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Has Hollywood Helped Generate Hatred Towards Arabs?
Reaching over 100 countries around the world, Hollywood is probably the largest entertainment medium of all races, ages and ethnicities.
But if the ancient Greek philosopher Plato was onto something when he said “those who tell the stories also rule society”, it’s worrying that Hollywood films, with its power to entertain and more importantly influence its audience, are seen by millions around the world – especially when that medium has been found to lead to the demonization of a race of people.
Arab American academic and author Jack Shaheen has researched and written extensively about how people of Middle Eastern decent are continuously depicted in negative roles in Hollywood cinema over decades.
In his 2001 book, Reel Bad Arabs, Shaheen says although every race of people have been stereotyped at one time or another, it’s the Arabs who have suffered the most, never shaking lose that negative typecast over decades.
As part of his research, Shaheen provided a meticulous scope of more than 900 films featuring Arab characters.
Of that number, about 12 had positive portrayals of Arabs, 50 offered a balance and the rest depicted Arabs as villainous characters.
And with figures like these, it is no wonder why many people have false perceptions about Arabs and the Middle East.
Over in the Arab world, the occupation of the Palestinian territories as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have always been hugely unpopular, as opposed to the majority of Western countries, who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and are seen to side with Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.
But why is there such a divide in opinion? Could Hollywood cinema, with its wide reaching influence, really have the power to help dehumanize a race of people so much so that the wars in Iraq and the human rights abuses perpetrated by Israel towards the Palestinians really not affect those too used to seeing Arabs as gun-toting terrorists or ridiculously wealthy sheikhs?
Sharif Nashashibi, chairman and co-founder of Arab Media Watch, a non-profit watchdog which strives for objective coverage of Arab issues, seems to thinks so.
“Unfortunately Arab stereotypes in Hollywood allows for the dehumanization of Arabs. If you think about it, Hollywood has such an influence on the rest of the world internationally, and even more so on American perceptions on the Arab world and the Muslim world. So if people time and time again see films that portray Arabs as violent, backward, hateful, fundamentalists, this eventually dehumanizes the Arabs. Unfortunately these perceptions can translate to foreign policy and the view that those peoples lives are simply not worth as much as the lives of Westerners.” Nashashibi said.
Of course, stereotypical images of Arabs have been around for centuries. Hollywood’s perception originated from pre-existing caricatures in European literature and specifically Arabian Nights, which until 1979, was the second most printed book after the bible.
It explains why earlier films had represented the Middle East as a region full of harems, Sheikhs seducing Western maidens and mythical marketplaces.
Although these perceptions still exists to an extent, it has evolved due to news coverage of the recent events in the Middle East.
Nowadays critics say that filmmakers have collectively indicated Arabs as “public enemy number #1 – brutal, heartless uncivilised, religious fanatics and money mad cultural ‘others’ hell bent on terrorising Westerners, especially Christian and Jews.” (Shaheen, 2001)
But how have films changed since the terror attacks in America on September 11, 2001?
Surely there would be a greater effort to understand this elusive culture?
Nashashibi says doest think so.
“The attempt to depict Arabs with some depth might be true in literature but with movies I don’t think this is the case,” he says.
One trend that has emerged is that you might have films that come out where you have a good Arab character, though this doesn’t counteract the fact that most of the Arabs in the film will still be negatively stereotyped. In fact, the attempt will be to supposedly balance that with the fact that there is a good Arab character,” he adds.
Nashashibi says the last effort to provide a good Arab character was in the film The Kingdom, where there was one character, Police Colonel Faris al-Ghazi (played by Ashraf Barhoum), who is depicted as a character who loves and respects American culture.
Nashashibi says that the majority of every other Arab character in the film is either a terrorist or a corrupt authority figure thug.
“The only difference now, post 9/11, is that there is a good Arab in the film to balance it out while every other Arab in the film is usually still old stereotype.” Nashashibi says.
