of this movement references a belief in this literature as a mode to justify European colonial endeavors with the expansion of territory. In his novel Salammbô, Gustave Flaubert used ancient Carthage in North Africa as a foil to ancient Rome. He portrayed its culture as morally corrupting and suffused with dangerously alluring eroticism. This novel proved hugely influential on later portrayals of ancient Semitic cultures. In film Said argues that the continuity of Orientalism into the present can be found in influential images, particularly through the Cinema of the United States, as the West has now grown to include the United States. Many blockbuster feature films, such as the Indiana Jones series, The Mummy films, and Disney's Aladdin film series demonstrate the imagined geographies of the East. The films usually portray the lead heroic characters as being from the Western world, while the villains often come from the East. The representation of the Orient has continued in film, although this representation does not necessarily have any truth to it. In The Tea House of the August Moon (1956), as argued by Pedro Iacobelli, there are tropes of orientalism. He notes, that the film "tells us more about the Americans and the American's image of Okinawa rather than about the Okinawan people." The film characterizes the Okinawans as "merry but backward" and "de-politicized," which ignored the real-life Okinawan political protests over forceful land acquisition by the American military at the time. Kimiko Akita, in Orientalism and the Binary of Fact and Fiction in 'Memoirs of a Geisha, argues that Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) contains orientalist tropes and deep "cultural misrepresentations." She states that Memoirs of a Geisha "reinforces the idea of Japanese culture and geisha as exotic, backward, irrational, dirty, profane, promiscuous, bizarre, and enigmatic." In dance During the Romantic period of the 19th century, ballet developed a preoccupation with the exotic. This exoticism ranged from ballets set in Scotland to those based on ethereal creatures. By the later part of the century, ballets were capturing the presumed essence of the mysterious East. These ballets often included sexual themes and tended to be based on assumptions of people rather than on concrete facts. Orientalism is apparent in numerous ballets. The Orient motivated several major ballets, which have survived since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Le Corsaire premiered in 1856 at the Paris Opera, with choreography by Joseph Mazilier.