Educational Media Reviews Online

Dr. Jack Shaheen has spent thirty years looking at Arab representation in the media, particularly motion pictures. In many ways this DVD is promotional material for his recently published book for which he saw 1000 films depicting negative stereotypes of Arabs “robbing an entire people of their humanity.” The book’s website and ordering information are found at the end of the documentary.

The image of Arabs represented in North America initially derived from European art and travel writing: from the exoticism of flying on magic carpets in silent and early sound films, to the lurking terrorists in films of the last 20 years. Dr. Shaheen posits that these representations are brought about by fear. There no longer appears to be any fear of the otherness of African Americans or Latino individuals and therefore since they pose no particular threat to the American culture, they are very rarely represented in films as “uncle toms”, or as shiftless and lazy as most supporting ethnic characters had been for so many years. However, Arabs continue to be used as de facto bad guys whenever they are needed in films to the extent that audiences don’t even notice the stereotypic representations. Perhaps a more general context is provided in Dr. Shaheen’s book but this film does not situate the viewer within the history of filmic stereotypes. A passing mention of some of the shifts in filmic stereotyping would probably have supported Dr. Shaheen’s thesis even further by going back to WWI and a period thereafter where Germans were the bad guys and again during and following WWII until the Cold War when evil characters shifted and were represented by all sorts of communists and/or Russians. The current trend for Arabs as embodiments of evil comes without this group ever having a transitional period of relatively positive representation. Arabs developed from their most positive representation as exotics to their current worst as evil terrorists. Dr. Shaheen argues that there is a definite link between Washington and Hollywood.

Two production companies are singled out as particularly guilty of promoting Arab characters as evil, Disney and Cannon Pictures. Examples from Aladdin (1992) continue to recycle old degrading stereotypes to be laughed at and, in Father of the Bride (1991) a remake of a 1950 film, Arab characters not in the original are inserted specifically to be made fun of. As for Cannon Pictures, Dr. Shaheen focuses on its two Israeli producers, Menachan Golan and Yoran Globus who for 20 years released about 30 films vilifying all things Arab, particularly Palestinians. Dr. Shaheen maintains that Palestinians are never shown as innocent and that islamophobia has now become part of the American psyche. He makes an interesting and well-illustrated analogy between anti-semitic Nazi propaganda and contemporary hatred towards Arabs with the only difference being the way they dress.

A documentary such as this one could itself turn into a rather biased piece but it maintains an objective, if academic position. Stereotypes take a very long time to wither away and Dr. Shaheen concludes by showing that there now are films that reveal the complexities of its Arab characters rather than dehumanizing them. Dr. Shaheen does not mention television but it would appear that positive depictions of Arabs have more impact on a weekly basis in television comedy and drama. This is a well conceived and constructed documentary, probably following the structure of the book on which it is based, but its low budget did not allow for higher quality clips and most of the excerpts of films are of very poor quality. Additionally, the now-clichéd use of digital insertion of scratches and dirt to denote old or archival footage is rather grating and itself a negative stereotype of what archival films look like. However, this film raises a number of important issues around stereotypes that would prove valuable as discussion in media, film and cultural studies courses. Recommended.