Galactic Orientalism

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there existed what we have come to know as Orientalism. This is a phenomenon described by Edward Said as “a kind of intellectual authority over the Orient within Western culture”. This authority must in large part be the subject of any description of Orientalism.[1] This translates to a group of people who are trapped in an imaginative bubble, sterile of any real interaction with those outside this “imaginative” geographical boundary. Then with the help of prevalent media and propaganda these ignorant people with no other source of valid information are led to believe in a, usually negative, stereotypical depiction of the “others”. Those would be cultures and civilizations outside this imaginary “bubble” which are only encountered by the masses through the lenses of popular literature and arts portraying them as backwards, inferior and unlike the reality which is purposely blurred by those who seek to benefit off of these misconceptions. Why this matters is found in the seeds of ignorance, sown by Orientalism, deep within the psyche of all the participants and observers of conflicts and imperialism of this world.Whether it is through killings or determination of wars, by the end of this article you shall understand how these seeds of misconception whether sown through academic literature or leisurely yet orientalist media such as Star Wars can become a force of damage.

The first of these misconceptions is noticeable from the very second scene of Star Wars. We can actually see the direct consequences of such stereotyping in the way the outer rim planet ‘Tatooine’ is depicted. It is known as a desert planet and could be argued is the Middle East of the space saga with filming taking place in the North African country of Tunisia[2] and being named after a Tunisian village.[3] Other references are present in the portrayal of the building’s architecture and markets representing “classical Orientalist models”[4] of the region’s setting which when in fact most modern Arabian buildings are not sand huts. Nor do most Middle Eastern people do their shopping in a bazaar style market.

Fig.1 Arab Market at Jaffa, Gustav Bauernfeind, 1877

Figure 2 Tatooine’s Market

Thus as you can see from the above images, this representation is from an outdated and therefore backwards inspiration. In fact, the Middle East happens to be home to the fifth largest modern mall in the world and the tallest skyscraper as well.[5] [6] Even the “natives” of the desert planet are seen as wearing robes comparable to the traditional white “Jallabiya” worn by people in the Arabic & Middle Eastern world.[7]

Fig.3 Traditional Jallabiya worn by North African farmers Fig.4 Sand People Native to Tatooine

This brings me to my next point, the natives. They mainly consists of the Tusken Raiders (originally known as ‘sand people’), which are portrayed as being inferior to the human colonizers of Tatooine. If it was not bad enough that they are portrayed as being barbaric and non-understanding in every appearance within the movies, they also are shown to wield primitive weapons compared to their human counterpart. Even the language spoken by the Tusken Raiders is portrayed as being an aggressive and unappealing one based on growling and helps this representation stray even further from being human. [8]

We also have scenes in which female slaves such as ‘Twi’leks’ are seen dancing in the palace of the de facto ruler of the planet’s underworld ‘Jabba the Hutt’ in a manner similar to that in which harem girls or belly dancers would be seen pleasing an Ottoman ruler  while he smokes his “shisha” or water pipe  in 19^th century Middle East.[9] If one takes a look at any orientalist scene we will notice how they all take inspiration from paintings and depictions that are greatly outdated and not reflective of the current reality. We can find evidence of this in how Jabba is portrayed as a chief smoking his water pipe with his advisors and scantly dressed entertainers all around him specifically princess Leia who in this scene appears to be his “favorite”. The scene is similar to this painting by Gyula shown below which depicts an ottoman sultan also smoking his water pipe, surrounded with his advisors, and admiring his “favorite” naked women.

Figures 5 Top: Jabba inside his palace (Star wars episode VI)

Bottom: The Favorite of the Harem, Tornai, Gyula (1861-1928)

As we can see from Figures 5 the depiction greatly resembles what 19^th century western painters have depicted the settings of this region to have been like. These portrayals of the landscape and its people as being a setting where “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.[10]” makes one subconsciously associate these negative traits seen on the screen with their  real life “inspirations”, contributing to the latter’s dehumanization and further isolating them as others, almost akin to being “alien”.

