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: