UJ: Arab Portrayal in Movies
It is no question that the media has an enormous effect on all its viewers. The media has an agenda and expects the audience to respond positively to it. It chooses what and what not to broadcast to people. It is disconcerting the level of influence they exert but taking in this information happens on such a level that sometimes we don’t even notice it.
I would like to focus my attention on what could perhaps be part of the media and that is how Arabs are portrayed in Hollywood movies and TV series. Over the years, there have been many movies and TV shows that have depicted a terrorist as an Arab, reciting Islamic chants before he goes off to blow a building or a similar setting. These actors speak in Arabic so the audience are conditioned to believe almost automatically that they are associated with an evil plot. Furthermore, an Arab is constantly associated with living in the desert in tents riding in his camels or at the extreme end, ridiculously rich and corrupt in power.
One-dimensional Muslim terrorist characters were the generic “bad guy” in countless movies and television shows, including True Lies (’94) and Executive Decision (’96). Even the cartoon Aladdin (’92) portrayed villains with Middle Eastern accents while the hero and heroine had standard American voices. The best example of a tv series I can think of is ’24′ . The problem with the depiction of Arabs as terrorists in ’24′ lies in their one-dimensional nature. They are essentially dehumanized, which in turns makes the torture inflicted upon them by Jack Bauer more palatable than if they were seen as persons. It makes it all the more easier for the audience to despise them and automatically associate them with acts of terror.
A more recent movie ‘Up in the Air’ , Clooney’s character and his business partner are deciding what line to wait in at an airport security checkpoint. While pointing to a line of Arab men, Clooney says, “Five words: Randomly Selected for Additional Screening.” Clooney and his colleague avoid the line.
These are just a FEW examples of the countless movies where we see stereotypes against Arabs take precedence to what should be an enjoyable experience to all viewers without conjuring up negative emotions and encouraging all kinds of prejudice.
My question is how accurate do you think these portrayals are? When you imagine an Arab is this the kind of thing that instantly comes to mind? Do you personally believe that certain movies are vilifying Arabs and encouraging false stereotypes and misconceptions about the whole Arab nation? Does this encourage you to do your own research and dig deeper beyond those stereotypes?
If you do have the time, this is a documentary which is part of a book entitled ‘Reel Bad Arabs’ where Jack Shaheen surveyed more than 900 film appearances of Arab characters. Here, he discusses how Arabs are being depicted in a wide range of movies.
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Rowan, I thoroughly enjoyed this fascinating documentary and your thought-provoking question. Prior to reading this, I truthfully never even really thought of or considered the rampant prejudices that are depicted by various forms of the mass media towards the Arab people. Even though Aladdin is one of my favorite movies, I never before noticed your observation of how the hero and heroine speak with perfect American accents while the villains speak with heavy Middle Eastern accents. It would seem that Arab men really are portrayed as barbaric or incompetent and the women as sexualized belly dancers.
Since I was born in Egypt, what comes to my mind when I imagine an Arab will probably be more accurate and true to life than these stereotypes, but no doubt, these blatantly incorrect characterizations of Arabs, encouraged by the media, fully pervade American society. I cannot tell you how many times that, upon knowing that I’m Egyptian, people that I meet will ask me if we rode camels on our way to school or if we lived in pyramid-shaped huts! Now of course, these types of ignorant questions aren’t raised at my university, but the stereotypical preconceptions exist, no doubt, and are even fueled by some of the movies you mentioned.
One of my favorite television shows of all time was Lost, which was about a group of very different individuals who were forced to stay together after the plane they were on crashed on a deserted island. This show actually contained a relatively positive portrayal of an Arab. His name was Sayid Jarrah from Iraq, and he was one of the most interesting characters of them all. In his life before the plane crash, he had worked as a torturer for the Iraqi Republican Guard, requiring him to be brutal and cold. Yet, when he fell hopelessly in love with Nadia, he tried to atone for his past as he went on a path of redemption. After the plane crash, he was the most helpful and resourceful man on the island, the exact opposite of the usual illustration of incompetent Arab men. In the end of the series, he boldly sacrifices his life to save the others left on the island, allowing them to escape. Sadly, though, this is probably the only example I can think of in which the media sheds a positive light on Arabs.
The events of September 11th, no doubt, complicated matters, to say the least. One now would be hard pressed to find a portrayal of an Arab man in the media who wasn’t a terrorist attempting to blow up a plane or a building. Before this date, Arab men were mainly depicted as sex-crazed bumbling idiots, as you mentioned. Now, they’re dangerous individuals who cannot be trusted to be on a plane. I now wonder if the media actually gave an accurate representation of the Arab people as a whole, instead of only choosing to portray terrorists or the like, whether many Americans would still be in favor of separate lines at airport security for Muslims and Non-Muslims, or whether airport security measures should be harsher for Arabs who, for the sake of safety, should be subjected to a more severe degree of scrutiny. Though the vast majority of Arab Muslims are not radical by any means, it is a shame that Arabs are often unrealistically seen as such because of these negative portrayals by the media who continually perpetuate this stereotype.
Arab women are certainly not fairly portrayed either. What comes to mind is, again, the film Aladdin. In the film, Jasmine was a princess, the daughter of the Sultan, yet her clothes were belly dancing attire, giving her an air of sexuality rather than royalty. In many of the films now, it seems that the stereotypes of Arab women are very polarized—they are either overtly sexualized as belly dancers and the like or they are docile, submissive creatures whose only purpose in living is to please their husbands.
Being from Egypt myself, I would most definitely welcome the end to all the fallacies sustained by the media concerning Arabs, and I think the only solution to this issue is for Arabs everywhere to voice their opinion concerning this matter. Just as African-American stereotypes were lessened in America thanks to the work of the NAACP, so can Arab stereotypes be eliminated if Arabs demanded this change from the media. The media, after all, is a large factor in the infiltration of cultural stereotypes, but it also has the power to take them away.
Great question — when I had just read the title of the question and not the text, my thoughts immediately went to “24″, which you mentioned as an example of portraying Arabs. You’re totally right about the one-dimensional portrayal of the Arab “bad guys” but what interested me more in the seasons where the terrorists were Arab was that there were always one or two “good Arabs” as very minor characters, denouncing suicide missions or helping Jack Bauer, etc. Having spent several months in Morocco, I see these characterizations as very artificial. Given the ambitions of most Arab immigrants in the US, shows like 24 seem like very unrealistic portrayals. What I wonder is to what extent the writers and producers of such shows and films believe that people like their characters exist/are common, or if they are just looking to capitalize on what is seen as a hot button topic among the American public.
With regards to Sandra’s post, I remember really liking Saeed’s character in Lost, and they definitely portray him in a positive light, but it’s worth noting that he still is portrayed with this terrorist/extremist past that he needs to atone for. I’d like to think that American media’s most famous Arab characters don’t create Americans’ entire concept of Arabs in the west, but the hopes for that being the case are probably unfortunately small.