Vide" Edward Said on "Orientalism"

Edward Said is a professor who wrote a book on "Orientalism" because he thought artwork, literature and other arts of the Middle-East was not realistic, and as time passed this unrealistic representation of the Middle-East was not changing. He said that this unrealistic representation of the Middle-East was so ingrained into the minds of Westerners that even those who visited the Middle-East ended up describing the people that lived there in the same way as they had falsely read about them. The visitors to the Middle-East retained the unrealistic opinion instilled upon them by others that all the Middle-Easterners were the same. This view that all Middle-Easterners are the same was created when European Empires invaded Middle-East Nations. When they invaded them, they tried to figure out a way to control all of the Middle-Easterners that looked different than themselves, and they attempted to control Middle-Easterners by placing them into one category. Napoleon was the first European colonizer to try and actually understand the native people rather than to just conquer them. This is significant because it shows us the origins of false assumptions Westerners make about people with different color skins and different cultures than themselves.