The late Columbia Professor Edward Said defined orientalism as
a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on
the Orient’s special place in European Western experience. The Orient is ... the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other..., the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Yet ... The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, and even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles (Said, 1978)
To really dissect what Said it saying we need to define what is meant by “The Orient”. In this context where he’s talking about European culture and colonization the term refers to the part of the world East of Europe, specifically North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. In most American context its used to refer to East Asia countries like China, Korea, or Japan, this is because of stuff like differing immigration waves and different ideas of what that mean by a person from “the East”. And despite this definition being focused on European colonialism, or actually because it is focused on European colonialism which shaped the current cultures of America and a lot of the rest of the world, this concept of orientalism has seeped into the media of a lot of the world and shapes the way people from “the orient”, and for the purposes of this video specifically South Asian people are portrayed in media. And this is like especially apparent if you put examples of South Asian people written by and presented by orientalist cultures next to examples of South Asian people being written and presented by South Asian people. And the point of this isn’t to be exclusionary and say something along the lines of “White people can’t make brown characters” but more a set of examples of the benefits of diverse writers rooms and some ques that any writers room of any combinations of backgrounds can take.
A good examples to start with would be to use pieces of media that almost everyone is probably universally familiar with, whether they like it or not. NBC’s The Office was a sitcom that ran for 9
seasons with a mockumentary format that unconventionally had a team of actor-writer-directors
(Insert screenshots of “written by Mindy Kaling” s6e4, “written by BJ Novak” s2e15, “directed by John
Krasinski” s6e15) including Mindy Kaling who played the character of Kelly Kapoor. I believe that this
was a huge reason why the show and its side characters remained fresh and for a sitcom, fleshed
out without falling back on stereotypes. Oscar never felt like the token gay character or the token
Mexican character, Darrell and Stanley never felt like token black characters, and Kelly Kapoor is the
furthest thing from the token, stereotypical, exotic Indian. Likely do to Kaling’s presence in the writing
room Kelly’s character is not defined by Indian stereotypes and can’t be reduced to “because she’s
Indian” while also not making the mistake of trying to be ignorant of race. All things considered with
Kelly being a side character, she is an excellent portrayal of the diasporic Indian. She is
unquestionably Indian and that isn’t ignored by characters like Michael Scott . It's important to
acknowledge that Kelly is by no means a perfect person and an unflawed character with an
overwhelmingly positive story arc. Kelly is a flawed person, she starts the series as an obnoxious
character who thrives on gossip and craves drama, her series arc sees her in an on and off
relationship where both parties are toxic to each other. None of her character is defined by orientalist
ideas of her Indianness, but it also doesn’t fall into the pitfall of ignoring the ways that being Indian in
the setting of the show would affect her. Kelly Kapoor is a multidimensional character and gets the
same amount of development and complexity a non-Indian character filling her role would receive,
and much of that is likely due to Kaling's presence in the writer’s room.
While most of this blog has American and Indian portrayals of South Asians, the orientalist views of South Asians has, without failed spread to other culture’s media. Japanese video game company Capcom’s Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior, originally released in Japanese arcades in 1991, has reached nearly iconic status despite the ample use of stereotypes in its portrayal of an international cast. Nearly all of the characters in the game are based off of stereotypes of different cultures referencing game’s World Warrior subtitle, save for the Brazilian character Blanka who appears only to be based on the concept of a beast man in the rainforest, and Thailand’s Sagat who at this point in the series is a straightforward Muay Thai fighter. The interesting thing about these characters is that they appear to all be based on stereotypes stemming from media of the places they are stereotyping from, which still is not a positive portrayal but is important to note the difference between the other types of portrayals in the game. The American Guille comes from Schwarzenegger and Van-Damme American action movies, Chun Li comes from tropes of heroines in 1980’s Hong Kong cinema, the games Japanese characters Ryu and E Honda come from fantasy infused versions of actual Japanese martial arts, but two characters in the game distinctively come from other the media portrayals of these cultures by Western media. One of these characters in the Russian Zangief who comes from the Cold War Era American action cinema archetypal Russian bad guys. The other character is the strange and exotic Dhalsim, coming from India. With a name that comes from a combination of the foods daal and shim bata, two dishes seen on the menu of an Osaka Indian restaurant the game’s developers would frequent, Dhalsim sports a necklace of skulls and vermillion body markings. He fights using yoga that allows his limbs to extend like rubber while also being able to teleport and breath fire (an ability dubbed “Yoga Flame” which Capcom’s American branch had once said comes from all of the curry he eats, but that was later contradicted in the manual for a 1993 re release where it was stated that the ability came from his kundalini (while this is related to Hatha Yoga, this in no way is related to the ability to breath fire), and again in the series latest installment, 2018’s Street Fighter V where it was said the ability came as a blessing from the Hindu god Agni. Dhalsim’s portrayal comes from orientalist stereotypes that appear from Western media, in essence Dhalsim is the product of two different layers of South Asians being portrayed by non South Asians.
Contrasting with this portrayal of a South Asian character in a video game, 2016’s Overwatch takes cues from positive portrayals of a South Asian character despite the lore of the game not being made by South Asians. Overwatch’s morally gray Satya Vaswani, most often referred to as her alias “Symmetra” is an architect who happens to be on the autism spectrum and grew up in poverty in Hyderabad India who uses hard light constructs and drones of her own inventio to fight. Because of her history living in poverty she is willing to work outside of the law and morality to improve living conditions and housing when the she ends up working in Rio de Janeiro. Symmetra’s story doesn’t ignore her Indianness and makes it a part of her history and character motivations, but she isn’t defined my being Indian. Her childhood living in poverty isn’t an orientalist Indian stereotype and the way it is handled is as true to life as can make sense in a game set in the far future. And much like Kelly Kapoor she isn’t written as a perfect infallible person, she is a multidimensional and flawed character who is morally questionable fueled by an interesting background that creates a nuanced character. And while it isn’t exactly the focus on this blog, Symmetra is also a positive portrayal of a character on the autistic spectrum as her character doesn’t begin and end at being autistic. Symmetra’s autism affects her life and informs her behavior just as her Indianness does but it doesn’t define who she is.
-Zaheer
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