Reel Bad Arabs - (Media Meditation #4)

Even if Hollywood movie creators don't mean to, they are persuading us into demonizing Arabs. Through their films they are creating one-dimensional stereotypical Arab characters. They use these characters as villains and comic relief, they are seen as dangerous and incompetent characters. From everything we have learned throughout class we know that media and government go hand in hand with each other. The same goes for movies. The American government has continuously made it clear what side they are on, and for the most part is wasn't in favor of Arabs. Hollywood movies depict that relationship, and the idea that Arabs are the villeins in every situation. This is shown very clearly in the movie "Rules of Engagement" where you are lead to believe a shooting on a Arabic crowd was started by America Marines, it makes you start to humanize the Arabs but the more the movie goes on the more you realize that you were wrong for humanizing them. In the end it comes out that the crowd shot at the marines first, thus justifying the killing of "innocent" people.



To give you a little understanding on how I viewed this movie I would like to give you a little background about me. I am 1/2 Arabic. My mother is 100% Lebanese, so while it was only my great grandparents who where born in Lebanon, this movie still really interested me. My Situ (Grandmother) was fluent in Arabic but only very often spoke it. Both my grandparents grew up in a time where it was better to blend in as Americans. They never taught their children to speak Arabic. She did make the most amazing Arabic food I have ever tasted, and I grew up going to a primarily Lebanese Maronite Catholic Church. Maybe due to the fact that I am only 50% Lebonese or that I never lived in Lebanon,but I don't look very "Arabic", so I didn't get many of the stereotypes that many other children of middle eastern decent did. But I have family and friends that look more Arabic then I do, and have experienced people believing the stereotypes that Hollywood feeds them. One of my more vivid memories when I thought being Arabic was a bad thing was when I was applying to college. I thought that since when everyone else put down that they were "ethnic" in some way, Spanish, Native American, African American, that being Arabic may help me stand out more too. When I brought this up to my mom she kind of laughed it off and said that it may work against you more then for me. And even though she was laughing I could tell that she was being serious.


The first part of Reel Bad Arabs that really opened my eyes was when it talked about the Disney movie Aladdin. I loved this movie when I was younger, I didn't think twice about the Arab stereotypes that I now see are so negative and abundant. My first question was why did my Mother let me watch this movie? Because while I may have been to young at the time to realize what was being shown to me she wasn't. The opening song to this movie has very clear lyrics that say, "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face, its barbaric, but hey it's home". I asked her about this and she said that she didn't even think twice about it. Aladdin is a child's movie, that was made for enjoyment and laughter. This made me think about when Dr. Williams said that the Reel Bad Arabs video was shown to a group of students, some of which were Arabs and one of The Arab students said that many of those videos where shown in her country and that even there they didn't realize the effects of showing Arabs in a false negative light could do. They were see an an entertainment source, not a medium to breed a stereotypical hate against the Arab people.



When Jack Shaheen, the featured scholar in the video talked about the War in Iraq and perhaps how it made it easier to go into war because we had more than a century of seeing Arabs vilified in our media. On September 11th we saw 19 Arab terrorists cause the deaths of nearly 3000 people, our media and trained mind made us think that action reflected all Arabs and their beliefs. We don't do this to all terrorist groups. We never thought that members of the KKK reflect all white Christians. It is only with Arabs that in this day and age that after September 11th we saw high increase in hate crimes and even our own government condoned racial profiling. This in itself demonstrated the power of film that even with all the facts staring us in the face that not all Arabs are bad, that we still embrace the mythology and stereotypes given to us by the media. Many of us are more comfortable with those prejudices then admitting there is more to it, then all Arabs are Really Bad. We dehumanize them, so is it any wonder or surprise that when innocent Arabs are killed or tortured that we don't feel an compassion, or that we even light of it?



We don't even notice that any of this is going on. We are being persuaded into thinking a certain way and we don't even realize it. I have middle eastern, Arabic blood in me and I don't even realize it. The Arab student that watched this film that Dr. Williams from what he told to us didn't even really seem to realize it. And that is scary, that we are so easily persuaded into vilifying a people without even knowing it.

