ABSTRACT
As part of the process of subjugation, knowledge about and images of the subjugated cultures were framed in particular ways-often stressing the differences and ‘otherness’ of the people in a rather simplified and collective manner, and usually stressing differences which implicitly recognised the superiority of the European opposite pole of the difference: ‘the orientalist paradigm was a persistent feature of social science which constructs the Orient (as stagnant, irrational and backward) as a contrast case to explain the Occident (as changeful, rational and progressive)’ (Turner, 1994:96). The use of the word ‘Orientals’ is of course not necessarily restricted to the written word-it can occur in any form of communication, in any medium in which discourse is possible. In the nineteenth century, for example, art prints by European artists might show neatly dressed and disciplined European troops standing near neat, classically styled colonial buildings, a short distance away from poor and shabbily dressed (but ‘colourful’) natives, outside semi-dilapidated hovels. In the twentieth century TV comedies (for example BBC TV’s It Ain’t Half Hot Mum! in which British soldiers are posted in India during the Second World War, affording plenty of opportunity for ‘native’ menials such as punkah-wallahs to wander in and out speaking in funny accents) as much as TV documentaries or advertisements put out in Britain by India’s own tourist promotion board can perpetuate Orientalism at a popular level.
