Orientalism in and Speilberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Sept 25

Good afternoon!

Today for my blog, I would like to discuss Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Because I had seen this movie multiple times before, I found it quite interesting and enlightening to stop viewing this as entertainment, and start watching it from a judgemental, analytical view. Getting past the fact that this is in deed a "bad" movie, I do believe that according to Said's definition, it is the perfect example of an Orientalistic film. It carries many qualities and characteristics of Orientalism such as racism and genderism done by creator George Lucas that could be offensive to the specified party, generalizations and fantasy within the creation of the village, temple, and night club (carried in from the West), and multiple stereotypes among the characters including the creation of a blond female character in constant distress (always needing a man's help), Eastern countries /villages worshiping the Western countries / villages and its people, and over-emphasizing customs that may or may not be true. These are just some of the many qualities I noticed will watching the film as well as what was discussed in class.

Orientalism is a very broad category in literature in movies. I have never really heard of this concept until Tuesday's class and as I look back now, I realized that many other pieces of film and literature can be construed as Orientalistic. The other Indiana Jones movies are perfect examples of that as well as comedic movies such as Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker's Rush Hour movies. The include multiple stereotypes and cliques that create modernized orientalistic cinema. I am very excited to finish Arundhati Roy's The God of All Things and compare the Orientalism in the book and movie. I feel that the lack of visual may make the Orientalistic characteristics less obvious, but equally as important.