How Hollywood Vilifies A People
Arabs have always been portrayed in bad light by the western countries. They are the most maligned group in Hollywood history. They are always depicted negatively and are considered sub-human. This culture has been with the western countries for many years and has extended easily in non Arab countries. For decades the Arabs and Muslims have been portrayed as the enemy and an obstacle to peace and prosperity in the world, something that is not about to change soon. They rarely attract anybody’s sympathy. Images and words contained in holly wood films have encouraged the culture of fear, hate and despise against all Arabs including all things that are associated with them such as the Islamic religion. Dr. Shaheen the author of the documentary film: Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, brings this into light by analyzing pictures from more than 1000 films in Hollywood starting from the earliest to the most recent. When you analyze how these pictures depicted the Arabs of yesterday and Arabs of today you realize that nothing has real changed. This generalized conclusion against the Arabs and Islamic religion ignores the fact that every group has among its members alienated individuals who are committing heinous acts that go contrary to the norms of the society. This has been a biased and unfair judgment because majority of the Arabs are regular and peace loving individuals that are against acts that threaten peace of the world. In almost all films created in the western countries especially the united state of America, the Arabs are always depicted as bad guys and evil minded always with the intentions of harming innocent people. This negative portrayal is deranged because it does not present any positive Arab characters. These myths have been continuously fostered by television and have distorted the insight of what the Arabs are like.
Shaheem’s documentary film Reel bad Arabs: How Hollywood vilifies a people, looks clearly into this issue of Arab representation in the western countries especially the United States of America which has the most biased perception on the character of the Arabs. This film successfully demonstrates the depiction of the Arabs and Islamic religion in Hollywood cinema. This film shows how the Arabs are portrayed in bad light with attributes such as violent people, mystic, backwards, lascivious, hateful, narrow-minded and misogynistic. Hollywood cinema has greatly succeeded in creating fabled stereotypes about the Arabs, which shows that the Middle East is a land that is associated with inhuman cultural practice and inhabited by people who can never understand things from western point of view, therefore not human to attract anybody’s attention or sympathy. These negative perceptions of the Arabs have contributed to a popular myth that they are terrorists who may even be plotting the destruction of the whole world.
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