Orientalism and Hollywood: A Match Made in Heaven

Join Dr. Luke Peterson, UCIS Visiting Professor in Contemporary International Issues at The University of Pittsburgh for a film screening event and discussion connecting the contemporary practice of Orientalism with modern American culture, Hollywood films, and twenty-first century American policy in the Middle East and beyond. The film screening and discussion will take place on Friday, September 19, 3:00-5:00pm in 4130 Posvar Hall.

In Edward Said's classic work, Orientalism, the late scholar describes methods of western thought and practice which effectively create, represent, and structure essentialized images of the “Orient” in a process designed to impose cognitive distance between the refined, cultured, Western “Self” and the destitute, degenerate, Eastern “Other.” Functioning efficiently in a variety of academic as well as artistic pursuits, modes of Orientalist practice were the broadly accepted norm for European colonial administrators for hundreds of years.

Orientalism has its own traditions and trajectories here in the United States as well, and is arguably nowhere more discernible than in the cultural products offered up to eager movie-going audiences regularly by Hollywood. One such cinematic representation is The Delta Force, a 1986 full-length film featuring Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin as the conquering American heroes who arrive on the scene in the nick of time in order to mete out tough justice and hard lessons to wild-eyed Arab terrorists bent on nothing but mayhem and destruction.