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The Arab is a one-dimensional caricature, a cartoon cutout used by film makers as stock villains and as comic relief. And so, over and over, we see Arabs in movies portrayed as buffoons, their only purpose being to deliver cheap laughs. This groundbreaking documentary dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today’s biggest Hollywood blockbusters. Featuring acclaimed author Dr. Jack Shaheen, the film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs–from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding “terrorists”–along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in US history, and why they matter so much today.

Shaheen shows how the persistence of these images over time has served to naturalize prejudicial attitudes toward Arabs and Arab culture, in the process reinforcing a narrow view of individual Arabs and the effects of specific US domestic and international policies on their lives. By inspiring critical thinking about the social, political, and basic human consequences of leaving these Hollywood caricatures unexamined, the film challenges viewers to recognize the urgent need for counter-narratives that do justice to the diversity and humanity of Arab people and the reality and richness of Arab history and culture.

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RunTime: 51 min

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Watch the Full Documentary Now

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[ Full Screen ]

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The Arab is a one-dimensional caricature, a cartoon cutout used by film makers as stock villains and as comic relief. And so, over and over, we see Arabs in movies portrayed as buffoons, their only purpose being to deliver cheap laughs. This groundbreaking documentary dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today’s biggest Hollywood blockbusters. Featuring acclaimed author Dr. Jack Shaheen, the film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs–from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding “terrorists”–along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in US history, and why they matter so much today.

Shaheen shows how the persistence of these images over time has served to naturalize prejudicial attitudes toward Arabs and Arab culture, in the process reinforcing a narrow view of individual Arabs and the effects of specific US domestic and international policies on their lives. By inspiring critical thinking about the social, political, and basic human consequences of leaving these Hollywood caricatures unexamined, the film challenges viewers to recognize the urgent need for counter-narratives that do justice to the diversity and humanity of Arab people and the reality and richness of Arab history and culture.

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RunTime: 51 min

-

Watch the Full Documentary Now

-

[ Full Screen ]

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This post has been cross-posted on Racialicious.

If you’re having trouble trying to figure out what’s wrong with this newly revealed poster for Disney’s upcoming film, “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” it may help if I pointed out that the title character is played by Jake Gyllenhaal. In other words, the prince of Persia is not played by a Persian/Iranian. Big surprise, huh?

Why is this a big deal? Well, considering that negative perceptions of Middle-Easterners and/or Muslims have increased since 9/11 (and haven’t gotten better according to statistics and civil rights incidents reported by CAIR), a relatively anticipated film like “Prince of Persia” would seem like the perfect opportunity to help break stereotypes and misconceptions about Middle-Easterners. The film is based on a very popular video game of the same title, which allows you to play the role of a Persian prince who has to save his kingdom (or world) from a time-altered reality. I remember playing the game when it was released in 2003 and even though it’s filled with Orientalist stereotypes, I always felt the story and character depictions could be tweaked into a mainstream film with serious potential (and by that, I mean a film with an actual story, real character development, and appreciation for the culture it intends to represent).

Unfortunately, Jake Gyllenhaal isn’t the only White actor playing a Middle-Eastern character. Gemma Arterton, who plays Tamina, the film’s version of Farah, an Indian character from the video game, is also White. Ben Kingsley is also cast as a Persian character, and while he is of half-Indian descent, many Iranians recall how poorly he played an Iranian father in “House of Sand and Fog.” The best part (sarcasm) is that Alfred Molina will play a Persian again after his abusive and oppressive Iranian husband role in the 1991 propaganda film, “Not Without My Daughter”! As a user on IMDB commented: “Tamina = Indian / Gemma Arterton= White; What the hell is going on?”

Yeah, so what is going on? It’s not like Iranian actors and actresses are non-existent. A simple explanation may come from the fact that the film is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the Hollywood producer of “Pirates of the Caribbean” and other successful mega-hit blockbusters. It seems like he wanted to play it “safe” since casting real Persians/Iranians would supposedly jeopardize the film’s box office success. In other words, Bruckheimer is more concerned about raking in the dough than conveying important messages about a community that he’s representing (read: exploiting) in his latest B-movie.

