Representations of The Other Reproduce Inequalities: A Case Study of the Dictator Film in Terms of Orientalism

Proceedings of ‏The 3rd International Conference on Research in Humanities

Year: 2021

DOI:

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Representations of The Other Reproduce Inequalities: A Case Study of the Dictator Film in Terms of Orientalism

Dina Hassan

ABSTRACT: 

Media is the creator of stereotypes, it creates it, publishes it, then normalizes it till it becomes the truth about the other. This article focuses on the representation of the Arabs in Hollywood movies taking Larry Charles’s film dictator (2012) as a case study. The paper argues that increasing the representation of the other can reproduce inequality as it was the case in the film. The paper applies Edward Said’s Orientalism and Stuart Hall’s work to shed the light on the traditional stereotype of representing Arabs in the film. Textual analysis is used to analysis the representation of the character traits of the protagonists and the representation of the Arab countries in relation to Orientalism.

Keywords: Arabs; Orientalism; Stereotype; Textual analysis.