Week 2 Questions

How might Hergé's The Blue Lotus address or relate to to what Said (1977) terms 'orientalism'?

As Said(1977) states in his book ‘Orientalism’, the term ‘orientalism’ could be defined as inappropriate assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward Asia, such as China and Arabia. According to the research of Said(1977), the false understandings occurs since the 20^th century and the major issues that thinkers have considered about ‘orientalism’ are that Western knowledge about Asia is only engendered from the older generations, who may describe that all eastern countries share similar societies and systems. If you have read the third section of the entire book ‘Orientalism’, Said(1977) focus on the way in which the colonizing countries have invent false images and myths of the third world countries. As a result, those images have conveniently justified western domination of Eastern cultures and people. In the comic ‘the Blue Lotus’, there is a scene which Tintin saved Chen’s live and their conversation display the misunderstandings between two different cultures and this section obviously relate to the aspects of ‘Orientalism’.