I Image Googled Arabs and these are some pictures that came up:

Awareness Through Music (Media Meditation #3)

Michael Franti and Spearhead are very socially and politically conscious musicians, as well as advocates for peace in the middle east. After September 11th Franti wrote the song "Bomb the World". This song featured lyrics such as "You can bomb the world to pieces, but you can't bomb it into peace". These lyrics have shown up on protest signs and t-shirts all over the world, at demonstrations, large and small, for peace. He has become known as an artist that sings what he believes in. Michael Franti & Spearhead released the Yell Fire! album, inspired by Franti's trip to Israel, Baghdad, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The song Yell Fire!, with the same name as the album title is a good example of one of his songs with a strong meaning behind it.


He has even wrote a song showing his support for President Obama.




You know that music awareness affects listeners when in March of 2003 MTV banned music videos with war-related titles, lyrics or images. According to an article "MTV drops war-themed pop videos" written by The Guardian "MTV, like many other broadcasters, feels content should reflect audience sensitivities at this time of war," an MTV spokeswoman said. "There will be heightened public sensitivity to representations of war, soldiers, bombing, destruction of buildings and public unrest at home," stated the memo from Mark Sunderland, the broadcast standards manager of MTV Networks Europe. Yea right, MTV was probably told that they should refrain from showing these videos by the man upstairs. Not because they were being sensitive to their viewers but they didn't want these videos to evoke change or upset the public to a level where they choose to act on it...maybe even decide to protest against the war.


Another musician with a strong voice in preaching awareness is Ani DiFranco, singer, guitarist, songwriter, feminist, and gay rights activist among other things. "On July 21, 2006, DiFranco received the 'Woman of Courage Award' at the National Organization for Women (NOW) Conference and Young Feminist Summit in Albany, New York. Past winners have included singer and actress Barbra Streisand and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. DiFranco is one of the first musicians to receive the award, given each year to a woman who has set herself apart by her contributions to the feminist movement." (Wikipedia). Her songs talk about social issues such as: racism, sexism, sexual abuse, homophobia, reproductive rights, poverty, and war.

Here are two songs that show her ability to share awareness through music.





Another Group to note would be Liyana, a musical group from Zimbabwe who spreads special needs awareness through music.



It is key to note that all of the musicians I talked about above have gained an enormous increase in the amount of listeners they have from social media sites such as youtube. The technological shift from analog to digital has definitely helped them spread their message of awareness, which goes along with the cultural shift of how we choose to find music. They are persuading us to take action or be aware through value messaging, and for these artist depending on which side you take are mostly positive. But as we have seen music can promote bad value messages such as the Lil John song "Can't Stop Pimping" which was talked about in Censored 2010 in reference to Human Trafficking and Domestic Prostitution Reconsidered (pg. 346). His lyrics state "They don't keep nothin dough, They bring it straight to daddy, You catch them stealin dawg, You beat that ass badly". This obviously is music being used to send negative value messaging. I guess just like everything in life, you have to take the good with the bad. It just sucks to see the bad being viewed more by the public then the good.

The Truman Show - Calling a Corporation Mommy and Daddy (Media Meditation 2)

The Truman Show is a movie that was made to be dissected by a class like like Contemporary Media Issues. The main point to this movie is the media and its destructive powers when controlled by one of the mega corporations. Truman Burbank was the first child to be legally adopted at birth by a corporation. They stuck him in a massive Hollywood set and filmed him growing up. They created what Censored 2010 calls a Hyperreality, the inability to distinguish between what is real and what is not (pg. 251). Truman had no idea that he was not living in reality and that everyone around him was acting. Truman thinks that he is an ordinary man with an ordinary life and has no idea about how he is exploited by a corporation.


This brings up the question of how far is going to go? The idea of a corporation legally adopting a human being to do what they want with, seems ridiculous to us now...but maybe in 20, 50, 100 years it could be common occurrence that isn't even noticed by the average human being. In Postmans, Amusing Ourselves To Death, he says "Television has achieved the status of 'meta-medium' - an instrument that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of ways of knowing as well" (pg 79).