It’s important to note that this has happened before. Remember the animated film, “Sinbad and the Seven Seas” released by Dreamworks in 2003? The legend of Sinbad, an Arab sailor, is a classic Arabian Nights tale which the animated film distanced itself from in the most direct way possible. In his article, “Why Hollywood Drew a Veil Over Sinbad’s Arab Roots,” Sean Clarke writes:

…[I]n this version, Sinbad is from Syracuse (in Sicily, as opposed to New York State). The love of his life, Marina, is a noblewoman of Thebes. His estranged best friend is Proteus, the son of King Daimas, and his most dangerous enemy is Eris, the goddess of chaos. Every Arab reference has been removed, and replaced with something vaguely Greek.

Jack G. Shaheen, the author of “Reel Bad Arabs,” added:

This was an ideal opportunity to shatter some stereotypes about Arab and Muslim villains. When I spoke to Jeffrey Katzenberg – a visionary producer – I asked him to include some reference to Arabs or Arab culture. He didn’t seem surprised that I mentioned it, which presumably means that it was discussed early on in the development of the film.

I think maybe they decided to play it safe, not to ruffle any feathers by having neither Arab heroes nor Arab villains. Basically they’re out to make as much money as possible, and I think they were worried that if they took a risk on an Arab hero they might have suffered at the box office…”

The same argument can be made about Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” where a Middle-Eastern man, Jesus (peace be upon him), was played by a White American actor, Jim Caviezel. As William Rivers Pitt wrote in his article, “‘The Passion’ of the Americans,” putting a “white Jesus Christ to the cross on film will generate a far more emotional response from the American viewing public than the crucifixion of a savior who actually looks like he is from the Middle East.”  Similarly, it seems that Hollywood filmmakers don’t believe an American audience can connect with “Prince of Persia” if the main character, God forbid, was actually played by an Iranian/Persian actor!

There isn’t any doubt in my mind that concerns were raised about “Prince of Persia” among many Hollywood producers since Iran is (wrongly) labeled an “existential” and “nuclear threat” to Israel. As with the Sinbad animated film, it seems that authentic Persian history, facts, and roots are going to be ignored in favor of Hollywood’s own Orientalized and exocitized version of the Middle-East — one in which brown people are played by White actors. It’s an extremely offensive and insulting modern form of Blackface which says only White people can play central Middle-Eastern characters.

Hollywood’s ethnocentrism shines shamelessly again.

Riz Khan – Arabs in Hollywood: ( July 15, 2008 )
“Always the villain? With author Jack Shaheen, actor Ahmed Ahmed and producer Abdullah Omeish, this episode of the Riz Khan show looks at stereotypical portrayals of Arabs in Hollywood and asks why these continue.”
Part 1:

Part 2:

Related: I, II

I was wondering when I would get to read an articulate critique of the movie “Taken”, and here it is.

“Taken for a ride” (Source : AltMuslimah)

“Bryan Mills (played by Liam Neeson) is a former spy for the US government whose 17 year old daughter, Kim, gets kidnapped (by Muslim men) and sold into sex slavery (to Muslim men) while on a trip abroad in Paris. Bryan immediately heads out to save the daughter in distress, which remains the main point of the story, even as we are treated to scenes depicting the appalling underworld of illegal prostitution. The fate of the many other, non-American women doesn’t really matter to Bryan, nor eventually to us, the viewers. Even the one European girl who is taken out and whom we have the fortune of meeting briefly, is no more than a means to an end, for she is able to tell Bryan where she last saw Kim.

This blind spot reveals how the movie is not so much about the problem of sex slavery, but merely a cinema adventure following the travails of the victim-who-matters. Unlike the beautiful and innocent Kim, who has somewhat of a character history (the opening scene shows her father remembering her fifth birthday party), the other women simply fade into the position of anonymous extras: most of them are never even seen, as Bryan opens door after door to find them drugged and draped in blankets in the dark. The individuality of the American girl is thrown into relief against the background of the thus doubly victimized collectivity of all the other invisible women.

