Orientalism
Orientalism refers to Western traditions of studying and representing Eastern societies and cultures. Since Edward Said, the term has also described a critique of Western discourse that constructs the East as an exotic or subordinate “other.”
The original Aladdin story begins: "Once upon a time, in a village in China, there lived a boy named Aladdin." Just as Europeans exoticized the Middle East, Arabs had their own Orientalism toward China—the setting is nominally Chinese, but everything in the story is distinctly Arabian.
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