For Truman the corporation who adopted him put him into this controlled universe and dictated to him what was reality. This makes me think about the mega media outlets and how the fewer the corporations that control our major forms of news the more they control 'our reality'. Just like mega corporations controlling our governemnent and dictating legislature.



Once Truman starts to question his reality, his "friends and family" try to reassure him that everything is okay, the idea behind persuasion through "Big Lie" couldn't have been more present than in this movie. He starts to see his reality unravel around him and this leads him to mistrust everyone around him. That causes the corporation to get upset that their money maker could possibly put an end to their show. They go so far as to almost kill Truman to keep their show going. This made me think of the chapter in Censored "Index on Censorship 2008-2009" (pg. 241-250). In this chapter is goes over all the extreme lengths governments or other outlets have gone to keep certain information from being reported and viewed by the public.

Tweet Tweet, Twitters #3 Chick, Ellen Degeneres (Media Meditation #1)

How did Ellen get to be the #3 Twitterer?

I am rather new to Twitter but one of the first people I choose to follow was Ellen Degeneres’s, TheEllenShow. I choose to follow her after my roommate mentioned how she followed her and really enjoyed her tweets. Since then I have seen her Tweets all over my wall, and it occurred to me how smart she was being. Ellen was tweeting about up coming shows, fun events, articles, or other various things that either she or her Twitter team thought was interesting enough to share. What I believe really skyrocketed her followers was when she decided to hold contests or leak special information specifically on Twitter for her followers. This gave them the opportunity to win prizes and connect more with Ellen and the show.

Here is a video of Ellen discussing the beginning of her Twitter experience. She started just like everyone else hearing about Twitter through a friend. Even if in this case that friend was P.Diddy.

Ellen Talks Twitter



So many people are on Twitter now, updating their Tweets every couple of minutes. I found this article called, Tweeting by Thinking, through Magic Hats Twitter, and after reading it I couldn't help but think of the book Feed. In Feed they all had "feeds" installed in their heads which is like basically a computer hooked up to your brain. In this article a man was able to send a Tweet simply by thinking. It really hows how new technology can affect us and make us think differently and create even newer technology off of it, which could be used in so many different ways.


While reading Media Society, I came across the term Technological Determinism on page 305, which according to the book means, "an approach that identifies technology, or technological advances, as the central casual element in processes of social change".

Twitter has spawned a new level of social networking online and it has effected social change. Ellen brought about change to her show and the amount of followers and their interaction with the show through Twitter. TheEllenShow on Twitter was getting so popular that Ellen had to create a whole team dedicated to running her Twitter account.

Ellen Degeneres Twitter Team




Here Are some of the examples of how Ellen Tweets, these came right from her Twitter account:

*TheEllenShow: Attention Los Angeles Followers: Who wants prizes! Less than a half hour! Grab your red dresses & O Mag & get to The Grove! Santa's Workshop

--Ellen earlier Tweeted and let everyone view video and photos of her photo shoot with Opera for O magazine. Later when the magazine was published she had this promotion through exclusively Twitter. Here is the video from the Photo shoot with Opera.



* TheEllenShow: My tweets are real! RT @furtherpeace Are you really Ellen, or someone posting for Ellen?

*TheEllenShow: Want more footage from my trip to Chicago? Here's me having some fun in the Rockies: See it @ThisISGMC

*TheEllenShow: Everyone that who participated in my twitter challenge today got tickets to 12 days! Thanks for playing. It pays to follow me!

US Repression of Haiti Continues

Response to Censored 2010 Article: US Repression of Haiti Continues

Essential Facts

1. The United States Government as of March 2009 has destroyed 155 buildings in the town of Cite Soleil in Haiti, with numbers rising, to expand the occupying UN force's military base. The contractor for this expansion is the US company DynCorp, a quasi-official arm of the Pentagon and the CIA. This expansion and demolition of mostly homes started without warning to the people living in them.

