Cinema is a branch of art that uses images. In this context, cinema can take Orientalism to a different dimension with images by using its own narrative language. In this study, the 2006 film Babel by Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu is analyzed in order to show how the orientalist elements were constructed in the West's (Occident) otherization of the East (Orient). As a result of the analysis, it is seen that Babel put forward everything that is related to the East since its first scene, mostly with an orientalist point of view, in a way that alienates the East. The film is based on the fact that the language of the marginalized can never be understood, and therefore, there is always a difference between the West and the East.
TopIntroduction
“Orientalism”, which is used as “Oriental science” in the Turkish dictionary, can be considered as the point of view of Westerners against Eastern societies and their cultural practices. For Said (1978: 9-10), who is effective in the acceptance of the concept in the literature, Orientalism is a way of thinking based on the ontological and epistemological distinction between East (Orient) and West (Occident). In this aspect, according to Said, the East is almost a European invention and has been seen as a place of romance, exotic beings, unforgettable memories, landscapes and extraordinary experiences since ancient times.
Çırakman, who thinks that Said’s starting point stems from a philosophical or socio-psychological problem, namely the problem of perceiving and understanding the other, states that Said actually made a serious claim (2002: 182): Throughout the ages, all knowledge of Westerners about Easterners and the representation of this knowledge is based on distorted, incomplete and inaccurate perceptions.
While Westerners are presented as completely rational and effective people in the East-West comparison; from an orientalist point of view, the Orientals are people who have negative characteristics that are not likely to be corrected (Yıldırım and Hira, 2016: 45). In this respect, they are marginalized in terms of their cultural practices. In this marginalization, the West first saves the East from its traditional structure and re-establishes it. Yıldırım (2002: 137) emphasizes that the Westerner who claims to be a subject actually owes their existence, knowledge and truth to the Easterner whom they reproduce, only in this way the West can become a temporal and historical norm.
Until the 18th century, it is understood that the main occupation of Orientalism was to form the other against the West and to learn the culture of the other. However, Boztemur (2002: 135) stated that the West assumed a civilizing mission against the other at the end of the 18th century, and that the orientalist orientation started to change; he emphasizes that the East has taken a form in which it is revealed and studied with its differences, in order to emphasize the superiority of the West and make the rest of the world believe that it has such a superiority. Over time, this new orientation has become the ideology of obtaining the riches of the East.
As Çırakman (2002: 191) put it, the idea of the East, which was continued in a uniform and consistent manner towards the end of the 18th century, actually has a quite contradictory and diverse structure. According to the author, the main reasons for this are the changing political and cultural relations between East and West over the ages, and it does not seem possible to say that the West was in the dominant position in these relations until the end of the 18th century. Therefore, as the West reflects itself in different ways in the historical process, it has also made some changes in its way of understanding the East.
The end of the 18th century actually marks the post - “Age of Enlightenment”. According to Said, just as this period was left behind, European culture formed its own strength and identity by positioning it against the identity it defined as the East. In this respect, Orientalism is a point of view that the West marginalizes the East by establishing the East at a discursive level and coding it as an anti-Western traditional identity (cited in Keyman, 2002: 21). The aim here is for the West to impose its hegemony to the world and to marginalize the societies other than the West, especially the East. Established as an integral part of Europe’s material civilization and culture, the West presents itself under features such as modern, developmental, democratic and individualist, while loading the other with codes such as traditional, fanatic, underdeveloped, communalist, authoritarian. Therefore, what is different is made the other of the West. According to Said, the codes attributed to the East by the West in such a power relationship are not acceptable. According to Çırakman (2002: 182), Said states that the main reason for the East to make such moves is actually to reinforce the West’s desire to dominate the East.