







































Communication, Society and Media 
ISSN 2576-5388 (Print) ISSN 2576-5396 (Online) 

Vol. 1, No. 1, 2018 
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20 

Original Paper 

Midnight Express as a Product of Hollywood Orientalism   
Goksu Gigi Akkan1* 

1 Blanquerna - Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain  
* Goksu Gigi Akkan, Blanquerna - Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain 

 

Received: February 6, 2018       Accepted: March 1, 2018      Online Published: April 19, 2018 

doi:10.22158/csm.v1n1p20                     URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/csm.v1n1p20 

 

Abstract 

The concept of Orientalism has been a forthcoming issue in film studies, be it the (mis)representation of 

minority groups in Hollywood, or white-washing people of color characters in remakes of films from 

“the Orient”, or through a complete omission of representation of these characters. Ideology is a great 

aspect in shaping the views of the masses, and as they become more embedded in cultural devices such 

as films, the more soft power they deploy and the more problematic they become. In Foucauldian terms, 

knowledge about the Orient is produced through films made by the Occident, and thanks to their 

infinite capital and wide distribution networks, the West, particularly America, is far more successful in 

retaining a cross-cultural dominance through this power/knowledge structure. 

This paper aims to deconstruct the motives behind Oliver Stone & Alan Parker’s 1978 film Midnight 

Express, in terms of putting Turkey and Turkish people in the Oriental position and putting Western and 

White characters in the Occidental epistemological positions. Some questions this paper tackles 

include “How does Orientalism work in the context of Film Studies? Does the Gaze grant a monolithic 

and unidirectional look at the Orient instead of the Occident?”  

Keywords 

film studies, Edward Said, Orientalism, Occidentalism, representation 

 

“Orientalist discourse was neither monolithic nor unidirectional, but much more complex and 

heterogeneous” (Sinha, 1995, p. 19).  

By arguing that Orientalism is not just a product of the West, but a construct that affects both the East 

and the West equally, Mrinalini Sinha offers an alternative to Edward Said’s take on post-colonial 

theory. Although what Sinha argues can be applicable to some cases such as specific political 

discourses, in the entertainment industry, all products regarding “the East” are almost always 

exclusively both monolithic and unidirectional. This is why I will take the film Midnight Express (1978) 

as a case study to elaborate on how Hollywood seeks to replicate representations of the Orient as 



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degenerate and incapable compared to the West. By depicting the Turks in Midnight Express as evil, 

masochistic and ignorant, the film rationalizes the Western characters as good-natured, clever people, 

who just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. As a result, the dichotomization of Turkey 

as “the other” inferior counterpart of the Western civilization is just another banal repackaging of “the 

idea of the Orient” by Hollywood, which serves to preserve the West’s global cultural hegemony 

established through the entertainment industry.  

To solidify my thesis, first the idea of Orientalism according to Edward Said will be discussed. This 

will give the reader a sense of how the Occident (Western civilizations) tries to define the Orient 

(Eastern civilizations) in order to protect its hegemony. Secondly, I will elaborate on how Said’s idea of 

Orientalism operates within films made by the West, in which they maintain and reinforce these 

stereotypes about the East through a power/knowledge relationship. While doing this, I will be 

referring to my case study Midnight Express in order to illustrate Said’s ideas with examples. 

Following this, I will try to acknowledge who or what legitimizes Orientalist films, which are overtly 

reminiscent of each other that aid the West’s cultural hegemony. How some critics approach such 

repackaged stereotypes will also be touched on.  

Before we move on to analyze how Hollywood studios exaggerate the differences between the East and 

the West to accumulate capital and spread Western ideology, first we must look at why Edward Said’s, 

instead of Sinha’s, version of Orientalism, is more useful to study cultural products made by the West. 

In an attempt to identify how Western thought shaped the discourse outside of the Occident, Said 

argues: 

“The imaginative examination of things Oriental was based more or less exclusively upon a sovereign 

Western consciousness out of whose unchallenged centrality an oriental world emerged, first according 

to general ideas about who or what was an Oriental, then according to a detailed logic governed not 

simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires, repressions, investments, and projections”  

(Said, 1979, p. 8). 

The storyline of Midnight Express replicates exactly what Said emphasizes in terms of constructing the 

Orient, and combines it with the idea of “the Western gaze’ in cinema. It is this gaze that “reduces the 

non-European to the not-yet being of underdevelopment; lacking presence and agency” (Venn, 2000, p. 