This does not only apply to how cultures here on Earth portray and “other” one another. We see this also occurring several times within the far away galaxy of the Star Wars universe. Orientalism is seen as causing one race to feel superior to another and this is evident in the way which Chewbacca, an alien ‘Wookie’ is treated by human characters during the first film ‘A New Hope’. We notice an Imperial officer on the starship our heroes board to save princess Leia, asking Han and Luke disgustingly, “what is that thing and where are you taking it?” This reference to Chewbacca as an object and helping back the notion of the empire being a racist and xenophobic entity which believes in “Speciesism”[11], the superiority of humans to aliens. That is the explanation of why we never see aliens among the ranks of the empire. This superiority is not something exclusive to the seemingly evil or immoral Imperial characters however as later in the same movie we notice princess Leia a supposedly good character demand “someone get this walking carpet out of my face” referring again to the only alien in the group, Chewbacca, and emphasizing this Orientalist notion humans seem to have that they are somehow superior to aliens. Chewbacca even had to watch his human copilot get awarded with an honorary medal by the end of the movie while no one bothered to even thank the brave Wookie for partaking in the rebellion’s destruction of the death star.

We also see how Orientalism plays out in the political and social structure of a planet such as Naboo, on which the inhabitants are divided to the surface dwelling humans with luxurious palaces designed after western inspired architecture[12]  and political superiority (as only humans at that time represented the planet in the Galactic Senate.) Then we have the ‘Gungans’, the native species of the planet, yet are seen as being more primitive than the human colonizers. With awkward speech patterns and living below the surface in the bottom of the oceans and having no contact with the “civilized” major metropolitan areas inhabited by humans on the surface, the perceived superiority seems to lie with the western inspired human colonizers despite them not even having a decent army to fight when the planet is invaded. This leads to the colonizers begging for the natives’ help in the war during which the leader of the native Gungans admits he appreciates that the Gungans are no longer viewed as inferior[13] proving that that was indeed the prevalent mindset.

This established view of superiority, directly the result of Orientalism, is most disturbing when it begins to devalue a being’s life in comparison with another or in other words, some lives become of less importance than others. A prime example would be of Anakin Skywalker on Tatooine learning of his mother’s death and exacting revenge on a tribe of Sand people, killing even their women and children. He is met with no repercussions from anyone and upon learning of Anakin’s immoral deed, his love interest, Padme, does not show to be bothered whatsoever or take the act as such a grievous sin even though we can hear by the end of the scene the ‘Imperial March’ theme, indicating this was indeed a wicked crime that aligned Anakin with the dark side.[14] However, when Padme is told of Anakin committing a similarly wicked act later in the trilogy by killing all the “Padwans” or young Jedi, who mainly consisted of human children, his wife is astonished and cannot fathom that her husband would do such an evil deed saying “He couldn’t”.[15] Despite that he can and did a similarly evil thing just earlier in killing the sand people. This distinction in the reaction of the two massacres shows that the severity of maliciousness associated with the killing is based on who is killed.

The importance of this imaginary world’s Orientalism problem is it gives us a glimpse into similarly disturbing observations of Orientalism noticeable in our real world. The human in Star Wars becomes akin to the white man of our world. The fact that Orientalism is used by some to justify or at least make less wicked the killings of others in far, far away places, whether they be in Africa, Asia, or Latin America, is distressing to say the least. We observe drone strikes and rains of bombs being dropped by countries such as the United States onto Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of democracy. However in reality, many of the casualties are innocent people, including women and children, just trying to live a peaceful life and whose only crime in life is that a supposed terrorist group had taken refugee nearby.[16]

Yet no one seems to give as much weight to their deaths as they would to the French people dying in an attack on Paris.[17] No one changes their Facebook profile picture to the Iraqi flag when a suicide bomber kills in Baghdad[18] nor do we see #PrayForBeirut trending online when a bombing takes place in the Lebanese capital just one day prior to the French.[19] That is simply because orientalist portrayals of the “others”, those who were unfortunate enough to have been previously colonized by the west and thus have become inferior to the white man. This mentality is then taken advantage of by parties like the US when they deploy the only nuke ever used in warfare to kill the Japanese or drop the largest bomb ever used in conventional warfare on Afghanistan[20], all without facing nearly half as much backlash that would have been met had those been Western countries.

