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Summary: Hegemonic Race and Gender Representation Latinas in Film: A Historical Overview Jennifer Lopez: Latina Star in an Age of Multiculturalism
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This Lecture
Arab representation in Hollywood: Real Arabs vs. Reel Arabs Common cinematic Arab stereotypes Aladdin and The New World Order
Pre-Hollywood Stereotypes
Muslim and Arab stereotypes have existed since well before the advent of cinema.
18th and 19th century European artists and writers caricatured the Middle East as full of desolate deserts, corrupt palaces and heathen Arabs.
Real Arabs
Of course, real Arabs are much more complex and varied than reel Arabs:
300 million or so Arabs as well as Persians and Kurds live in 22 nations in the Middle East. Because of the history of occupation - including French, English and Greek - there exists a mixed ethnicity in the Arab world. Geographically, the Arab world is 1 1/2 times as large as the United States.
Most Arabs are Muslim, but there are about 15 million Arab Christians as well.
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Arab Contribution
The Arabs have made many contributions to civilization, including algebra and the concept of zero.
They have contributed widely to astronomy, geography, agriculture, architecture, law and secular, scientific and philosophical thought.
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More Contributions
Arab intellectuals made it feasible for Western scholars to develop and practice advanced educational systems . . . In astronomy Arabs used astrolabes for navigation, star maps, celestial globes, and the concept of the center of gravity. In geography, they pioneered the use of latitude and longitude. They invented the water clock; their architecture inspired the Gothic style in Europe. In agriculture, they introduced oranges, dates, sugar, and cotton, and pioneered water works and irrigation.
Jack G. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
A Shared Past
Arabs, like Jews, are Semites a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Near East and northern Africa, including the Arabs, Arameans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians.
The term describes not only shared language, but also the extended cultures and ethnicities, as well as the history of varied peoples, associated with the region.
Familiar Racism
It is perhaps not surprising then that Hollywoods image of hook-nosed, robed, money-grubbing, lecherous Arabs parallels past similar representations of Jews in German and U.S cinema and media.
Cannon Films
One example of institutionalized antiSemitism is the mid 1980s filmmaking of the production company Cannon, formed by the producers Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus, the Israeli director of the Film Industry Department.
The producers teamed up to make 26 hateand-terminate-the-Arab movies, including Hell Squad and The Delta Force (1986) both of which featured Palestinian villains.
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Post 9/11
Throughout much of the 2000s, public officials and journalists relentlessly criticized and vilified Arabs and Muslims. Though several Saudi citizens were responsible for the events of 9/11, the overwhelming vilification of Arabs by government and media drowned out any possible balanced representation of them.
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Examples
For example, President Bush linked 9/11 to Baghdad and, more specifically, stereotypes of Arabs to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This War in Iraq, The War on Terror and other U.S. government activities have been recycled, fictionalized and reflected in mainstream entertainment, in movies such as In the Valley of Elah (2007), The Kingdom (2007) and Sryiana (2005); and TV shows such as 24, South Park and Family Guy.
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Illuminating Types
Just as Donald Bogle outlined common Hollywood stereotypes for African Americans mammies, coons, bucks, etc and Charles Ramirez Berg outlined common Hollywood stereotypes for Latinos/as bandidos, harlots, Latin lovers, etc Shaheen has outlined five common Arab stereotypes that reoccur and overlap in Hollywood films: Villains, Sheikhs, Maidens, Egyptians, and Palestinians.
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Critical Disclaimer
Note about the stereotype categories as outlined by Shaheen:
Though his research is useful, Shaheens categories of Arab stereotypes are somewhat problematic. First, referring to Arabs as Villains is a bit generic, so we will call them International Villains. Second, he singles out several groups by nationality, which can contribute to the essentializing against them.
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(International) Villains
For more than 100 years, in hundreds of movies, Hollywood has singled out Arabs as an American enemy. They have been faced off against every imaginable foe Americans, Europeans, Israelis in comedies and dramas.
Some examples include A Night in Casablanca (1946), The Sad Sack (1957), Never Say Never Again (1983), Ishtar (1987), Frantic (1988), Executive Decision (1996) and The Mummy (1999). 27
Example
One particularly egregious recent example of Arabs as villains can be found in The Rules of Engagement (2000). The movie includes scenes of U.S. soldiers slaughtering Yemeni women and children, scenes cheered by some U.S. audiences. The movie reinforces damaging stereotypes, and promotes the dangerous but common idea that all Arabs are Anti-American.
