| The negative stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims in contemporary American popular culture is a problem which can be addressed in terms of Orientalism. Stereotypes are negative essentialized representations of a culture. Orientalism is a traditional Western discourse, most effectively described by Edward Said, wherein "the Orient" is a culture of essentialized and dehumanized inferiority.; Orientalism informs American popular cultural stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims. Popular cultural stereotypes in the texts of media presentation reveal recurrent themes identical to themes revealed in a semiotic (paradigmatic and syntagmatic) examination of Orientalism. A leading influential novel, Leon Uris' The Haj, which is a fictional autoethnography of a Palestinian Arab Muslim society is subjected to separate intensive textual analysis which shows an extraordinary parallel between the teachings of Orientalism and its stereotypical imagery of Arabs and Muslims. A Marxist-derived critique, exploring institutional or political biases of the popular text authors, also shows that, as in Orientalism traditionally, imperial concerns over the Middle East (oil, political domination, Israeli hegemony) are directly connected to stereotype dissemination.; Solution to the problem of Orientalism and stereotypes requires a moral effort to resist placing partisanship over truth in scholarship. Those who create or interpret texts must become aware of their own biases. Then, they must take affirmative steps to promote narratives that subvert the Orientalist themes, while avoiding the partisan risks of that effort, namely "third world" Occidentalism and "cultural intimacy." In this process, the field of intercultural communication provides workable guides for examination of texts. Finally, Arabs and Muslims are urged to engage in the creation of narratives and institutions challenging the prevailing discourse. |