War has been the historic tool used to settle disputes between opposing opinions but when you have a tool such as Orientalism to help shape public opinion and beliefs[21] then you have a tool for shaping what wars “should” and will be fought such as the cases of Iraq in 2003. These wars are intended to further the elites’ personal agenda to extract wealth from the vulnerable post-colonial world and they use Orientalism as a tool to gain the backing of the people to accomplish this. We notice this in Episode 3 for example when the clone war, a war which was greatly popular with most people, are used as a means to oppress the tax inspired uprising and separatist calls of the seceding planets in the galaxy. Here most viewers were found rooting for the republic which included some of the story’s heroes fighting for them even though these rebel plants have a similar motive to the rebellion of the later trilogy and should have a right to self-determination and should not be forced to be a part of the republic. Likewise we can take the example of the historic invasions of Afghanistan in which the Soviet conquering of the land was condemned and met with fierce opposition both in the media and the parliaments of western governments. However when the US attempts to do a similar act it is portrayed as America “exporting its democracy” and liberating the oriental people from their backward ways. Yet what gives these neo-colonists the authority to do such things? The answer is they have none but that they gain their authority through both their military power and public backing. Thus Orientalism is used to sway the public’s perception of what constitutes right, increasing the colonizers power in the global arena. One could argue that this is done so that some may benefit from the sales of arms or the extraction of natural resources (usually oil) while everyone else suffers. That is why we can notice similar methods of occupation taking place with Iraq and Libya and the list only continues to grow. We can then see that when it comes to the determination of conflicts (which are just a means of imperialism) the more non-western a place is portrayed, the further it deviates from the jurisdiction of moral rulings as it becomes a representation of disorder and tradition[22] and the more lenient people become towards the killing of its natives and transgression of its sovereignty with the promise that it should bring about more prosperity to everyone when in truth it only serves the colonizing elite. Thus we witness the justification of interference within the orient, backed by public opinion, inspired by orientalist propaganda that helps sway us to rooting for the colonists.

That is why, whether or not Gorge Lucas intended to make star wars an updated presentation of Orientalist art, it has unfortunately taken exactly that shape. Yet we must not let these misleading depictions fool us and determine our understanding and view of these foreign people, nor should we allow them to perish so easily and give the imperialist elitists the green light for the continuous crimes and theft, which have been ravaging those unfortunate enough to be victimized as “others”, for centuries.

References:

[1] Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Pantheon Books, 1978. (Pg.25)

[2] Hearn, Marcus (2005). The Cinema of George Lucas Pg.102

[3] Rinzler, J. W. The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film Pg.99

[4] Refer to Figure 1 and 2

[5] says, Patric, et al. “10 Largest Malls in the World.” Touropia, 24 Oct. 2017, www.touropia.com/largest-malls-in-the-world.

[6] World’s Tallest Skyscrapers | Emporis.Com, web.archive.org/web/20101225004217/http://www.emporis.com/en/bu/sk/st/tp/wo/.

[7] Refer to Figures 3 & 4

[8] “Star Wars Tusken Raider Sound Effects.” YouTube, 4 Feb. 2013, youtu.be/tgYxW30cDN4.

[9] Star Wars Episode VI Return of the Jedi

[10] Obi Wan Kenobai, Star Wars Episode IV

[11] “Speciesism.” Wookieepedia, starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Speciesism.

[12]  Figure 6 shows how the royal palace is inspired by figure 7

[13] “Gungan Alliance – The Phantom Menace [1080p HD].” YouTube, 13 May 2015, youtu.be/yzfsq8tTv9s?t=268.

[14] “Star Wars – Anakin Scene – I killed them. I killed them all.” YouTube, 19 Nov. 2011, youtu.be/pfevBIsVG1o?t=44

[15] “”Anakin Has Turned to the Dark Side” – Revenge of the Sith [1080p HD].” YouTube, 29 Apr. 2015, youtu.be/NsM-fpkK2aQ?t=163

[16] Rasmussen, Sune Engel. “US airstrikes kill scores of civilians in Kunduz province, Afghans say.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Nov. 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/04/us-airstrikes-kill-civilians-kunduz-afghanistan

[17] “Paris Bombing (13 November 2015) and Western.” Cesran.oRg, 14 Nov. 2015, cesran.org/paris-bombing-13-november-2015-and-western-terrorism-policy.html.

[18] Press, The Associated. “Suicide Bombing in Baghdad Kills at Least 36.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2 Jan. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/world/middleeast/iraq-baghdad-market-suicide-bombing-islamic-state.html.

[19] Botelho, Greg, and Catherine E. Shoichet. “Beirut suicide bombings kill over 40.” CNN, Cable News Network, 16 Nov. 2015, www.cnn.com/2015/11/12/middleeast/beirut-explosions/index.html.

[20] Starr, Barbara, and Ryan Browne. “US drops largest non-Nuclear bomb in Afghanistan.” CNN, Cable News Network, 14 Apr. 2017, www.cnn.com/2017/04/13/politics/afghanistan-isis-moab-bomb/index.html.

[21] Barkawi, Tarak, and Ketih Stanski. Orientalism and war. Oxford University Press, 2014. (pg.3)

[22] Barkawi, Tarak, and Ketih Stanski. Orientalism and war. Oxford University Press, 2014. (pg.5)