The shift of villains from Russian to Arab is something that you can track as the Cold War was diffused and the U.S.S.R. broke up. I always think back to films and TV shows where the bad guys are Russian and the good guys are Anglo-Americans helping to save the world and Russian Gymnasts/ballet dancers from the corrupt KGB agents. Inevitably, in many of the TV shows, at least, there was a defector. Usually someone creative and a "national" treasure of some kind.
What you describe of the documentary and the book remind me of discourse on representations of Asians and Blacks in Hollywood. It's a problem of otherness and the need to vilify the Other because of difference, fears of cultural, religious and physical infection. The insistence on there being an Us versus Them pervades pretty much all contexts of human relationships and dependent upon the political tide, the bad guys reflect the real world tensions. My interest tends to fall into an exploration of black as Other because I am that Other. What you describe in your review reminds me quite a bit of documentaries and articles on Hollywood blackness. Although the vilification of black men, and I focus on men because there seems to be a reference to violence enacted between men -- war, doesn't quite encompass the global despite the few despotic African leaders littering the Hollywood battlefield.
I think that you can also include the older films like Lawrence of Arabia in your discussion of this topic because they are just as telling as the newer films even though the actors portraying the "villainous Arab" isn't anywhere close to the race. It speaks to a very real world fear and the history of oppression -- the fearful representing the thing that they fear and how that doesn't allow for an alternative discourse. We're usually still talking caricatures. I'd also question if the depictions of racial identity change with the actor playing the part. Are Arabs presented in a better "light" when portrayed by white actors in stain? Does it decline as they are played by either ethnic actors or "darker" skinned actors? We're talking the spectrum from Valentino's Sheik to Alec Guinness in LofA to, say, Art Malik in True Lies.
It also raises the question of how do we read characters like Naveen Andrew's David in The Brave One. A first generation Middle Eastern man marrying a blonde, blue-eyed white woman in culturally diverse New York. Do we make a comment at all? Is it meant to be something or is it something we are supposed to take for granted? I am less likely to notice and comment on lower-middle class italian/puerto rican relationships in the Bronx then I am an upper class Middle Eastern (and I really don't remember what his heritage was supposed to be - and that speaks to your comment on the interchangeability of Othered races in American eyes because I can tell the difference between Indian and Middle Eastern but nothing after that, and I am only slightly better at differentiating between Asians) and a white female.
I'm really curious to read this book and I'll put it on the list. YAY for new reading material!! Said is a fascinating read, btw.
Also, kinda FYI - I wrote meta/commentary on a fic that references racial otherness in the Buffyverse that you can find here if you're interested.
no subject
What you describe of the documentary and the book remind me of discourse on representations of Asians and Blacks in Hollywood. It's a problem of otherness and the need to vilify the Other because of difference, fears of cultural, religious and physical infection. The insistence on there being an Us versus Them pervades pretty much all contexts of human relationships and dependent upon the political tide, the bad guys reflect the real world tensions. My interest tends to fall into an exploration of black as Other because I am that Other. What you describe in your review reminds me quite a bit of documentaries and articles on Hollywood blackness. Although the vilification of black men, and I focus on men because there seems to be a reference to violence enacted between men -- war, doesn't quite encompass the global despite the few despotic African leaders littering the Hollywood battlefield.
I think that you can also include the older films like Lawrence of Arabia in your discussion of this topic because they are just as telling as the newer films even though the actors portraying the "villainous Arab" isn't anywhere close to the race. It speaks to a very real world fear and the history of oppression -- the fearful representing the thing that they fear and how that doesn't allow for an alternative discourse. We're usually still talking caricatures. I'd also question if the depictions of racial identity change with the actor playing the part. Are Arabs presented in a better "light" when portrayed by white actors in stain? Does it decline as they are played by either ethnic actors or "darker" skinned actors? We're talking the spectrum from Valentino's Sheik to Alec Guinness in LofA to, say, Art Malik in True Lies.
It also raises the question of how do we read characters like Naveen Andrew's David in The Brave One. A first generation Middle Eastern man marrying a blonde, blue-eyed white woman in culturally diverse New York. Do we make a comment at all? Is it meant to be something or is it something we are supposed to take for granted? I am less likely to notice and comment on lower-middle class italian/puerto rican relationships in the Bronx then I am an upper class Middle Eastern (and I really don't remember what his heritage was supposed to be - and that speaks to your comment on the interchangeability of Othered races in American eyes because I can tell the difference between Indian and Middle Eastern but nothing after that, and I am only slightly better at differentiating between Asians) and a white female.
I'm really curious to read this book and I'll put it on the list. YAY for new reading material!! Said is a fascinating read, btw.
Also, kinda FYI - I wrote meta/commentary on a fic that references racial otherness in the Buffyverse that you can find here if you're interested.