Taken is disturbing not just for what it says (or rather, does not say) about non-American women, but also for what it wants to say about non-Western men. Interestingly, although its thoroughly xenophobic portrayal of Muslim men is quite unremarkable (see Jack Shaheen’s Reel Bad Arabs), Taken does not represent Muslims as a monolith: they are diverse, yet all bad. The men involved in the trafficking network in Paris are a gang of illegal Albanian immigrants (who, in case you missed their darker, Middle-Eastern features, have a green crescent and star tattooed on their wrists!), whereas the men who eventually purchase Kim are rich, old Arabs with luxury yachts. Stereotypes are further regurgitated as when Bryan finally finds his daughter at a secret auction in the basement of an upscale Paris mansion, she is brought onto the stage covered in a glittering embroidered Oriental piece of cloth and then unveiled – titillating the fantasies of the men in the film as well as those behind the camera, including us, the viewers. Thus, at the same time that Taken attempts to criticize the enslavement of women, it does not neglect the possibility of taking voyeuristic advantage of the situation. As long as they, not us, do the dirty work.

Herein lies the fundamental double bind in the film: the duty to criticize other men for exploiting women, while being unable to fully wrest out of our own ugly fantasies and desires to control women. And so Taken is ultimately interesting not even for what it says about Arab or Muslim men, but for what it inadvertently reveals about American masculinity. The clue lies in the larger narrative that frames Kim’s abduction: Bryan initially refuses to grant legal permission to his under-age daughter to travel abroad with her friend. He seems unusually paranoid, insisting that neither Kim nor her mother know what the world is like. Of course, his irrational fears prove correct when Kim and her friend are kidnapped within a few hours of their arrival in Paris. The implicit moral of the story is that man knows what is best for woman, for he really only wishes to protect her. But if anything happens, he is more than prepared to save her and exact his revenge. Determined to find Kim by any means necessary, Bryan goes on a killing spree all over in Paris, and in an utmost demonstration of power, he electrocutes one of the Albanian men to death, even after having already extracted information from him. This one terrifying scene alone manages to embody the twin duo of patriarchy and patriotism, by evoking and enacting both the War on Terror and another legacy of America’s grim past, when black men would be lynched for their perceived threat to the sexual purity of white women.

Taken, therefore, constructs Western masculinity by and through demonizing Other men. The point here is not to falsely suggest that there are no Muslims or Arabs involved in the business of enslaving women for prostitution, but rather to interrogate the gendered political ideologies implicit in a popular movie like this. What causes are served by the symbolic identification of the world outside with danger and violence, while evading the very real injustices that exist in our own backyard, or by neglecting the fact that the demand from Western sex tourists often sustain prostitution in many developing countries? How does the articulation of American men as able protectors of their women depend on representations of non-Western men, either as emasculated or as hyper-sexualized and unable to control their animal desires to subjugate women?

Approaching Taken’s portrayal of Muslim men in light of these questions, two moments in the film seem particularly telling. First, while working as a part-time bodyguard, Bryan successfully saves a young pop diva from a mysterious assailant immediately after a concert and lends her a sympathetic shoulder as she breaks into tears. Second, while trying to force information out of a former acquaintance, a corrupt French intelligence official, Bryan brutally shoots the man’s wife in the arm. Both scenes depend on the same premise: that men are the guardians if not owners of women, which is precisely what lets a man hold a woman as hostage in his struggle with another man. In this sense, the overall plot of Taken thus relies on the body and person of a young woman, Kim, as the site of a contest between the West and the rest — a story that not only ends by reasserting the West’s spectacular power, but ultimately reveals its own dark, patriarchal subconscious. So much, then, for saving the victims.

Arafat A. Razzaque is currently a Master’s student at Harvard Divinity School. He previously worked for two years at an international non-profit foundation in Cambridge, MA devoted to women’s education in South Asia. Arafat graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Humanities, and his academic interests lie in the social and intellectual history of the medieval Near East.

PS:
Pakistan’s dehumanized “other”
Pakistan: Do school texts fuel bias?

This short video interview on Democracy Now is really excellent!

Where are the human images of Arabs and Arab Americans? That’s the topic of a new film called “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.” The book and the film explore the American cinematic landscape to reveal a stark pattern of Arab stereotyping and its disturbing similarity to anti-Semitic and other racist caricatures through history. We play excerpts of the film and speak to acclaimed media critic Jack Shaheen, author of the book it’s based on.

An old audio interview about the book from 2001

Film trailer

Planet of the Arabs

A trailer-esque montage spectacle of Hollywood’s relentless vilification and dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims. Inspired by the book “Reel Bad Arabs” by Dr. Jack Shaheen

Out of 1000 films that have Arab & Muslim characters (from the year 1896 to 2000)
12 were postive depictions, 52 were even handed and the rest of the 90O and so were negative.