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How to Eat Pray Love the Orientalist Way

Gabriella Di Benedetto
Global Media
Professor Clini
20-11-2013
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Sony Productions Eat, Pray, Love is a film adaptation of a book by Elizabeth Gilbert,
translated in over thirty languages, who tells hers story about finding herself through the one year
long journey to Italy, India, and Bali. In this paper I do not wish to discuss the book and its content.
Rather, I wish to analyze its adaptation to film through Hollywood, and how its directors decided to
represent visually what was written on paper, or almost. According to The Punitive Theater of the
Western Gaze: Staging Orientalism in Eat Pray Love, many critics that the film removed what
little sense of depth had appeared in Gilberts writing (2012, 3-4). The visual adaptation offers
more than meets the eye. Although superficially it may seem that one just observes Gilberts story
through Julia Roberts impeccable acting, I wish to point out that the film also brings forth matters
concerning tourism and Orientalism. Overall, the film does not only tell Gilberts story, but it tells
something about the world and countries that are less developed than the United States of America.
In the film, the audience travels with Gilbert to three wonderful places in the world, each of
which offer something, as the title suggests. Through the representations of these three places, the
audience is inadvertently invited to travel and witness such beauties with their own eyes. In his
essay on contemporary tourism, Erik Cohen says that the main goal of tourism is known to be
moderns depart[ing] on sightseeing tours in a quest for authenticity, which they miss in their own
phony, alienated world (2008, 2). Although this definition was established in the 1970s, it could
easily be applied to EPL as Gilbert leaves the States to look for an authenticity that she cannot find
in New York. In fact, when she goes to the Ashram in New York, she can barely take it seriously.
Once she gets to the Ashram in India, however, everything around her allows her to take in the
experience and find herself.
Moreover, Cohen says that tourism as a whole is
a modern Western cultural project. The core of
modern tourism lies in the Western world; the industry was
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developed, owned and managed by Westerners; modern
tourists were predominantly Westerners; Westerners shaped
the principal tourist routes and destinations, styles of travel,
of accommodations and of auxiliary services (2008, 2).
Again, this statement fits the way the film grew around the tourist approach of Italy, India, and
Indonesia: a Western construction of a Westerners experience who established space, time,
depiction, and style of journey. Along these lines, Pleasure-seeking tourism is driven by the
enterprise of objectifying others as a commodity or means of satisfaction (Longchar, Wati 466).
Unwillingly, however, this statement recalls the idea of Orientalism defined by Edward Said
as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient (1978, 25).
Thus, through the film, the West has once again showed its viewers the American domination over
these three destinations. Although the greatest Orientalist view occurs when Gilbert arrives in
India, it can be discussed that even Italy is framed in an Orientalist manner, underlining specific
elements that make the viewer gaze upon the country with a top-bottom approach. Unlike India
and Bali, however, Italy is depicted more as a borderline Western-Orientalist location. In fact, it is
the only place in which Gilbert manages to mingle with the locals.
When Gilbert arrives to Italy, the main aspects of Rome and Italians that stick with a
viewers mind are poverty of place contradicted by the extreme wealth of the people, ruin, chaos,
rudeness, laziness, food, and language both oral and physical. Each of these points can be
witnessed in various scenes. The apartment Gilbert decides to live in is falling to pieces and in
order to have hot water to bathe, she needs to heat water on the stove. When she then explains that
it would take her forever to fill the bath, the landlady replies Everything thats important gets
cleaned (Eat Pray Love). Would it be to bold, then, to imply from this scene that Italians are
considered dirty? The contrast to this comes in the bar scene where Gilbert is the only female
surrounded by men in suits and tie, chaotically ordering coffee. Moreover, people at the restaurants
are presented as extremely wealthy and impeccable in their presence.
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Rudeness is presented in the obnoxious scene where the young boys follow the pretty girls
and basically stock them; laziness is represented in the barber scene where an Italian friend explains
the idea of dolce far niente, implying that Italians believe in and love doing nothing. Finally, the
