Entertainment or propaganda? : cultural cognition: implicit stereotypes in historical film

This thesis explores the intersection of culture and cognition, presenting an investigation into how implicit bias may be propagated through representations of antiquity in Hollywood historical film. These biases often align with the binary framework of Orientalism, critiqued by Edward Said, which positions Middle Eastern geopolitical entities and peoples as one monolithic “Oriental Other”. Historical films portray this stereotypically exotic, oppressive, and backward “Orient” as an archetypal component of the ancient world, defined by its enmity with the “West”. By contributing to the cultural narrative presenting a historical divide between a monolithic “Eastern” and “Western” world, cinematic depictions of antiquity may further propagate implicit stereotypes concerning the Eastern “other”. This process may in turn influence the perception, and practise, of contemporary international relations. In order to elucidate the mechanisms of implicit bias propagation, cognitive psychological frameworks were applied to this analysis. Tversky and Kahneman’s cognitive heuristics of “availability” and “representativeness” were contextualized within Perry Hinton’s argument of implicit bias arising, not from individual cognition, but rather from prevalent stereotypical associations within culture, i.e., the “culture in mind”. This multidisciplinary paradigm was used to analyze specific stereotypical tropes fitting the Orientalist framework within thirty-five, predominantly Hollywood, historical films. These tropes encompassed geopolitics, race, appearance, visual setting, disability, gender, and sexuality. The discussion suggested that historical films indeed present an implicit argument, associating the ancient Middle East with a homogenous and stereotypical contemporary “East”, one fundamentally opposed to “Western” liberty and morality. Examples such as the release of Zack Snyder’s 300 during the Iraq War were examined, demonstrating how cinematic representations of antiquity may propagate an implicit perspective that the “clash of civilizations” between “East” and “West” is timeless, rather than a hyperreal Orientalist construct.

Authors

• Seyed Norani, Ali
• University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science

• orientalism
• availability heuristic
• representativeness heuristic
• hyperreality
• film
• international relations

Identifier

hdl:10133/7046

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:opus.uleth.ca:10133/7046