Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People

[my_daroga]

I've been intending to read Jack Shaheen's book for some time, and just haven't gotten around to it. So I was somewhat pleased that it had been made into a documentary, which gives the gist of the argument--that Hollywood films have created a bloodthirsty stereotype we're now exporting to the rest of the world--but doesn't really replace what I assume is a much more in-depth book.

The helpful thing about a movie about movies, of course, is that it can show clips. And Shaheen does: clip after clip of violence, yelling, and justification for an attitude that all Arabs are terrorists. It's a convincing argument, as far as it goes, and Shaheen is careful to include a few of the positive portrayals. There is certainly enough negative to make one angry, as time after time you see the utter disrespect with which entire nations are treated. The film traces the stereotypes from the Sheik/harem days through the greedy and bumbling oil-rich days through today's fundamentalist-with-machine-gun image. Seeing the films stacked together is revealing, as it quickly becomes apparent that the same scenes are playing out over and over, whether it's the blond girl being menaced or the wild-eyed shouting about Allah. There wasn't any question in my mind before I watched the film that Hollywood has indeed done very badly by the Middle East, but the visual evidence was nonetheless shocking.

Another interesting section was about the way Hollywood follows Washington policy, especially as regards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since the country's birth, Hollywood has made film after film highlighting the humanity of Israelis and demonizing Palestinians. For films involving the military, the Department of Defense is a necessary partner if you want access to realistic materials, and the list of films about American forces kicking nasty Arab ass on the DoD's dime is appalling.

There were some conspicuous absences, however. Shaheen cites Syriana as a film that did something right by portraying Arabs all over the place: as terrorists, as families, as Siddig el Fadil's progressive prince. But I wonder if some films and subjects were just too complicated for a film running 50 minutes. What does he have to say about Lawrence of Arabia, for instance, a quagmire of representation? What about the fact (never mentioned) that an astounding number of screen Arabs are played by Indians or Pakistanis, who aren't anything ethnically like?

My own theory is that we need to cast someone sufficiently "other" in those roles, and if our own ethnically Arab actors can "pass" as Monk or Salieri, we must import darker-skinned and unfamiliar races to demonize them. Certainly Naveen Andrews, Art Malik, and Ben Kingsley have all played wonderful roles as Indians (I know Malik is Pakistani, but that's another matter), but all have been pressed into service to terrorize Americans. (As a side note, I just read that Andrews' character on Lost is supposed to be Iraqi. Really? I mean... really? This boggles me. Can we really not tell the difference? Not to mention the fact that many Indian or Pakistani actors are actually also British but hardly ever get to use their real accents.) And let's take Lawrence again: any actual Arabs are in the background (or Omar Sharif, who we stole from Egypt because he's hot enough to play anywhere) while English and American (or American-Irish-Mexican in Quinn's case) actors put on false noses and brownface. Again, I assume, to make them unlike "us" enough (though frankly at the time there were many fewer casting options, so it's not a very good example).

I've gotten away from the point, which I think was a sort of review of this documentary, but not really. I actually don't have a problem with crossing ethnic lines a bit in casting, because it's all acting anyway and I like a lot of the performances that result. But as a pattern, it's more disturbing. And it's combined with another pattern of demonizing the inhabitants of a whole region of the world, which again isn't a problem on an individual basis (there are bad guys everywhere) but becomes one when its endemic.

So what are your observations? What have you "learned" about the Middle East from Hollywood, or have you seen a film that altered the pattern? Do you have a favorite non-Arab Arab performance? Has anyone read this book?

Comments

[tinyholidays.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I mean Edward Said, right? I also recall people noting that the Arab villainry really was upped as the Cold War stalled out... that a lot of villains used to be Russian, but that these have now been replaced by Arabs. It's definitely all about othering. If we're used to seeing these bad people on screen, then it must be okay to bomb them, y/y?

In a related topic, Sheridan Prasso's The Asian Mystique (http://www.amazon.com/Asian-Mystique-Dragon-Ladies-Fantasies/dp/1586483943/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208272209&sr=8-2) (which somehow I feel I've mentioned before??) deals with this othering issue, only all Asian-style. Although I think she mentions the Arab thing, also. Though how can you not, with Orientalism being the seminal work in the field?

