Reel Bad Arabs (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Reel Bad Arabs |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2006 |
| length | about 50 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Sut Jhally |
| script | Jack Shaheen |
| production | Jeremy Earp Andrew Killoy |
| music | Simon Shaheen |
| cut |
Sut Jhally Andrew Killoy Mary Patierno |
| occupation | |
| |
Reel Bad Arabs is a documentary from 2006 by Sut Jhally based on the book Reel Bad Arabs by Jack Shaheen . The author Jack Shaheen also accompanies the viewer through the film as a speaker.
The 50-minute documentary deals with the representation of Arabs in Hollywood films and the amalgamation of Hollywood with the foreign policy of the American government. According to the author, this presentation is distorted and it uses racist , Islamophobic , xenophobic clichés. The documentation is based on the analysis of over 900 films . Jhally repeatedly shows excerpts from film scenes to substantiate Shaheen's theses.
content
The mythical Arab country
Shaheen shows that the distorted representation of the Arabs is a topic that has been a feature of Hollywood films for decades. To do this, he made a leap from portraying Arabs in films of the twenties to the cartoon " Aladdin ", a film that is particularly aimed at young viewers. The (Arab) singer sings a song in the intro of the film about ancient Arabia with the line ("where your ears are cut off, that sounds barbarous, but hey, it's my home") this line was later after protests by the American -Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee toned down . The cartoon continues to show good protagonists with more western facial features and bad Arabs with hooked noses and darker appearance. Apart from that, there is total anarchy. In the 1940s cartoon by Looney Tunes Ali Baba, the mad dog from the desert , a similar picture was drawn decades earlier. Shaheen continues further scenes: In Raiders of the Lost Ark , the Egyptians only serve as a target for the hero Indiana Jones . And in Happy Hooker goes to Washington (1977) an Arab tells us that he would have sex with dogs and goats. In True Lies , the Arabs are shown as a mixture of idiots and devilishly cunning men who threaten the United States. In On the Highway, Hell is Going , the Arab is portrayed as a hook-nosed darkling who is obsessed with sex and has a particular preference for blondes, as he is fed up with women with mustaches. He wanted the blondes for his harem. The cliché of the Arab who is crazy about Western women is still served in the Sahara , Protocol - Everything dances to my tune , Never say never , On the hunt for the jewel of the Nile . In the feature film “Chapter Two” the question “How was London?” Is answered with “Full of Arabs”. Jack Shaheen asks the viewer to imagine that the answer was “full of Jews” or “full of Latinos”.
In his opinion, one of the worst depictions is the portrayal of an Arab in Father of the Bride 2 . A hook-nosed Arab negotiates with Steve Martin in bad English about his house, when the Arab wife tries to say something, he yells at her in front of everyone and then keeps her mouth shut. The Arab bought the house and when Steve Martin wants the house back, he greedily takes advantage of his emergency situation. Shaheen sees the anti-Semitic clichés of the malevolent greedy and cunning Jew , who cheats the honest white Christian, transferred to the Arab. In the film Gladiator , too , the main character is sold by an Arab slave trader.
With these two scenes, Shaheen wants to make it clear that even in films in which Arabs do not actually play a role ( Gladiator describes the fate of a Roman who has to fight for a Roman gladiator owner in Rome, Father of the Bride 2 describes a white Christian American who takes care of the problems of his Christian family), Arabs are artificially built into the plot as villains. Another example of this “absurd” insertion of Arabs is Back to the Future : In the middle of the USA, “Libyans” wrapped in Palestinian cloths speed through the night in a VW van and carry out assassinations with a mixture of brutality and idiocy as if they were them in Beirut during the civil war.
The Arab Threat: Middle East Policy and Hollywood
The next chapter of the film begins with Jack Valenti's quote "Washington and Hollywood are genetically related". Important aspects of the film industry are the Middle East conflict , in which the US is loyally on the side of Israel, the 1973 Arab oil embargo, which annoyed the Americans because of the petrol, and the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. These events would have deepened American consciousness burned. An important cliché that recurs over and over again is the sleazy sheik: As in The Rollover Plot , where the filmmaker adheres to the conspiracy theory that the Arabs dominate the world economy in such a way that they could trigger a world economic crisis. The figure of the greasy sheikh also appears in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Ernest in the Army .
According to Shaheen, the film Network (1976) is extremely harassed against Arabs. Here the conspiracy theory is advocated that the "Arabs" would buy up the USA and only the American people could rise up against it. Shaheen then shows parallels to the anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda: In Jud Süß “the Jew” is portrayed as greedy, the striker provided comparable images : The Jew as an ugly, greedy sinister who threatens German children and propaganda posters from the Second World War , where a Jew steals money. Shaheen contrasts a picture from the film Aladdin, which could almost have been copied from the striker: The Arab as a dark, hook-nosed darkling who greedily grabs treasures. He also compares this representation with the Jud Süss poster and the Arab in Gladiator .
