The representation of Middle Eastern people in Hollywood after 9/11

This research is aimed on one hand to reveal the interaction between the imageries related to the East and Easterner are created by Orientalists writing about East and their representations in Hollywood movies after September 11 and on the other hand to reveal their effects upon the Orientalist tradition. Within the research, by setting off from the fact that the terrorism and bellicosity after September 11, both of which mention the relationship of East and Eastern people with West and Westerners, had brought a new kind of cultural circulation with the political thriller movies of Hollywood film industry; the movies Argo (2012), Charlie Wilson's War (2007) and Syriana (2005) are evaluated in order to see that circulation's reflections. Within this study, which deals with the fact that there was a concentration upon East and Eastern people in Hollywood cinema beginning from September 11, 2001; it is aimed to explain the East/Eastern portrayal in the Hollywood cinema after September 11 with reference to the idea of Orientalism, by aiming to investigate the presentations created towards East and Eastern people after September 11. Within the movies studied; by identifying the discourse which is used by Hollywood while culturally and politically locating East and Easterners; to intend how the images, ideas or clichés which are created by Orientalists in order to define the East effects the East/Easterner representations in the movies. Orientalist clichés and fictions signal the fact that Hollywood cinema is used as an ideological device. Hollywood cinema is both a course in which different stereotype stories are frequently described and an industry which create fictionalize and describe its own other in every period. By analyzing the places and characters of the movies, are studied by approaching some key features such as the dialogues and scenes which create the opposition of West/Westerners over the images of East/Easterners; it has come through that the clichés within the Orientalist discourse are articulated in the movies which were taken as examples directly or implicitly and also the ingrained fiction of East and the typecasting of Easterner both of which take place in this discourse are given with the metaphors of threat and enemy in the Hollywood movies are produced after September 11. Key Words: Hollywood Cinema, September 9/11 Attacks, Orientalism, American Foreign Policy, Cultural Emperializm, Middle East