[my_daroga]

I still haven't read Said's book, and I so so need to. I see it quoted everywhere. I think you're right about the Cold War--at least, I've heard that said, too. It makes sense.

Looks like I need to read The Asian Mystique, too. "AT A BAR CALLED SUPER PUSSY..."? I'm there.

[tinyholidays.livejournal.com]

Yeah, actually, I think that the Prasso book might actually be the sort of style of discourse you might be going for with your POTO book. Ugh. Got to go talk to prof about Milton essay now.

[dangerousdame.livejournal.com]

I've never read the book, though I'm told it's good. I did slightly object to the term 'humanizing' Israelis, since that implies a lack of humanity to start with.

[my_daroga]

I meant that from a Hollywood p.o.v., not my own, but you're right, it sounds bad. What I mean to say is that the films seem to set out to "prove" Israelis are like us but that Palestinians are not.

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen the movie, but your review got me thinking about Arab-American actors.

In The Siege, a 1998 movie where Middle Eastern terrorists are trying to take over Manhattan, Tony Shalhoub (Lebanese) played an Arab-American FBI agent who finds himself suddenly mistrusted and abused.

Jamie Farr played Corporal Klinger on MASH (the old TV show), but I don't think his ethnicity came into play there.

This page (http://www.aaiusa.org/arab-americans/23/famous-arab-americans) has a few paragraphs about Arab-American actors/actresses (scroll down.) What I see here is that actors of Arab descent *sometimes* play ethnic roles (like Shalhoub in The Siege), but often they seem to play "generic" roles (i.e. "white people.")

Could it be that if a director wants someone who will "look ethnic" (i.e. the audience can "see" his or her ethnicity), the director will pick someone "obviously" ethnic, i.e. darker - like Naveen Andrews?

[my_daroga]

Could it be that if a director wants someone who will "look ethnic" (i.e. the audience can "see" his or her ethnicity), the director will pick someone "obviously" ethnic, i.e. darker - like Naveen Andrews?

That's what I'm thinking; as you said, Abraham or Shalhoub can and do play ethnic roles, but frequently just get cast as "Americans." We (white Americans?) need "something else" to differentiate "them" from "us."

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

I always like posts that make me go off and look up something new. One thing I noticed while perusing Arab-American sites is that the US Census categorizes Arab-Americans as "white." I remember during homeschooling once we were talking about race and ethnicity, and how people get defined as "white" vs. "non-white" (for instance, the Irish were considered "non-white" back in the 19th c.) My guess is that (imagine that!) most Arabs would be largely indistinguishable from any general US or European population not composed of Nordic blonds.

I'm not complaining that LOST cast Naveen Andrews in LOST (he's a gorgeous man, LOL), but it's interesting on several accounts, and again, I wouldn't have thought of it had you not pointed it out. Naveen's character, Sayid, is a former military officer under Saddam Hussein, who worked as an "interrogator" (read: torturer.) His character is complex, and he is not in any way cast as a "bad guy." However, in the first season especially, he is seen as a scary "Other" by at least some of the castaways.

I saw that Andrews' parents come from Kerala, on the west coast of southern India. The little I know of Indian history tells me that there has always been a kind of divide between Northern and southern India. Some of it comes from the Islamic Moghul invasion/conquest, which held the northern 1/2 of the country for several hundred years. Some of it is that northern Indians are considered to be of Aryan, i.e. Turkish-Caucasoid ancestry, while southern Indians are darker and considered to be "non-Aryan." So Naveen Andrews might be an "other" playing an "other." Curioser and curioser...

[my_daroga]

Re: the state of the census

That's interesting, but not at all unexpected to me. Think of how people of Jewish ancestry (ethnicity, not religion) have "moved" around; and there's also (perhaps counter-intuitively from a social standpoint rather than racial) a lot of movement by Jewish and Arab actors between the two. Many of the people I knew growing up who were proud of their Lebanese or Syrian or whatever roots--some of them quite recent--were indistinguishable from the largely white makeup of my rural New England schools. Think also about the historical attitude of Northern Europeans in America vs. Southern/Mediterranean Europeans. Like the Irish or Italians back in the day, there's a backlash against whatever group of people is currently immigrating. They get to be "non white" until a new group comes along.