Terror inc .: demonization of Arabs and Muslims
Since the founding of Israel , the US has always made it clear whose side it was on, Shaheen said. The interests of the Palestinians in the Middle East have always been irrelevant to the Americans. Shaheen claims that there is not a single positive portrayal of a Palestinian in Hollywood films. Members of this people are exclusively beasts in human form. This is underlined by excerpts from Death before Dishonor , where Palestinian women are monsters who torture innocent Americans. Shaheen made the beginning of this portrayal in 1960 with the film Exodus , where the Palestinians are associated with the Nazis. The film The Giant's Shadow is also criticized . Kirk Douglas' words are, according to Shaheen, the "uncritical adoption of Israel's propaganda". Palestinians, however, are portrayed solely as beasts who would kill at any time for no reason. In an "absurd" scene they also shoot a defenseless Israeli who is holding a white dove. You can also see mutilated female corpses. You never hear the Palestinians speak, in one scene they scream, but only to terrorize Israelis. Ten years later in the film Black Sunday (1977), Palestinians reappear, this time to murder 80,000 Americans, in Helden USA (OT: Death before Dishonor ), again a decade later, Palestinians are shown again as monsters.
Shaheen accuses Israeli producers Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan in particular of having made a particularly large number of propaganda films: they would have made at least 30 anti-Arab films within 20 years . Including The Human Shield , Firewalker , Bolero , The Hitman . A particularly “absurd example” of these films is the film “Hell Squad” where big-breasted Las Vegas showgirls in miniskirts armed against Arabs. According to Shaheen, one of the "worst films" is " Delta Force " and the strongest anti-Palestinian film is True Lies. What is never shown are suffering Palestinians or Palestinian refugees. It seems to be an unwritten law in Hollywood never to be allowed to show a suffering Palestinian. There would also be no film in which Palestinians are at least portrayed as normal people.
The only good Arab ...
Shaheen also shows that films he considers anti-Arab, such as The Steel Eagle or Navy Seals - The toughest elite troop in the world were made in cooperation with the American Department of Defense. The film Shaheen considers the most anti-Arab of all is Rules - Seconds of Decision , a film co-written by former US Navy officer Jim Webb . This is where the mass murder of Arabs, regardless of age or gender, is justified. The film begins with a demonstration by Yemenis in front of the US embassy. Suddenly the US Marines are caught under fire and fire back. First of all, the viewer feels sorry for the Arabs, and a little girl of about seven has also lost a leg. But then Tommy Lee Jones begins his investigation and finds out that all Arabs are lying. It later turns out that even the little girl shot at the Americans. So the pity is erased and the viewer says to himself: "Not even the children deserve pity". The officer sees the massacred Yemenis and laconically announces “mission completed”. Shaheen asks himself what such films should be used for and states for himself: "In any case, this representation does not serve peace".
Islamophobia
Shaheen already regards Islamophobia as part of everyday American culture. Demonization also has the effect of making it easier for politics to kill Arabs in real life, as happened in the Iraq war . The attack of September 11, 2001 can be more easily classified into the worldview. It can be said that the terrorists' actions reflect the wishes of 1.3 billion. However, no one would argue that the actions of the Ku Klux Klan would the Christianity reflect. Timothy McVeigh was an Irish Christian; it would never occur to anyone to see his religion as the background to the attack. Shaheen recalls how politicians and journalists suspected Muslims behind the attack after the Oklahoma attack without any evidence.
He sees this as an effect of decades of media influence. Shaahen makes TV series such as Sleeper Cell , which, in addition to the Arabs living in Arab countries, would now also make Americans of Arab origin under general suspicion. The new series expanded the circle of suspects to include "western" looking Arabs.
Shaheen also shows examples of Christian television stations working with hate propaganda. In one broadcast, the number of Muslims is inflated from 1.3 to 2 billion to create a sense of threat. According to this video, every terrorist network in the world is run by Muslims. A number of non-Muslim terror groups are suppressed. You see Mike Gallagher incite against Muslims by take the view, everyone is a terrorist. This propaganda leads to the fact that the death of Arabs or their humiliation would no longer trigger feelings in the audience, or would greatly reduce compassion. To make this clear, Shaheen fades in a speech by the popular radio host Rush Limbaugh , who said that the torture of Abu Ghraib was not worse than " university initiation rituals". Shaheen sees a connection between influencing the media and the increasing number of so-called " hate crimes ", ie crimes that are committed out of hatred of a certain group, against Muslims or Muslim-looking people in the USA.
Getting real
Shaheen complains that there are few positive or at least normal depictions of Arabs. You hardly ever see normal teenagers, women, and family men treating their families with love. There are hardly any Arab Christians. Shaheen shows a few Arab stand-up comedians making fun of their fate as terror suspects. The comedian Ahmed Ahmed describes how he applied for a role as an Arab: He caricatured the anti-Arab clichés in his performance and earned enthusiasm and acceptance. He was told that he should behave a little more “Arab”, which was a synonym for “distorted hate” and “fanatical”.
The feature film A perfect murder shows a normal Arab of Arab origin as an exception, Three Kings shows bad and good Arabs at the same time and is at least balanced. The Kingdom of Heaven is an exception . Also Syriana , the terrorists show on the one hand and positive Arabs on the other hand, was a bright spot in the representation of Arabs. Hideous Kinky is also positive . Shaheen nevertheless draws a positive conclusion in the end. The racist prejudices against Jews and blacks have also been reduced. He does not demand better treatment, but equal treatment of Arabs in films.
additional
Similar documentaries are Reel Injun and Imagining Indians , which deal with vilifying Indians .
Individual evidence
Web links
- Reel Bad Arabs in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Transcript of the film on the Media Education Foundation website