Reel Bad Arabs

Throughout history there have always been groups of people that have been portrayed as different and sometimes as the “bad guy”. Society and Hollywood pick these groups because they are not “us” and are different then us, thus making them less in stature and easily put at the butt end of a joke. This portrayal of different societies can be engraved in the minds of the generations that see it over and over again in entertainment and this mind set can be difficult to get rid of. One of the most common and oldest groups of people that have fallen victim to this is the Arabs. They have been seen as malign and subhuman in entertainment from the oldest of movies to the most current blockbuster. And this is all based on a few studied images that have been played over and over. Nearly three hundred movies, almost 25%, have portrayed Arabs in a bad light.

While watching the documentary Reel Bad Arabs, a few of the movies or moments really stood out to me. The first was how a child’s Disney movie such as Aladdin could fall victim to this crime of portraying Arabs in a bad way. It’s provocative to realize that in the opening song to this movie they put the lyrics “… They will cut off your ear if they don’t like your face, it’s barbaric but hey its home”. This was thought to be from one of Disney’s finest children movies yet, they still neglect the Arabic people.  As a kid I never really realized it but looking back on it and really focusing on hidden tones in the movie it’s easy to see why this was brought up in the documentary. Another interesting part that stood out to me was that not only does Hollywood portray Arabs as barbaric and terroristic but also as incompetent. This was seen in the movie True Lies as the terrorist is easily fooled and loses sight of the key to his whole plan. This was also seen in Back to the Future as Doc brown easily fools Libyans into trading nuclear fuel with pin ball machine parts that they thought was going to be a bomb. The really controversial thing about all these situations was that what if they weren’t about Arabs but instead wrongly portraying blacks or Mexicans. In that case there would be no way that these movies or scenes would ever be allowed to be viewed. Then why did they pick Arabs? In the documentary he describes 3 main events as to why we have degraded Arabic people. The first is the Palestinian Israeli conflict in which the US sided with Israel. Next was because of the Arab oil embargo that angered Americans because of expensive and even absent gasoline. The last was the Iranian revolution where US citizens were taken hostage for the whole world to see. These events put the Arabic people in the living rooms of America and showed us the “real” face of the Middle East. The obvious larger sociopolitical consequences for representing the Arabs in such a negative way is that simply no one likes to be made the bad guy or made fun of. By the US basically saying as whole country through its entertainment that we see Arabs as malign or subhuman, we also say that we don’t see them as human beings or recognize them as a country to even negotiate with. It can be taken from this that politics and Hollywood images are linked and they reinforce each other, policies enforce mythical images and mythical images enforce policies. Actions speak louder than words and this countries action towards the Arabic race has been irresponsible and disrespectful.

We can also see this taking place in a more specific realm as Hollywood portrays female Arabs. In Father of the Bride 2, the Arabic man yells gibberish at his wife the second she opens her mouth to give her opinion. This shows the way how we see Arabic men treating their wives and puts it into our everyday lives. Entertainment sees Arabic men as disrespectful and abusive and this rubs off on us and gives us the same outlook.. Arabic women have also been portrayed as highly sexualized belly dancers and nothing more than just an object that someone can own but this mindset has recently changed to view the Arabic women as a bomber and terrorist murdering countless lives and showing no emotion. And Hollywood didn’t stop at just the Arabic people but also tried to portray where they live too. Arabland, as it has been known to be called, is the mythical place where all Arabs are from. It usually starts in a hostile desert where no one could possibly want to live and then features an oasis. It then moves to a palace with a dungeon at the bottom and with an insane, power thirsty sheik capturing and torturing people. This is obviously falsely portraying where Arabs live and this Arbaland can’t be used to describe where every Arab person lives.

As I watched this movie it startled me that I recognized so many movies, I lost count around 8. And yet I never thought that America would ever portray Arabic people in such a bad light so many numerous times. My reaction to these films when I first watched them was somewhere around delight because I love movies and any action film that had the good guy fighting off hoards of bad guys with swords was a good movie in my book. But now that I realize that there is a common theme in all these films as they victimize Arabs just based on the fact that they are different or have different customs somewhat angers me. I don’t know if I would allow my kid to watch a movie like Aladdin because of its undertone of portraying Arabs in a negative way because that just adds fuel to the fire as more generations carry on this believed false understanding of how Arabs are. The speaker from the documentary has an optimist outlook on the future for how Arabs are portrayed and believes that a younger generation will come along and realize the injustice that has been committed towards Arabic people. My reaction to these movies has defiantly changed after watching this documentary and I hope it continues to change the minds of all Americans.