I know what you mean about not complaining about Andrews. He's good-looking, and I like him, and I want him to work. I especially want him to work as something other than a) a terrorist or b) a goofy-accented Indian peon of some kind. I'm sure he (and Malik and Fadil and anyone else in that position) is happy to be cast as a PERSON rather than a type, even if it's a person from someplace he's not. (I've also read actors expressing gratitude that "at least this terrorist I play has dimensions.") As I said to seraphcelene below, I've looked at old Hollywood films where actors attempted to move along the race spectrum to find a better job; if a black man (or someone of mixed race) could pass as a Native American, it meant he got to play a "savage" rather than a servant.

So maybe the part Andrews plays is fine because it's nuanced and layered, and maybe casting him is fine because he does a good job and we like him, but it's part of a larger view that's a little bit scary.

And then, getting into divisions we're not even aware of complicates things. People over here have a hard enough time telling Iraqi from Indian--debating the ancestry of Andrews in Indian terms is yet another wrinkle. I'd be curious about casting in Bollywood as relates to race and ancestry, actually.

[seraphcelene]

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.

[my_daroga]

The topic is huge, of course, and in my post I was trying to stick with that the film addressed. But you're right; this comes into play whenever race or ethnicity is depicted. I remember a class about 1920's film where we looked at the spectrum actors of color were forced to place themselves on: white actors could "stoop" to playing Native Americans or Asians (I'm talking about "serious" films not minstrelsy, which is related but a whole other topic) while black actors could attempt to "pass" as Native Americans to get jobs. The point is that everyone was allowed to try for the ethnicity that was "next to them" on some scale created for filmic representation. If that makes sense.

Then there's mixed race or films about passing, like in Pinky where god forbid we have an African American actress playing an African American who passes as white! Which on top of being racist (and uninspired) casting, adds something to the monologue Hollywood creates about What Race Is. What people look like. Are we training people not to tell the difference between an Iraqi and an Indian? (Reading this over, it makes me uncomfortable because it implies I want a chart or something so there's no confusion and everyone can go sit in their little box.)

I think that you can also include the older films like Lawrence of Arabia in your discussion of this topic...

The reason I think LoA was left out of this documentary is that I believe it's too complicated to be summed up as one in a barrage of clips. While the actors portraying the majority of the (speaking) Arabs are non-Arab, there are so many mitigating factors (the difficulty of actually getting English-speaking Arab actors at that time, for instance) that I don't think there's an easy answer about that film. On top of that, and I might be delusional, what I see in that film doesn't contain a lot of stereotypes other than Quinn's false nose; from what I've read the infighting of the Bedu and the difficulties of organizing isn't exactly an exaggeration. My parents lived in Arabia when I was a baby, too. And I find Sharif such a compelling figure that I see respect in the portrayal (which I do too in Guinness' Feisal, though that's fraught with his whiteness. I still think he did the best he could). But I don't always feel comfortable discussing this, as someone whose only potential stereotype is the ditzy blonde. I'm sure I'm not seeing things the way someone else might.

We're talking the spectrum from Valentino's Sheik to Alec Guinness in LofA to, say, Art Malik in True Lies.

But this is an excellent point; I see this particular spectrum as ranging from one Other (Latino) playing another (more acceptable? sexy?) type of stereotyped Other; to an attempt to play Arab straight but miscast (or, alternately, the only way to play an honorable Arab is by casting a white man); to casting someone decidedly different looking from both "the generic American" and "the Middle Easterner who might get mistaken for generic American" to be "properly othered." Which, of course, is also a trend darker.

As for the The Brave One question, I think we (I'm not sure who "we" is in this sentence) might be trained to remark upon "white woman with non-white man" more than anything else. My household just had a conversation about what trends one could see in a modern high school--what ethnicities could hook up without comment. There seems to be a complicated system, rather like the old Hollywood White--Native American/Asian--African American continuum, where movement is one stop in either direction. Again, "without comment." I'd say the Andrews/Foster relationship would be meant to stick out if he's Middle Eastern (because of the contemporary political issues), but not if he's Indian. That's just my sense. If he was black, the movie would be about him being black and her being white.

Sorry if the above is convoluted. I'm going to go read your essay now; thanks for joining the conversation!