Hollywood's Relentless Vilification And Dehumanization Of Arabs And Muslims.

...Unfortunately, though, these views have been flawed. Hollywood films often produce erroneous images of the world and its inhabitants. Throughout the history of the feature film industry, negative stereotypes and mistaken representations of almost every minority group in the world have been portrayed in the movies-including blacks, Native Americans, Asians, and Arabs. While all of these groups have been treated poorly throughout the history of Hollywood films, in this article it is argued that the Arab culture has been the most misunderstood and supplied with the worst stereotypes.

The characterization of the Middle East and the Arab culture began during the silent movie era of the 19205. Rudolph Valentino's roles in The Sheik (1921) and Son of the Sheik (1926) set the stage for the exploration and negative portrayal of Arabs in Hollywood films. Both The Sheik and Son of the Sheik represented Arab characters as thieves, charlatans, murderers, and brutes (Michalak 29). Numerous other films that graced the silver screen during the twenties seemed to hold the same low standard of Arabs. The Song of Love (1923) tells the story of a power-hungry Algerian chief who schemes to overthrow French colonial rule and make himself the king of all of North Africa; A Cafe in Cairo (1924) is about an Arab desert bandit who kills a British man and his wife but saves their daughter so that they may be wed; and The Desert Bride (1928) portrays an Arab named Kassim Ben Ali as the leader of a group of "Arab nationalists" who capture and torture a French officer and his lover. All of these movies portray the Arab as the villain and are sure to conclude with the victory of the good Western symbol: the Algerian chief in The Song of Love is killed by French troops; the girl who is to marry the desert bandit in A Cafe in Cairo is rescued by an Englishman, and The Desert Bride concludes with the escape of Ben All's two captives and the death of Ben Ali.

...Throughout the 20th century, little has changed regarding the stereotypes of Arabs in Hollywood. In recent years Arabs were still being characterized as villainous, deranged, and murderous. Furthermore, these more recent Elms, despite the greater public awareness of the Arab culture, were just as erroneous as the first portrayals of the 1920s. Movies advertised as historically accurate were anything but that, and the Arabs in these movies usually were played by anyone but the Arabs. The Wind and the Lion (1975), set in 1904, starred Sean Connery as an Arab who kidnaps an American woman in Morocco and demands a large ransom from President Theodore Roosevelt. A film critic said of Connery's role in The Wind and the Lion, that he was "a 1904 forerunner of today's terrorists..." (Michalak 25). The makers of the film claimed that it was based on an historical account of an actual kidnapping case. However, the real 1904 kidnapping victim was a man, not a woman. Hollywood's alteration not only provided the intended effect of added excitement, but it also put an unwarranted label on the Arab community as being a group of terrorists fearful of confronting anyone more powerful than a woman. Further, while the negative theme of the Arab actions in the film did little to promote acceptance of Arabs in the world community, the casting of Sean Connery as the Arab terrorist further alienated the Arab community by implying that Arabs are not even worthy of portraying themselves in cinema.

...With the end of the eighties came an age of politically correctness, when more accurate depictions of Arabs might be expected. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. For example, two recent Hollywood movies, True Lies, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Walt Disney's animated feature, Aladdin, have extended the misrepresentation of the Arab culture into the 1990s.

...As True Lies has shown, Hollywood is far from changing its traditional outlook on the Arab world in its violent action films. At a fund-raiser, Republican Party presidential candidate Senator Robert Dole placed True Lies on his list of movies that are "friendly to families" (Weinraub 1). Bob Dole attacked such movies as Natural Born Killers and True Romance for their use of unnecessary violence to sell tickets, yet regarded True Lies as a film which promoted patriotism and family values. While this classification may seem absurd, it might be explained by the fact that Senator Dole has never seen the film, and that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the movie's star, is a staunch Republican who supports Dole's candidacy.

Might another Hollywood genre show Arabs and the Middle East in a truer light? One such possibility would be the animated feature film. In 1992, the Walt Disney Company released Aladdin, a feature length animated picture that was based on the tales of the Arabian legends of "Aladdin" and "Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves." However, this film, intended for both children and adults, continued the long tradition of misrepresenting Arabs and their culture in both images and words.

...The dialogue of Aladdin has fewer derogatory slurs of the Arab culture than in films such as True Lies yet, when they do occur, they are just as harmful. In the original version of the movie there were lines in the opening song, "Arabian Nights," that spoke of mutilation as a custom. The original lines were: Oh, I come from a land/Prom a faraway place/ Where the caravan camels roam/Where they cut off your earl If they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but hey it's home. These lines were extremely offensive to many members of the Arab community. In the summer of 1993, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) protested to the Walt Disney Company , asking to have the lines removed from the song. Disney consulted with the estate of Howard Ashman, the deceased lyricist, about the possibility of changing the lyrics of "Arabian Nights." After much deliberation, the fourth and fifth lines of the verse were eliminated and were replaced by, "Where it's flat and immense/and the heat is intense." The remainder of the song remained the same, including the references to Arabia being " barbaric."

Even in this age of "political correctness," Hollywood has been either unable or unwilling to change its representation of Arabs and the Middle East. Arabs today-as they were more than 70 years ago-are portrayed as being bandits, terrorists, thieves, and beggars. While Hollywood has taken some ameliorating, the casting of Arabs themselves to play demeaning roles is not enough. The work of groups like the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has created a new awareness that there are problems that need to be addressed. Perhaps, if Hollywood takes this advice, then film audiences may begin to know the true lifestyle and culture of the modern Arab.


Note: The above excerpts were taken from:
"Arabs in Hollywood: An Undeserved Image"
By Scott J. Simon, Northeastern University.

Source For The Above Material:
http://pages.emerson.edu/organizations/fas/latent_image/issues/1996-04/arabs.htm


Planet Of The Arabs

Courtesy Of: YouTube
Added: November 27, 2006
From: jzoshy
RunTime: 09:00

Official selection of the Sundance Film Festival 2005

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 900 and so were negative...