Thoughts on Orientalism

by Sean Hillman
Religion Department
University of Toronto
Oct. 2009

Edward S. Said’s “Orientalism” brings to mind the 1937 multiple Oscar-winning movie “Lost Horizon.” A terribly expensive, beautifully made and ground-breaking piece of work for its time, it displays an illusory Tibetan world made palatable to Western sensibilities. Although the Tibetans are allowed to keep their fuzzy hats, they are made to walk single-file and beam quietly and serenely. Anyone who has attended a Tibetan gathering would know that this is as far as one could go from the uproar typical of events, including (and perhaps particularly) the religious. Traditional deep-throat monastic chant is replaced with Gregorian-falsetto, European furniture is inserted into the inner sanctum of the High Lama, and the High Lama himself is an ex-pat: he is not indigenous to Tibet or the magical Shangri-la but, rather, from the West! Although there is a faint Buddhist scent in his distilled philosophical maxim of “be kind,” the High Lama’s language is very clearly not that of a Tibetan Buddhist: “When the strong have devoured each other, the Christian ethic may at last be fulfilled and the meek shall inherit the earth.” (IMDB) This is very much in line with Said’s “real argument…that Orientalism is-and does not simply represent-a considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the Orient than it does with “our” world.” (p.12) Amazingly, beyond the colonially-minded move by the film-makers in making the chief figure of wisdom a Westerner amidst the exotic natives, the most profound words come from another Westerner in the cast. While on a plane escaping from a raging revolutionary battle in China, before they are skyjacked and crash in Tibet, British diplomat Robert Conway gets quite drunk. In the haze of intoxication he delivers a most powerful monologue suggesting that when attackers come to the border, pistols all aimed squarely at us, we should lay our guns down and politely invite them in for tea. What does it say when a drunken, uniformed Westerner presents a more radical plan for peace than Shangri-la’s appointed religious leader?

Perhaps the fascination in the uniqueness seen in the object of study, most often inflated and regardless of that object being theoretical or living beings, is a necessary step providing the impetus to become involved in a field of study, whether individually or collectively. Said points to the “virtual epidemic of Orientalia affecting every major poet, essayist, and philosopher of the [mid-1700s to the mid-1800s] period, [where] “Oriental”…was…synonymous with the exotic, the mysterious, the profound, the seminal.” (p.51). In my own case, I can see three major phases in my involvement in the study of the Far East. First, there was this fascination with the East and the transcendent associations imputed upon it. Families and communities are imagined to be more connected and every-day life is seen as imbued with a visceral spirituality, all very far removed from my own experience. I wanted to sit by the river with Chuang Tzu and couldn’t understand why The Last Emeror in Bertolluci’s film wanted so badly to come to the West when he so obviously had it made. This stage was fraught with a rejection of my heritage and an isolated contemplation of what I could piece together from Chinese, Indian and Tibetan textual fragments which led to great misunderstandings and an inner disturbance. Next was immersion in two cultures of interest, Tibetan and Indian, learning the language of the former but not of the latter. Not coincidentally I found it harder to feel at ease with Tibetans than with Indians, and in general there was great disillusionment regarding my image of a pure land in the East. Third was a return to the West and to Eastern texts informed by these experiences, with more respect towards the texts and my own heritage than ever, arising from the conviction in the text’s benefit personally and in my field of study and that my heritage contains basic operational tools necessary for understanding the world and operating within it. The mountain is a mountain again. Hopefully each stage is a maturation and I wonder if, beyond the first stage of fascination that prompts involvement, there are parallel stages in East Asian area-studies in the discipline as a whole. In Said’s picture of “Orientalism” it seems to not be the case as indicated by his depiction of what I refer to as the ‘immersion phase’ with “English Orientalists in India…[who] took from the classical Oriental past…a vision…which only he could employ to the best advantage; [and who] to the modern Oriental…gave…the benefit of his judgment as to what was best for the modern Orient.” (p.79) Rather than mere observation and learning, we see here a meddling which surely is one of the many pitfalls that leads to “obliterating…“the Oriental”…as a human being.” (p.27)