![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
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?
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?
no subject
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!