De-westernizing the gaze in Hulu’s Ramy (2019)

ABSTRACT

The marginalization of the Orient in U.S. cinema has reduced the Oriental space and its inhabitants to a series of clichés and stereotypes. Based on Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), several film scholars like Jack Shaheen, Ella Shohat, and Lina Khatib, among others, have demonstrated that the exclusion and the distortion of the Orient in U.S. cinema were achieved through the manipulation of Oriental music, culture, religion, and the objectification of the female figure. These cinematic representations contribute to the marginalization of the Orient while creating a Eurocentric narrative. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam in their Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (2013) and Saër Maty Bâ and Will Higbee in their De-Westernizing Film Studies (2012) challenge this long-lasting tradition that marginalizes the Other. The Hulu TV series Ramy (2019-) by the Egyptian comedian, actor, and director Ramy Youssef attempts to de-westernize the gaze on the marginalized Muslim and Middle Eastern communities in the U.S. This article highlights how the series goes beyond the stereotypical iconography used to approach the Middle East while depicting the life of a first-generation American Muslim. It will use a comparative method and discourse analysis to examine how the show can deconstruct these clichés and offer a fresh perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Ramy (2019)
• hybridity
• multiculturalism
• de-westernizing
• Orientalism
• anti-orientalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Gesa Mackenthun questions the absence of post coloniality in the US of America. Through her study, the author highlights the paradox between the large number of postcolonial departments and chairs, and the absence of a local applicability of the theory for some ‘neglectable’ justifications. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41389583.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A7a04ea0db1cd42cc4d00554c7b4d788d&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abderrahmene Bourenane

Abderrahmene Bourenane is Ph.D., member of 3L.AM laboratory at Le Mans University (France). He is working on American cinema, cinematic representations, anti-colonial cinema, the de-westernization of cinema and feminism and cinema. He has made various contributions in national and international conferences, and authored and co-authored articles published in peer-reviewed journals: Studies in European Cinema, Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research and other book-chapters.