148). As a result, the protagonist of the allegedly based on a “true story” film is an American called 

Billy Hayes, who is trapped in a jail in Istanbul in the early 1970s for trying to smuggle drugs back into 

the United States. He is depicted not as a guilty immoral drug trafficker, but as an unfortunate young 

White male who is stuck in the “middle of nowhere”, because he is in the “mystical” and “unreliable” 

East. The White, American man of European origins, is thus the only vantage point of the film. The 

story is told from his point of view, with the cinematic lens that films the whole experience 

symbolically becoming Billy’s own eyes. On a broader level, Billy’s perception becomes the Western 

“gaze” that Venn underlines. In this regard, encounters are never evaluated from the Oriental or Turkish 



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side, which eschews the East’s presence and agency as a legitimate form of existence. This precisely 

debunks Sinha’s argument about Orientalist discourse affecting both the East and the West in a 

heterogeneous way, because the Oriental subjects are never given a chance in the first place to express 

themselves. 

However, although the film opens with the lines “these events were based on a true story starting on 

October 6, 1970”, in a recent interview even Billy Hayes himself has accepted the fact that the 

screenwriter Oliver Stone and director Alan Parker had “made up a great chunk of it because of 

cinematic reasons” (Marnell, 2010). In fact, Hayes admits to the fact that he never was sexually abused 

as depicted in the film, and the beatings were not as violent. Additionally, in contrast to the ending of 

the film, Hayes admits that he never killed the sadistic head guard, but another inmate outside the 

prison shot him once he was released. At the end of the interview, Hayes comes to terms with the 

reality that the stereotypes in Midnight Express have casted on Turkey’s reputation: “it creates an 

overall impression that Turkey is this terrible place and Turks are terrible people. Which is not valid or 

true, both to my own experience and to reality” (Marnell, 2010). It is arguable whether he says he likes 

Turkey because he wants to make peace with this nation, but in any regard he still acknowledges the 

fact that Oliver Stone and Alan Parker had added scenes of no solid accountable background. He names 

“cinematic reasons” as being the source of distortions, however I think it is evident that these scenes 

are added in order to submit Turkey, as a part of the East, into the grand narrative of the Orient, which 

is inferior, untimely, and passive compared to the West. 

Thus, “based on a true story” tagline is used as an effective marketing technique for the film, even 

though most of the script is not based on the autobiographical account of Hayes. Therefore, Parker and 

Stone are projecting a myth about Turkey through the medium of cinema with the help of unscientific 

imprecision about this foreign country, and circumstances of interpretations of encounters (Said, 1997, 

p. 163) with Eastern subjects that fill the plot with banal stereotypes.  

Said also stresses that “while the West was modern, civilized, and progressive, the Orient remained, at 

least from a Western perspective, a static and backward society” (Said, 1979, p. 3). In this sense, 

Midnight Express seeks only to represent the Oriental identity as inferior and incompatible to the West, 

without giving the Orient a chance to express its individuality. Cinematically, this degradation is 

achieved through the music and lightening, as well as casting and costume choices. The opening scene 

of the film is depicting the sunrise over Topkapi, the historic peninsula of Istanbul, with the prayer 

voice hailing from the minarets of the mosques, and a lazy, yellow light, that immediately directs the 

audience to feel that the context is Middle Eastern. This peculiar yellow light and Oriental music is 

reused in many other scenes of the film to come, in order to underline the “strangeness” of the setting.  

Additionally, prison guards, who, with their exaggerated Turkish accents, are depicted as evil people 

who don’t miss out on a chance of verbally and physically abusing the inmates for no apparent reason. 

Alongside with the barbarian traits of the fellow Turkish cellmates, who love to snitch on the foreign 



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inmates just to sadistically watch them getting beat, collectively the Turkish characters are depicted as 

“backwards and uncivilized” through the casting choices. On another note, although the film is set in 

the 1970’s, the Turks are still seen wearing fez caps and ridiculous Ottoman outfits from the 19th 

century, which again highlights how “oriental” Turkey is, even though that fashion was abandoned 

more than a hundred years ago. Thus, representation of the Turks in this film is in perfect resonance 

with what Said offers about Eastern stereotypes, since they are continually projected as ignorant and 

dirty people with no solid historicity.  

In contrast to the barbarian, inhumane and passive Turks, Billy and his other foreign cellmates are busy 

making plans to “catch the Midnight Express”, which is a term used to describe an attempt to escape. 

