the article the film is discussed within the framework of the reproduction of the orientalist discourse with its approach to current issues debated in the context of Islam and radicalism. In this regard, the Eurocentric perspective in the presentation of the dynamics of integration of Muslims to Europe and preference of western values to eastern values is discussed in the context of orientalism. There are several reasons why Layla M. is discussed in the context of orientalism debates in the article. Firstly, the film establishes a discourse on the contradictions between the two civilizations by centering an eastern woman from the perspective of a western female director. Secondly, in the film it is talked about Muslims and spoke for them by focusing on a Muslim woman. Thirdly, a marginalizing orientalist discourse is established in the film although “Eastern” Muslims are not clearly dehumanized. Fourthly, although the simple cause and effect relations are used through the east-west contradiction in the film, complex intellectual arguments between radicalism and culture are also used. Finally, the film is a Netflix original production and has the opportunity to reach a wide audience. In this framework, firstly, the main lines of orientalism and concepts related to orientalism are explained in the article, and then the character of the discourse established in the film is studied through descriptive analysis. Within this scope, Layla M. is analyzed within the framework of Edward Said's critical arguments for orientalist discourse in the context of a European director's discourse on the East and Muslims but these arguments are considered only as an analysis perspective.