Reel Bad Arabs: An Analysis on Arabs Depiction in Hollywood Films

As an avid movie lover I enjoy every kind of movie. From Hollywood to Bollywood, from Independent to huge studio movies. Hollywood movies are quite influential, they influence what we believe about many things including people, culture, race, etc.. The depiction I will focus on is Arabs and their depiction in films. The short film "Reel Bad Arabs" makes some outstanding point on how Hollywood films scrutinize and depict the Arab people and their culture. In the movie the author of "Reel Bad Arabs" Dr Jack Shaheen claims that Arabs are the most maligned group in Hollywood history. They are depicted as incompetent, one dimensional, and/or used as comic relief for movies. They are depicted as evil and vile people, who carry big swords, and love their belly dancers. They are also shown as people who defile and mistreat their women often enslaving their women. This is true for movies like: Sahara(1983), Jewel Of the Nile (1985), Protocol (1984), Never Say Never Again (1983) so on and so forth. And even in movies that have nothing to do with Arabs or the Middle East Hollywood chooses to put in scenes or "inject" random thoughts about Arabs usually in a very demining way. Most often slurs are used in these situations, again comedic relief for me film that quite frankly had nothing to do with Arabs or their culture. For example in Back to the Future (1985), at the beginning of the film Arabs randomly shoot and kill the protagonist of the film Dr. Brown who is played by Christopher Lloyd. These two Arabs come out of nowhere in a white van and use a machine gun to kill one of the protagonist no reason is given for this scene just a simple way for Hollywood to "fill in" a scene by using Arabs. Even the women are depicted as terrorist in movies like Never Say Never Again, and Death Before Dishonor. So in other words women (as depicted in films) are belly dancers or terrorist. Hollywood should be more responsible and aware of how influential they are not only around the United States but also around the world. Ignorance creates more ignorance, and Hollywood's ignorance is just creating more ignorant people who watch these films. The sad thing is if the movie sells studios don't really care what they are showing in their films and how they are dimining many cultures and stereotypes which include the Arabs...