This is another cliché reinforced by Hollywood in such movies as The Mummy and Indiana Jones as 

well, where the Western protagonist is trying to “solve the mystery” of the static East by using maps 

and other devices to get around mazes and pyramids, or in this case, an old sketch of sewer tunnels to 

run away. As Albert Memmi advocates, this stereotype also exemplifies the “active agent” role of the 

Western man, in which the protagonist is the conqueror and the colonizer ready to take over the 

treasures of the passive East, which is in Billy’s case, his own freedom (Memmi, 2003, p. 172). 

These stereotypes are so casually reproduced that as a result, they lead to a dichotomizing process 

vis-à-vis to the Western gaze and audience in which the West is “us”, and the East is “them”. In this 

dichotomy, the East and the West are differentiated in terms of being incompatible civilizations, where 

the West has the upper hand. Moreover, in this dichotomizing process, Hollywood in general is 

influenced by potent racial and cultural stereotypes that seek to represent the Oriental way of being as 

“as decadent and inferior… tends to dismiss Muslim aspirations for self-determination as politically 

primitive, economically suspect, and ideologically absurd” (Little, 2008, p. 11). To exemplify, in 

Midnight Express, Billy’s foreign friends in jail mention this “ideological absurdity” quite explicitly 

while talking about his prison sentence: “This ain’t the good old USA. This is Turkey, man. It’s an 

accident if you are innocent!” which suggests that even though drug smuggling is pretty much a crime 

in almost every country around the world, because the White protagonist is likeable and identifiable to 

the Western gaze, it is unlawful and unfair for the Turks to sentence him to prison.   

On the other hand, the Western values and beliefs are attributed to such qualities as being rational, fair, 

and as the core aspect of Christianity, merciful. Billy’s monologue in court when he finds out that he is 

sentenced to 30 years is such a typical display of the “fair and just Western ideology”, in which the 

White subject rationally questions the value system of what is not his own culture. He cries: “Concept 

of a society is based on that mercy, fair-play sense of justice, but it’s a ton of shit to you. For a nation of 

pigs, it’s funny because you don’t eat them!” Here, Billy does not only act the part as the “rational” 

conscience of the Colonizer, but also as a White subject driven by banal stereotypes of Islam, such as 

not eating pigs, who is “witty” enough to make ironic jokes about it. The fact that he is “witty” and able 

to make fun of this cultural aspect further elevates his position in the Western audience’s eye as a White 



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character with whom they could identify with if they were to be in the same situation instead of the evil 

Turks. Through this Western gaze, that is “rational” and “normal”, the audience feels safe in regard to 

the Turkish subject, because the West is “powerful” enough to question and decide what is right or 

wrong in this foreign civilization.   

Through this power structure, Orientalism operates as a cinematic optic legitimized by the Western 

gaze in films like Midnight Express, because it is “an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into 

Western consciousness” (Said, 1979, p. 6). Although Billy is physically “victimized” by the evil Turks, 

the power of the White subject comes from his mentality and ability “to be rational”, which is 

historically affiliated with the West (Kennedy & Danks, 2001).  As a result, since they are viewing 

Turkey from an Orientalist lens of the director Alan Parker, the audience is most likely to adopt these 

negative stereotypes and affiliations with Turkey. Due to the economic dominance Hollywood holds 

over other national film capitals, American values, expectations, norms, or in Althusserian terms, 

ideology, is enforced upon anybody who is subjected to Orientalist films such as Midnight Express.  

In Foucauldian terms, knowledge about the Orient is produced through films made by the Occident, 

and thanks to their infinite capital and wide distribution networks, the West, particularly America, is far 

more successful in retaining a cross-cultural dominance through this power/knowledge structure (Little, 

2008, p. 310). Although he does not directly mention Foucault, Said also acknowledges the importance 

of power relations in Orientalist discourse: “unbroken arc of knowledge and power connects the 

European or Western statesman and the Western Orientalists” (Said, 1979, p. 104), which brings us to 

the question of the legitimizing forces of such Orientalist films as producing “true” knowledge about 

the East.  

The Academy Awards is seen as the authority in selecting the best motion pictures of the year, and the 

films that are lucky enough to get an Oscar are almost always huge box office successes. Midnight 

Express is no exception to this, with two wins in the year 1979, as well as an astonishing six wins in 

Golden Globes that same year, including the best picture award. Anthony Appiah identifies Orientalist 

directors such as Alan Parker as a part of a “comprador intelligentsia”, who are constituted “of 

relatively small, Western style, Western-trained, group of writers and thinkers, who mediate the trade in 

cultural commodities of world capitalism at the periphery” (Appiah, 1992, p. 5). Thus, to combine 

Appiah with Said’s argument about the “inbroken arc of knowledge and power”, the Western statesmen 

institutionalize the film industry in such a way that by crowning Orientalist directors like Alan Parker 

with awards, the West legitimizes its source of hegemony, and engrains it within the Western culture, 

thanks to extensive press and coverage these events accumulate.  

