The Arab World in Hollywood: Stereotypes and Prospects

Professor Jack Shaheen

Hollywood's portrayal of Arab culture and Washington's foreign policy toward the Arab world "spring from the same DNA," said Professor Jack Shaheen in a recent lecture presented by the Prince al Waleed bin Talal Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR). Entitled "Hollywood's Reel Bad Arabs: Problems and Prospects," the talk was held on April 22 at Bathish Auditorium in West Hall and attracted a large crowd of faculty and students.

Shaheen, who is an internationally acclaimed author and media critic, as well as an Oxford Research Scholar and former CBS news consultant on Middle East affairs, argued that the damaging racial and ethnic stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims disseminated through the media, especially by Hollywood movies, fosters a culture of fear, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and otherness, often injuring innocent people.

Arab men are almost always portrayed in Hollywood movies as corrupt, obnoxious, and philandering billionaires, and yet, as Shaheen pointed out, most Arabs have "never slept in a tent, ridden a camel, owned a harem, or enjoyed extensive wealth." Consequently, he noted that "Arabs are the most vilified people in the history of American cinema," describing the filmic construction of stereotypes that systematically dehumanizes and misrepresents Arabs as "a poisonous virus that infiltrates the hearts and minds of audiences worldwide."

"The antidote to this virus is still in abeyance," Shaheen added, because these images are considered by educators and diplomats, and sometimes even by Arab Americans themselves, as "harmless entertainment, rather than a driving force that pervasively influences public opinion and thus contributes to shaping public and foreign policy."

Shaheen explained that the triggers for these images were not the 9/11 terrorist attacks per se, because degrading images of the Arab world as "a fearsome and despicable alien" had been incorporated by the movie industry decades before the attacks. Repetition of these images makes their discriminatory aspect invisible with time as they slowly become "an index of saneness" in contrast to the lechery, incompetence, and violence with which the image disseminated of the Arab Muslim is portrayed.

Midway through the lecture, Shaheen projected footage of several American and Jewish-produced movies from the 1980s and 90s, as part of a documentary entitled "Terror Inc: Demonizing Palestinians and Muslims." He argued that Washington's pro-Israel affinities induce the inability of viewers to sympathize with the plight of Palestinians depicted in these movies as "vicious gunmen and wide-eyed maniacs" who jeopardize American and Israeli safety and interests.

Shaheen blamed the Arab-Israeli conflict and the silence of the world's "movers and shakers" for the uncontested stereotypes of Arabs and Palestinians. He suggested that the prospective activism of Arab Americans and the increased presence of American Muslim filmmakers and entertainment groups, such as Axis of Evil, in American culture are likely to help demolish these stereotypes in the long run. Acknowledging his intellectual debt to Lebanon, which he visited thirty-three years ago as a Fulbright scholar, Shaheen concluded that "the glorious cedars of Lebanon represent our humanity, that each branch represents our contribution to society, and that the trunk and roots of the tree represent the Lebanese scholars who implanted and instilled in us a sense of integrity."