Things I Found At Work: Notes on Hollywood “Arabs”

I was completing interlibrary loan requests and saw that someone had left her notes inside of a book she was reading. The book is about Hollywood representations of Arabs. I guess the tendency is to lump a whole buncha people into the category “Muslim/Arab/Terrorist”. This tendency manifests in film:

Side 1

“From cinema’s beginning, Hollywood’s fractured mirrors of popular imagination lumped together Muslims & Arabs as one homogenous blob…These distinctions are often blurred in American popular culture. For decades new reporters, editorial cartoonists, novelists, imagemakers, & other media professionals have vilified Arab Muslims.” xii

Here’s an example:

I’d like to point out Parker & Stone’s conflation of Arab culture with the culture of the peoples of Tatooine, a culture differentiated not only be geographic/galactic exigencies but also by history. The events of Lucas’ documentary,  “the Star Wars” , took place a long time ago.

It’s this kind of confusion that gets locksmith dude and dude’s daughter shot in Crash. The vandals that trash Store Owner’s (that’s how he’s credited) store don’t get that “we’re not Arab; we’re Persian”.

"Don't tase me bro!"

And of course, Store Owner doesn’t get that Guy That Looks Like A Mexican Gangbanger And May Have Been At One Point…well isn’t a gang member.  As Crash teaches us, dark people are easy to confuse. There are so many bad dark/brown people running around. How can we trust anybody anymore? (If you are dark or brown change the above to “white people are easy to confuse. There are so many bad white people running shit. How can we trust anybody anymore?” Not that that dynamic really appears in Crash, in an LA where racism/racist ideology appears at the personal level/intention/ambition.

Side 2

pg 39-pg 40

“As did Spielberg’s. Ridley Scott’s early Films painted Arabs with a sinister brush: ”

pg 99-100

Black Hawk Down

You know what? I am not even going to go into the clusterfuck of fail that was Somalia. And I’m not going to go into Black Hawk Down because I’m pretty sure that the last time I  saw that movie I was still stealing mom’s Victoria’s Secret catalogs. But that’s another story.

Thinkin' 'bout Somalia

(Source text: Shaheen, Jack G. Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2008)