Miriam Samadi, a 16 year old girl from North London agrees with Nashashibi’s observation.
“Arabs are always shown as the terrorists or the bad guy. The only exception I can think of is the Mummy Returns, but even then there were plenty of other bad Arabs, who were shown doing really backward things. One was even selling slaves and Islam doesn’t teach us that,” she says.
Miriam, whose parents are of Arabic descent, says she is an avid movie-goer who in between revising for exams and attending college enjoys going to the cinema with her friends.
She says he has also noticed the way in which Arabs are shown in Hollywood because that she comes from a Middle Eastern background, and has therefore lived what she calls a ‘real’ Arabic or Islamic culture.
“I don’t see any similarities between myself and the Arabs I see in the cinema. I’m a 16 year old ordinary girl living in a western country. But you never see that. You just don’t see ordinary Arabs in the cinema – just villains. Come to think of it, not even one person from my family back home has any resemblance to the people I see in Hollywood films,” she says.
But that isn’t to say that terrorism does not exist in the Middle East at all.
Miriam says: “Of course there are some Arabs or Muslim in the world that are bad and do fit the depiction you see in films, but that goes for every single race out there. Unfortunately everyone only sees the bad members of our society and thinks that’s how we all are. The majority of Arabs are normal people, but we all suffer because of the damage that is being done to our reputation by Hollywood.”
She adds: “I also think the news has a very big part to play in the problem. When people see Arabs on the news – which I think is very biased anyway – they believe what they see. It’s the case of ‘us against them’. So when Hollywood needs a villain and al Qaeda is in the news – that’s who they will cast as their villain. I don’t think its something that’s done on purpose – it’s just convenient. ”
Another Arab American academic, Alan Nadel, once wrote that the cliché depictions of Arabs comprise a set of what he calls “loose realities” meaning that the assumptions made by the United States about Arabs were due to the surrounding factors of the first Gulf war – as highlighted by the 1992 Disney animation film, Aladdin.
Back when it was released in 1992, Nadel said the vast majority of Americans saw Arab states as unstable and had shifting perceptions of which states were ‘good’ and which states were ‘bad’ due to the changing political landscape of these countries.
To make it clear, the makers of Aladdin had to ‘Americanized’ the ‘good’ Arabs in order to find acceptance. The Genie frequently does impersonations of well known American entertainment figures and speaks in an American accent like all the other ‘good’ Arabs and unlike the so called ‘bad’ Arabs.
In fact, the ‘good’ Arabs are only identified for their desire to escape their supposedly backward culture. In the ‘flying carpet’ scene where Princess Jasmine and Aladdin sing the song A Whole New World, there is even a line in the song which goes as follows: “I can’t go back to where I used to be.”
Sharif Nashashibi believes that decades of watching films like Aladdin, have helped create a negative false image of Arabs and Muslims around the world, which have led to their dehumanization and a kind of apathy in many Western countries when it comes to wars or conflicts in the Middle East.
“Their lives are expendable because they are seen to cause so much trouble to the west. Even when you look at polls conducted in the West about Arabs and Muslims they are consistently negative. I think Hollywood; with its influence has a lot of responsibility for that,” he says.
Miriam also thinks this is the case but she says she can understand why such false observations exist.
“I can’t really blame people for having negative perceptions of Arabs. There are many people out there who have never even met or even seen an Arab, so if all they have to help them make a judgment about a race of people is American cinema, then it’s not their fault if they think badly of us… I think society always needs a scapegoat, before it was the Jews and now it’s the Arabs.”
Indeed few would argue that today’s celluloid Jew is still subjected to the type of stereotyping that existed in the first half of the last century.
But unlike the shylocks of yesteryear, today’s hook nosed sheikh or trigger happy Palestinian is still common and widely accepted. Unfortunately anti-Semitism still does exist, as long as the Semites are Arabs.
Horia El Hadad
is a journalist living in London
Middle East Online