As a result of this legitimization process, the viewer is highly likely to regard Orientalist films such as 

Midnight Express as true representations of the East, and take how Turkey is projected in the film as 

granted, which is exactly where the hegemonic power of the West is most succinct. These stereotypes 

are so recycled and reused that the Western audience does not even question them anymore, but just 



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accept images of the East as depicted on silver screen as truth. Thus, what Lewis offers about the 

operational distinctiveness of stereotyping the East is verified: “it is the hegemonic ability of Orientalist 

discourse to retain the upper hand even whilst it accepts and incorporates challenges that accounts for 

its longevity” (Lewis, 1996, p. 20). Potentially, to take such representations of Middle East as granted 

could be dangerous in the sense that it can feed feelings of xenophobia and intolerance against foreign 

people among the people of the West.  

On the other hand, as a response to the global achievement of the film, several critics recognized the 

monolithic gaze evident in Midnight Express and how problematic such projections can be. Mary Lee 

Settle states that “The Turks I saw in Lawrence of Arabia and Midnight Express were like cartoon 

caricatures” (Settle 1991, p. 8). In this sense, she verifies that this Western gaze directed at Turks is 

common in Hollywood, and equally ridiculous. In resonance with her, David Robinson observes 

Midnight Express as being a “more violent, as a national hate-film than anything I can remember— a 

cultural form that narrows horizons, confirming the audience’s meanest fears and prejudices and 

resentments” (Wakeman, 1988, p. 741). His insight verifies what Said had to say about the Western 

consciousness, which can only project and imagine investments about the East, which can lead on to 

more serious problems such as racism or xenophobia.  

However, what famed film critic Pauline Kael has to note just hits the Orientalist spot of both Oliver 

Stone and Alan Parker. She writes: “this story could have happened in almost any country, but if Billy 

Hayes had planned to be arrested to get the maximum commercial benefit from it, where else could he 

get the advantages of a Turkish Jail? Who wants to defend Turks? They don’t even constitute enough of 

a movie market for Columbia Pictures to be concerned about how they are represented” (Kael, 1980, p. 

499). Due to its Oriental position, that is, as Little argues, politically primitive and economically 

suspect, Turkey is not even seen “worthy enough” to be worried about its representation in such 

Orientalist films. As a result, Turkishness is used as a stepping-stone to accumulate capital and 

reinforce Eastern stereotypes in order to preserve Western hegemony by the way of “entertaining” 

people around the world.  

To sum up, Midnight Express is just another Hollywood product that’s main aim is to display an 

Oriental civilization as monolithically different from the Occident. The clearly Orientalist storyline is 

justified by offering that it is “based on a true story”, even though many events are imagined by the 

screenwriter to make the film more dramatic. Additionally, the awards the film had acquired repute the 

film as a rightful account of Turkey, which has destroyed the country’s reputation back in the 1970s, 

and can still act as a source of “true knowledge” about the country since its depiction is legitimized by 

Western institutions that help to maintain their cultural hegemony.  

 

 

 



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References 

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University Press.  

Kael, P. (1980). When the Lights Go Down. New York: Hall Rinehart and Winston. 

Kennedy, P., & Catherine, D. (2001). Globalization and National Identities: Crisis or opportunity? 

Palgrave Macmillan Press. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985458 

Lewis, R. (1996). Gendering Orientalism: Race, femininity and representation. London: Routlegde. 

Little, D. (2008). American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945. Raleigh: 

UNC Press Books. 

Marnell, B. (2010). Billy Hayes Reveals the Real Midnight Express. Retrieved from 

http://www.craveonline.com/tv/interviews/137370-billy-hayes-reveals-the-real-midnight-express  

Memmi, A. (2003). The Colonizer and the Colonized. Earthscan Press. 

Wakeman, J. (Ed.) (1988). World Film Directors, II. New York: The H.W Wilson Co.  

Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books . 

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world. New York: Random House. 

Settle, M. L. (1991). Turkish Reflections. New York: Prentice Hall Press. 

Sinha, M. (1995). Colonial Masculinity: The manly Englishman and the effeminate Bengali in the late 

nineteenth century. Manchester: Manchester University Press.  

Varisco, D. M. (2007). Reading Orientalism: The said and the unsaid. Seattle: University of 

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Venn, C. (2000). Occidentalism: Modernity and subjectivity. London: Sage. 

https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446217436 

 

 
 

https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985458
https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446217436