Pause the lecture and watch the clip from The Rules of Engagement
Illogical Placement
Throughout Hollywood history, Arab villains have even showed up in stories in which they have no logical purpose. They frequently were used in early serials such as Son of Tarzan (1920), Queen of the Jungle (1935) and The Vigilante (1947).
This practice continued, with Arabs showing up as arbitrary villains in such movies as Back to the Future (1985).
Pause the lecture and watch the clip from Back to the Future.
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Sheikhs
Sheikh literally means wise, elderly person, the head of a family. Muslim leaders are often addressed as sheikhs. Sheikhs have been negatively stereotyped in hundreds of movies.
Sheikhs
In early to mid-century films, Sheikhs have been presented as tribal chiefs and indolent, perverted rulers who lounge on thrones. More recently they have been shown as rich, corrupt, oily, militant and ostentatious wearing Ray Bans and reclining in Rolls Royces and Mercedes.
In only a few films, such as Sryiana, Arab leaders have been shown more threedimensionally and realistically.
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Maidens
Arab women are eroticized, humiliated and demonized in a number of features. They often appear as bosomy belly dancers leering out from diaphanous veils, or as scantily-clad harem maidens with bare midriffs, closeted in the palaces womens quarters.
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Maidens (Continued)
Other stereotypes include:
Willingness to submit to their owners, as if they relish their sexual mistreatment and enslavement. Appearing as shapeless Bundles of Black or Beasts of Burden, a homogeneous sea of covered women. Being labeled as Black magic vamps or enchantresses possessed of devils. Dark-complexioned Arab femmes fatales who move to woo the American/British hero, but are often rebuffed and disappointed. 36
Egyptians
Egyptian caricatures appear in more than 100 films, from mummy tales to legends of pharaohs and queens to contemporary scenarios. They are often depicted as begging children or devious men after Western women. From the start, moviemakers linked Egypt with the un-dead from Georges Mlis The Monster (1903) to The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008).
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Palestinians
More than half of the Palestinian movies were released in the 1980s and 1990s; nineteen from 1983 -1989; nine from 1990 -1998. Absent from Hollywoods Israeli-Palestinian movies are human dramas revealing Palestinians as normal folk computer specialists, domestic engineers, farmers, teachers, and artists. Never do movies present Palestinians as innocent victims and Israelis as brutal oppressors.
Jack G. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
Palestinians (continued)
No movie shows Israeli soldiers and settlers uprooting olive orchards, gunning down Palestinian civilians in Palestinian cities. No movie shows Palestinian families struggling to survive under occupation, living in refugee camps, striving to have their own country and passports stating Palestine. Disturbingly, only two scenarios present Palestinian families.
Jack G. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
A Few Exceptions
Of course, as with the cinematic representations of all peoples, there are some positive exceptions a few films scattered throughout Hollywood history in which Arabs and Muslims are portrayed sympathetically and even heroically. Such films include Lion of the Desert (1981), Hannah K (1983), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), The Seventh Coin (1992) and Three Kings (1999), among others.
Pause the lecture and watch the clip from Three Kings.
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Aladdin
Aladdin was released in 1992 at the height of the 1990s Disney animation renaissance it followed Beauty and the Beast (1990). The movie draws on both Arab folktales including One Thousand and One Nights as well as traditional Western notions of Arabs and the Middle East.
Despite some complaints from Arab groups that the film was racist, it grossed 217 million dollars to become the biggest hit of the year.
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Disguise Narratives
According to Nadal, the disguise narrative of Aladdin in which characters constantly appear as other than they are is an allegory for ambiguous, confused American feelings towards the Middle East.
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Shifting Sands
[Contemporary foreign policy] illustrates how vague and protean the Muslim Middle East is to Americans, even to those Americans in the intelligence community; with great facility, the same roles could be played by a secular Arab state or, equally and interchangeably, by a fundamentalist non-Arab state. Foreboding, dark peoples on shifting sands, like characters out of Aladdin, play out the same story of evil in the guise of good in the guise of evil in the guise of good, ad infinitum.
Alan Nadel, A Whole New Disney World Order
End of Lecture 14