food and language are presented as the strong points of the Italian culture depicted by exaggerated
scenes of food preparation and the Italian lessons Gilbert receives in order to make her way around
the city.
It is interesting, however, to see that the directors thought to include reverse stereotypes
Italians have of Americans. In one scene, Gilberts landlady tells her that Gilbert is not allowed to
have men stay overnight. She says When you American girls come to Rome, all you want is pasta
and sausage (Eat Pray Love), purposefully underlining the last word to hint at the sexual double
entendre. The second scene, instead, is at the barber shop when the Italian friend who talks about
the idea of dolce far niente also says Americans know entertainment, but not pleasure. They
work all week and then act like couch potatoes during the weekend (Eat Pray Love). As fun as it
may be to see the reverse effect on the dominant gaze, it is only temporary and does not give much
to the movie as a whole.
Within these scenes and many more, including the little girl in Naples who gives Gilbert the
middle finger and Gilberts mocking response, the viewer is left with a somewhat distorted idea of
Italy and what it really has to offer. For this reason, it can be discussed that Italy has been thrown
in the mix with India and Indonesia as a form of Orient, seen as inferior by the American Western
power.
India and Indonesia, on the other hand, are depicted with an Orientalist gaze to its highest
manifestation for the people, the environment, and everything that accompanies those elements.
In India, Gilbert is presented throughout the whole experience as some sort of deity or
saint (The Punitive Theater of Western Gaze 21). She clearly lacks the ability to relate to people
in the Ashram like she did in Rome, underlying perhaps, a cultural gap which is too large to fill
between her and the Indians. In fact, the only person she ends up bonding with is Richard, an
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American who ends up being her guide on how to meditate and fully embrace the experience in the
Ashram, rather than having an actual local teach her (2012, 20). Moreover, it could be said that
both characters ran away from their reality to the ashram as some form of natural rehabilitation
center. In fact, Richard tells her at a certain point that she needs to stay until she can heal. And
shortly after, we see Gilbert walking Richard to the car, telling him to go home, as if he had been
detoxicated.
The only person Gilbert does link with is Tulsi, the sixteen year old girl who is about to be
wed in an arranged marry to a boy she does not love. Yet, the relationship established here is one
that recalls the first world woman helping the third world girl (2012, 27). Moreover, Gilbert stands
completely still during the wedding celebration, as though she were the spectator entertained by the
Oriental show in front of her eyes.
At the same way, when Gilbert arrives to Bali, the only people we see are Ketuts helper ,
that is never given an identity and is seen as a traditionalist woman for her insistence with Gilbert to
find a man (2012, 29), Ketut the medicine man, who resembles the idea of magic for his ability to
see into the future with impeccable detail, and Wayan and her daughter, who become Gilberts
charity case, therefore recalling the idea of the first world woman helping the third world woman.
Interestingly enough, it seems that this last part about Wayan receiving $18,000 from Gilberts
friends in America is not even in the book (2012, 28). This cinematic addition underlines the idea
of the West wanting to be seen as the savior of the Orient, including made up facts in a true story
about a womans journey.
Although the film is extremely fun to watch and leaves the audience in awe for the amount
of beauty seen on screen, the way that this beauty is depicted still places the so-called Orient in a
spectacle light, with the sole purpose of entertaining the spectator and marking the differences
between us and them, giving too much space to stereotypes and preconceived ideas about a
culture and too little space to the truth.

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Works Cited
"The Punitive Theater Of The Western Gaze: Staging Orientalism In Eat Pray Love."
Conference Papers -- International Communication Association (2012): 1-38.
Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.

Cohen, Erik. "The Changing Faces Of Contemporary Tourism." Society 45.4 (2008):
330-333. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.


Eat Pray Love. Dir. Ryan Murphy. Screenplay by Ryan Murphy and Jennifer Salt. Perf.
Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem, Richard Jenkins. Sony, 2010. Online.

Longchar, Wati. "Solidarity For Justice And Peace Solidarity For Justice And Peace: An
Asian Indigenous Perspective." Ecumenical Review 64.4 (2012): 463-471.
Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.


Said, Edward W. "Orientalism." Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978. 24-27.