IS 354: Middle East in Media/Media in the Middle East: Assignment 1

1.      First critical essay (1000 words, plus footnotes) due Feb. 8: Cinematic Orientalism

Option 1: Write an interpretive, comparative essay on the common overarching themes or narratives in the following three cinema classics plus one more: David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, Basil Dearden’s Khartoum, John Huston’s direction of Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King. For a more modern comparison you may choose another film, possibly The Three Kings by David O. Russell.   What are the common images, leitmotifs, stereotypes and/ or plot sequences about the European experiences in the Orient?  Is there a message about imperialism – and if so, what is it? 

Option 2:  Compare and contrast the images of Muslim or Middle Eastern women in two ‘Western’ films and two from Asia or the Middle East.  The ‘Western’ films will include Brian Gilbert’s Not Without My Daughter and either Kandahar by Mohsen Makhmalbaf  or Return to Kandahar.   To “represent” “Eastern” film, choose two of the following, or others you might identify independently:  Talaq Divorce Iranian Style by Kim Longinotto & Ziba Mir-Hossein; God is My Witness directed by Mukul S. Anand; The Home and the World by Satyajit Ray; Children of Heaven by Majid Majidi, or Majid Majidi’s Rain.  What roles are played by female characters in the two sets of movies?  Are there stereotypes of Near Eastern women (and men too, perhaps) in the “Western” films?  In what ways to the more “indigenous” films confirm or complicate those images?

Option 3: Visit the Richmond Holocaust Museum and analyze the political implications of the following films:  The Ten Commandments, Exodus, and Fiddler on the Roof.   What images and plot sequences from the Museum and the films convey a Jewish right to a national homeland in Palestine?   What makes these images and stories political in the context of the contemporary Middle East?