5/9 Readings Edward Said's "Arabs, Islam and the Dogmas of the West" and Sunaina Maira's "Indo-Chic:..."

  5/9 Angel Truong Journal Edward Said’s and Sunaina Maira’s Readings

   The readings reveal how orientalism is represented in today’s popular culture to stress how the racial social hierarchy persist in modern day. First Edward Said’s article provides the definition of orientalism that is coined by Westerners.  This suggests that the term’s basics ideas, such as the East is uncivilized compare to the West, shape the ideologies of Asian cultures in America today. With Maira’s article, orientalism continues in the Indo-Chic trend where South Asian cultural practices such as henna and bindis are practiced in America by non-South Asians women. This portrays the practice to be exotic and aesthetic body art which ignores the South Asian practices’ traditional and cultural aspects. Because these practices are capitalized mostly by non-South Asians, it represents orientalism because it conveys that it’s appropriate for white people to enjoy and profit off these cultural items and ignore the prejudice surrounding South Asians that intensified after 9/11. Therefore, the trend ties back to the orientalist roots because it communicates that South Asians’ discrimination is trivial compare to Westerners’ enjoyment. The article also ties to my life where I see my cultural food is also commodified. An example is the Sriracha sauce which used to be a hipster trend not too long ago. Sriracha is traditionally associated to the Vietnamese dish pho but at one point it became the new ketchup where people would use it as a condiment for many dishes. This led non-Asians chefs to use the sauce to create “Asian-inspired” dishes. From the Sriracha trend, I can see how orientalism is integrated like the henna and bindis trends because they degrade the Eastern cultural origins to deem the items as something new and discovered by Westerners. This hides Eastern people and their culture who are the real originator of these trends that are shaping popular culture. 

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