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Hollywood’s penchant for ugly
stereotypes
Amal Bouhabib reports on the
documentation of the film industry’s
prejudices
 At his home
in Hilton Head, South Carolina, Jack Shaheen can finally and
at long last, relax.
The renowned author and media
critic’s latest book, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a
People, published by Interlink Books, hit American bookstores
two weeks ago .
And it only took 20 years to get there.
An off-shoot of Shaheen’s first project, TV Arabs, a
ground-breaking book about television’s portrayal of Arabs
published in 1984, Reel Bad Arabs chronicles a century of
films that denigrate Arabs.
Beginning with motion pictures
made in 1896 up to the present, Shaheen’s book looks at over
1,000 films in which the Arab people are subjected time and
again to relentless stereotypes such as terrorists,
oil-hoarding sheikhs, and American-hating Muslim fanatics.
“Brute murderers, sleazy rapists, religious fanatics, and
abusers of women,” are only some of the other images Shaheen
encounters.
“No other group has been more vilified than
the Arabs,” said Shaheen.
“And the tragedy of it all is
that as the perception of others (African-Americans,
Asians, Native Americans, women) has changed dramatically
toward a fairness and balance over the past years, the image
of Arabs in film has only worsened.”
What Shaheen expected
to be another two to three year project rolled into two
decades. The films “just kept coming,” he said, with one worse
than the next.
“And I still haven’t finished,” he insists.
“I’ve already found 10 more following the publication of the
book.”
With the help of his wife Bernice, Shaheen scoured
computer databases for films depicting Arabs by typing in key
words like “desert, camel, Egypt, Arab.” Some of the films
were easy to find: Cable TV opened up a whole slew of new
releases; movie guides and reviews proved invaluable
resources.
Some were more difficult to come by: About 140
silent features were either destroyed or are now unavailable.
From the Library of Congress in Washington to the
University of California’s research center, Shaheen’s search
was relentless: “It was like being in a desert, and you’re
standing on a sand dune and you think you see an oasis. So you
walk towards it, but there’s no oasis.”
His conclusions
are discouraging and the statistics speak for themselves: Over
900 films project Arabs as villains, with only a “handful of
heroic Arabs” debuting in the 1980s and 90s. In “hundreds of
movies,” Arabs are slandered as “rag-heads, towel heads,
sons-of-she-camels, son-of-an-unnamed-goat, camel dicks,” to
name just a few.
Arabs trying to rape or abduct Western
heroines appear in more than 20 films; Arabs enslaving
Africans feature in about 10; at least 11 Israeli-made films
portray Americans and/or Israelis killing “evil Arabs.”
Anti-Christian Arabs star in more than 20, and noticeably,
no Christian Arabs ever grace the scene rather, and most
often, Arabs are equated with Islam indiscriminately, despite
the fact that only 12 percent of the world’s 1.1 billion
Muslims are Arab, Shaheen points out.
Shaheen credits a
Fulbright tenureship at the American University of Beirut in
1974 as the spark of his interest in the subject. Recalling
the Israeli devastation of the South and the constant overhead
airwar, he says his time here had an indelible impact.
“Being here, experiencing the reality of the region,
prompted me to look at this issue,” said Shaheen who, at the
time was working as a film reviewer for The Daily Star in
addition to teaching a communications class at the university.
That year, Shaheen, who has since delivered over 1,000
lectures world-wide, gave his first speech on Arab stereotypes
at the AUB Alumni Center on Bliss Street.
Now, in light of
the ongoing conflict in the region, the book gives an urgent
message about the power of Hollywood. “Film is not just a form
of propaganda, it is the most effective form,” Shaheen says.
“These movies reach countries all over the world, they shape
world views. A dirty Ay-rab in America is a dirty Ay-rab in
Russia and China. These are not just frivolous messages we’re
sending.”
In the past 30 years, films denigrating Arabs
have only worsened, a phenomenon Shaheen sees as being linked
to politics. Certainly the Israeli connection plays a large
role, and in many cases, the author believes, there is
“malicious intent. This can’t be taken in a vacuum.”
Shaheen’s research concurs. Of the 43 fiction films
examined by Shaheen that involved Palestinians, more than half
were filmed in Israel between 1983 and 1998, including the
blockbusters True Lies, The Siege, and Delta Force, which all
pit Palestinian terrorists against American heroes.
Cannon, an American Film company run by two Israeli
producers, has produced over 26 “hate-and-terminate-the-Arabs”
movie, including Hell Squad, The Delta Force (again) and
Killing Streets.
Not one of the films portrays
Palestinians as human beings. Also noticeably absent, Shaheen
notes, is any attempt to depict Palestinians under occupation,
as refugees or as victims of terrorism and colonialism.
Shaheen sees the perpetuation of such stereotypes as
having highly severe consequences: “When you vilify a people,
innocent people get hurt,” he repeats. Israel’s continued
expropriation of the Occupied Territories, for example, is
somehow perceived as acceptable because of the relentless
dehumanization of the Palestinians, he suggests.
What
makes these stereotypes so irresistible? Shaheen ventures to
say it is a mix of image-making and political agenda: “The
Arab stereotype is easy. It makes money,” he says.
“Film-makers grow up with the stereotypes and so revert to
them easily.”
Many of the film-makers Shaheen interviews
for the book say they don’t want to be targeted as “Arab
lovers.” Another producer put it bluntly: “You can hit an Arab
free; they’re free enemies, free villains where you
couldn’t do it to a Jew or you can’t do it to a black
anymore.”
The flippancy with which such confessions are
made are frightening, but the question raised is why nothing
is being done to stop it. Is Hollywood impenetrable, run by
Jews, as so many Arabs like to conclude?
Shaheen doesn’t
think so.
“That’s poppy-cock,” he spits. “Balderdash.
That’s an excuse not to do anything and it needs to be
dispelled.
“Hollywood is open, after all. Anyone can make
a film.”
In the US, there are groups like the
Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee working for the
cause, but it’s not enough. “It’s the basic law of physics,”
he quips. “Nothing boils unless you apply heat. This hasn’t
happened yet.”
Shaheen hopes the book will get the fire
going, and that it will make its way into university
libraries. From there, it is up to the community to act. “My
goal has been to make the injustice visible. Now we have the
evidence, don’t we? My job is done.” |
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