670
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
1 collections
    0
    shares

      If you have found this article useful and you think it is important that researchers across the world have access, please consider donating, to ensure that this valuable collection remains Open Access.

      ReOrient is published by Pluto Journals, an Open Access publisher. This means that everyone has free and unlimited access to the full-text of all articles from our international collection of social science journals, and the authors don’t pay an author processing charge (APC’s).

      scite_
       
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Orientalism on Television: A Case Study of I Dream of Jeannie

      research-article
      ReOrient
      Pluto Journals
      I Dream of Jeannie , Orientalism, television, Muslim representation, Muslim women on screen
      Bookmark

            Abstract

            This article examines Orientalism in the 1960s American sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. I argue that Orientalism, as defined by Edward Said, is at the core of this show. I Dream of Jeannie is unique in that it transferred existing Orientalist representations from cinema to television. I argue that Orientalism performs two functions in I Dream of Jeannie: (1) imagining Jeannie as an “Other” and (2) being a vehicle for comedy. I note that the show is seldom analyzed for its overt Orientalism, reflecting a problematic “tone-deafness” to anti-Muslim racism that continues in today's television.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Contributors
            Journal
            10.13169
            reorient
            ReOrient
            Pluto Journals
            20555601
            2055561X
            Autumn 2018
            : 4
            : 1
            : 4-23
            Affiliations
            University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada
            Article
            reorient.4.1.0004
            10.13169/reorient.4.1.0004
            27484d51-35b7-4cd4-b4cd-37b9cec55ecc
            © 2018 Pluto Journals

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History
            Categories
            Articles

            Literary studies,Religious studies & Theology,Social & Behavioral Sciences,History,Philosophy
            I Dream of Jeannie ,television,Muslim representation,Orientalism,Muslim women on screen

            References

            1. (2012) Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11 . New York: New York University Press.

            2. (2004) Incredible geographies? Orientalism and genre fantasy. Social & Cultural Geography . 5(1), 75–90.

            3. (2009) The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the ‘Abbasid Empire . New Haven: Yale University Press.

            4. (2003) The Audience in Everyday Life: Living in a Media World . New York: Routledge.

            5. and (1999) The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946–Present . New York: Ballantine Books.

            6. (2002) Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil: Challenging Historical and Modern Stereotypes . Herndon, VA: The International Institute of Islamic Thought.

            7. (2015) Visible and invisible: An audience study of Muslim and non-Muslim reactions to Orientalist representations in I Dream of Jeannie. Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research . 8(2), 83–97.

            8. (2009) Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience after 9/11 . New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

            9. (2016) Experiences of Islamophobia: Living with Racism in the Neoliberal Era . Oxon: Routledge.

            10. with (2000) Dreaming of Jeannie: TV's Prime Time in a Bottle . New York: St Martin's Griffin.

            11. (1994) Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media . New York: Times Books.

            12. (2011) Jeannie Out of the Bottle . With New York: Crown Archetype.

            13. (2000) Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures, Orientalism in America, 1870–1930 . Princeton: Princeton University Press and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

            14. and (2010) The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence . 2nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

            15. and (2008) Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy . Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

            16. (2005) Forty years later we're still dreaming of Jeannie. Antiques & Collecting Magazine . 110(7), 56–60.

            17. (2015) The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West . Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

            18. (2006). The age of the Galland manuscript of the Nights: Numismatic evidence for dating a manuscript? In (ed.) The Arabian Nights Reader . Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 105–121.

            19. (2007) Encoding/decoding. In (ed.) The Cultural Studies Reader . 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 477–487.

            20. (2014) The whites of their eyes: Racist ideologies and the media. In (ed.) The Race and Media Reader . New York: Routledge, 37–52.

            21. (2011) Through the looking glass: Muslim women on television – An analysis of 24, Lost, and Little Mosque on the Prairie . Global Media Journal . 4(2), 33–47.

            22. I Dream of Jeannie: The Complete Series (2013) 20 disc DVD set. Executive Producer, Sidney Sheldon. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

            23. (2010) Visions of the Jinn: Illustrators of the Arabian Nights . London: Arcadian Library; Oxford: In association with Oxford University Press.

            24. (1992) Honey I'm Home! Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream . New York: Grove Weidenfeld.

            25. (1999) Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque . Austin: University of Texas Press.

            26. (2003) Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence . Montreal: Black Rose Books.

            27. (2014) White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. In (ed.) The Race and Media Reader . New York: Routledge, 33–36.

            28. (1989) Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture . Boston: Unwin Hyman.

            29. and (2012) Moral panic and media representation: The Bradford riot. In and (eds.) Global Islamophobia: Muslims and Moral Panic in the West . London: Ashgate, 161–180.

            30. (1995) Women's Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718–1918 . 2nd ed. London: Macmillan.

            31. (2002) The Arab in American cinema: From bad to worse, or getting better? Social Studies Review: The Journal of the California Council for the Social Studies . 42(1), 11–17.

            32. (2010) Television and American Culture . New York: Oxford University Press.

            33. (2009) How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, 1790–1935 . Chapel Hill: North Carolina Press.

            34. NASA (n.d.) A Brief History of NASA, https://history.nasa.gov/factsheet.htm.

            35. (2002) Reporting Islam: Media Representations of British Muslims . London: I.B. Tauris.

            36. , and (2014) Media Framing of the Muslim World: Conflicts, Crises and Contexts . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

            37. (2006) Race … and other four letter words. Popular Communication . 4(2), 95–121.

            38. and (eds.). (2011) Images that Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media . 3rd ed. Santa Barbara: Praeger.

            39. (2012) Arabia fantasia: US literary culture and the Middle East. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics . (32), 55–77.

            40. (2016) Can television be fair to Muslims? The New York Times . Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/arts/television/can-television-be-fair-to-muslims.html?_r=0 (accessed 11 October 2018).

            41. (1979) Orientalism . New York: Vintage Books.

            42. (2006) “Evil” Arabs in American Popular Film: Orientalist Fear . Austin: University of Texas Press.

            43. (1984) The TV Arab . Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.

            44. (2009) Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People . 2nd ed. Northampton: Olive Branch Press.

            45. and (2005) Introduction. In and (eds.) Belly Dance: Orientalism, Transnationalism, and Harem Fantasy . Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers.

            46. (2005) The Other Side of Me: A Memoir . New York: Warner Books, 1–27.

            47. (2001) The Veil Unveiled: The Hijab in Modern Culture . Gainsville: The University Press of Florida.

            48. (2003) Television Women from Lucy to Friends . Westport: Praeger.

            49. (2001) Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs . Durham: Duke University Press.

            50. (1994) Ethnic archetypes and the Arab image. In (ed.) The Development of Arab-American Identity . Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 119–153.

            Comments

            Comment on this article