The Reel Arab and the Real Arab

The Nashef reading highlights how Hollywood and the media has constructed images of Arabs in such a way that we related to the image we see on screen, to the person in real life. This obviously increased post 9/11 and has created a phobia and fed stereotypes of Arabs. I myself found that when in airports, I was somewhat cautious and suspicious of particular people due to this fear that has been fed by Hollywood and the media. It is one thing for Hollywood to misrepresent a culture, but when news reports highlight every bombing and incident where Arabs are said to be involved, it helps create and reinforce this negative stereotype. Through this construction and representation you can see Shohat and Stam’s mark of the plural coming through. The assumption that everyone in specific group (Arabs) are the same. Relating the face of an Arab to the face of a terrorist represents the power of both Hollywood cinema and the media to construct a negative image of an entire people. This power is reflected in both mine and many other people’s actions and reactions to Arabs as we have be fed this idea that they are all evil and dangerous. It also helps to reinforce the idea that we are safe in a western context, away from war zones and mass murder. Unfortunately, Hollywood cinema and the media (particularly the US) have the power to craft an image that the majority believe. It is only the critical and well educated that can objectively look from the outside in and realize the problem. I myself have only just started to be a lot more critical of this misrepresentation of Arabs crafted through the cinema and media but unfortunately there are many out there that still believe this misrepresentation.

Expanding on Nashef’s reading of the construction of Arabs as the abject and the terrorist I want to highlight how in some cases, Hollywood casts a white actor as the terrorist. Such as Die Hard and Air Force One. As an audience we still seem to believe this representation to be accurate (based on what the media etc. has led us to believe) but fail to see the problems with casting whites to represent a race not their own and in doing so feeding the negative stereotype. Although the villains in Die Hard and Air Force One do not represent Arabs directly, they represent the association of terrorism that is associated with them both on and off screen. What these two films highlight however is the representation of evil based global politics at the time. In short, anyone seen as an enemy of American or has been in the past will be reinforced on screen. Die Hard, Air Force One, Rocky 4 all represented Russians and eastern Europeans as the villains. These films were released during the cold war (American vs Russia). When the war on terror began in the early 2000s, we saw an influx of films depicting Middle Eastern cultures as villains. This continues currently with films such as London has Fallen where the Middle east is again depicted as the land of the enemy. This demonstrates the power of both America and its Hollywood cinema to reinforce ideologies of the enemy in audiences (particular western) around the world. When we hear in the news about ISIS and then see films such as London has Fallen, this directly aligns with what Nashef was talking about. How the onscreen image (the Arab) is also what we see off screen (in the news). This translates to the fear of the Arab, a terrorist, a danger.

We don’t seem to challenge this misrepresentation enough and I feel that as a white European, it could be because it does not directly affect us. When white people kill large numbers of people such as in American school shootings, it is usually tied to mental illness or some type of unstableness. Whites seem to be granted a story that prompts sympathy whilst Arabs and non-whites are not. However when this is done by someone of colour (in particular of Middle Eastern decent) it is almost always tied to terrorism and Islam. As we saw with the killings in Norway, the media reported this as Islamic terror. In reality this so called “terrorist” was a white Norwegian male with no ties to the Middle East or Islamic radicalism. The media reports only slightly acknowledged this but still stated the danger of Islamic terrorists. This video helps to showcase this.

https://youtu.be/mz-tXhTUQw8