UN Military Base in Haiti


2. Lawyer Evel Fanfan, the president of the Association of University Graduates Motived for Haiti with Rights (AUMOHD) said "The authorities have not told them what is being done, if they will be relocated, how much they will be compensated or even if they will be compensated. Legally, the Haitian government has not authorized anybody to go anything." "There is no paper, no decree, no order which authorizes it."

3. June 23, 2008 RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights released a report revealing the Bush administration's blocking of "potentially lifesaving" aid to Haiti in order to meddle in the impoverished nation's political affairs.

UPDATES

4. The aid was intended to fund water and sanitation projects to improve "the quality of life - particularly for women and children - and to reduce incidence of disease and child mortality"


5. "Water is the leading cause of infant mortality and illness in children....Haiti now has the highest infant mortality rate in the western hemisphere....[and] more than half of all deaths in Haiti were due to water-borne gastrointestinal diseases."(Washington, DC-based International Action)



6. By blocking crucial aid, The Bush Administration could have potentially caused the deaths of thousands of Haitians, for cynical and self-interested political purposes. Yet, this story wasn't worthy of coverage by the US mainstream media.

7. The report written by the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights sparked Congress to investigate possible wronge doing, but the people of Haiti continue to feel the effects and suffer due to the actions taken by the U.S. There is slow but continuous work being done to improve the water quality in Haiti.

There are organizations out there trying to speed up the process of bringing clean water to Haiti such as Charity: Water



Lexis Nexis Search

When searching on Lexis Nexis I couldn't find one article that directly referenced my story. This was very surprising to me, because although I understand this is a censored story, I thought this book was popular enough to be referenced and talked about. There were a bunch talking about Haiti and the problems they were and are having but I found only one mentioning the United States withholding monetary aid and aiding with the unauthorized expansion of the UN military base.

Article found in Lexis Nexis Search Key terms used: Haiti, US withholding aid -
Rights Groups Assail U.S. for Withholding Aid to Haiti, Citing Political Motives

I feel as though this story is a true "censored story, I couldn't believe the lack of information on Lexis Nexis and the web in general. I spend so much time trying to search, using different keywords and phrases the lack of information was making me think maybe I just wasn't searching properly. Try searching yourself, can you find more information linking the United States and the repression of Haiti?


Outside Research

I did some outside research just to see if I could find any more information that was covered in the Censored Story "US Repression of Haiti Continues".

Websites Found:
This article (Haiti's UN military base expanding: What is Washington up to in Cite Soleil?) I stumbled upon, and then later realized it was one of the articles that was used as a source for the Censored story. There is a second article if you scroll down that is worth reading.

Social Networking Sites

I thought I would try and do some research social networking sites to see if anyone was discussing issues that were brought up in the censored article.

I found four Facebook pages came up when i searched Haiti / Water. All four groups have a total of an extremely low 308 members.

I Found one group on Facebook called The Haiti They Never Showed Us, which has 3,307 members. Under their description it says:
"THIS GROUP IS TO OPEN EVERYBODY'S EYES ON THE SWEET ISLAND OF HAITI. THIS IS AN INSIDE LOOK OF WHAT MY BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY LOOKS LIKE. I WOULD LIKE FOR EVERYONE TO ADD PHOTO'S, VIDEO'S, STORIES WHATEVER RELATES TO HAITI PUT IT ON. THIS GROUP IS FOR US!"

On Twitter I found organizations that are dedicated to making a positive change in Haiti such as:

Yéle Haiti is a grassroots movement inspiring change in Haiti through programs in education, sports, the arts and environment.

FutureHaiti, a Twitter page that updates its followers on news and plans for the future for Haiti.

haitinewsnet Latest news and headlines about Haiti and Haitians from.Haitian radio stations worldwide

and many other pages that are affiliated with Haiti but none that Tweet about US involvement with Haiti.

Just For Fun!
Haitian Kompa Breakdance Popping by Robot Scorpion