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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
To be seen in an objective light, June 17, 2008
This review is from: Guilty: Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs After 9/11 (Paperback)
THE INFLUENCE and power of movies in American society, as well as the rest of the world, cannot easily be avoided. One aspect of our lives that films affect more than most is how we perceive and interact with the world outside of the U.S. and those who inhabit it. According to Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan, "Movies are really hard-wired into our psyches, shaping how we view the world. It's when politics infiltrate entertainment that it is most subversive--and most effective...Artful entertainment easily beats full-on propaganda."
With this in mind, Professor Jack G. Shaheen--described by veteran journalist Helen Thomas as "a one-man anti-defamation league" because he's devoted much of his adult life to persuading Hollywood to be fair in its portrayal of Arabs and Muslims--has penned his latest book, Guilty: Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs After 9/11.
According to Shaheen, author of the bestseller Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, "Arabs remain the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood. Malevolent stereotypes equating Islam and Arabs with violence have endured for more than a century...Arab=Muslim=Godless Enemy." In fact, Shaheen argues, the entertainment industry's vilifying of Arabs and Muslims helped prepare the American public, as well as our fighting men and women, to go to war in the Middle East.
Shaheen makes it clear that the U.S. government has had a hand in ensuring that Hollywood sends the public a negative image of this part of the world and the majority of the people who live there. "Filmmaking is political," he explains. "Dehumanizing stereotypes emerging from the cinema, TV, and other media help support government policies, enabling producers to more easily advance and solidify stereotypes."
In Guilty, Shaheen covers a new aspect of Hollywood's misrepresentation of Arab and Muslim Americans living among us. Before 9/11--as far as Hollywood was concerned, at any rate--they were invisible. Now, however, they are portrayed in movies and television programs as members of sleeper cells, waiting to receive the call to become active terrorists and do harm to their neighbors. Since 9/11, Shaheen has found, more and more prime time TV dramas include the theme of out-of-control Arab and Muslim terrorists.
Shaheen's book is a valuable resource on a subject he knows better than anyone. Quoting well-known sources to reinforce his already strong argument, he then attempts to suggest tangible solutions to this pressing problem--leaving this Arab-American reader with a sense of hope. Finally, as he did in Reel Bad Arabs, he has compiled a list of the films that have been produced since 9/11 for the reader to use as a guide. The list--which now exceeds 1,150 films--includes not only offensive movies, but also those in which their makers attempted to present a more balanced representation.
This reader made good use of this section of the book. I was thinking of renting the film "Young Black Stallion" for my 7-year-old son after noticing that the back cover of the DVD box had pictures of Arabs with their horses. After reading Shaheen's assessment of how negative the film is toward Arabs, however, I know not to go anywhere near the movie. On the other hand, Shaheen's review led me to rent Roberto Benigni's "The Tiger and the Snow," which is set in Italy and Iraq during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Besides being a warm, moving and funny movie, it presents the Iraqi people as just that--people.
This, after all, is what Professor Shaheen and the majority of the world's Arabs and Muslims desire: simply to be seen in an objective light, no better, no worse than anyone else. It really isn't that much to ask--is it?
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Entertainment" as propaganda..., September 13, 2008
This review is from: Guilty: Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs After 9/11 (Paperback)
The aptly named `Guilty' updates Professor Shaheen's acclaimed book `Reel Bad Arabs' which was written just before Sept. 11, 2001. In each book he underscores, and documents the close connection between the political world and the entertainment one (yet, rather amazingly, he never uses the world "propaganda."). He quotes Jack Valenti in the prologue: "Washington and Hollywood spring from the same DNA." Few anecdotes better underscore this nexus than the one told in the same section about a special screening of the movie `Black Hawk Down' , before its general release, for 800 top Washington officials and military brass, including Donald Rumsfeld and Oliver North, in which they were permitted to suggest changes.
Shaheen places his subject, Hollywood, and its movies, within the greater context of the post 9/11 world in the first chapter, quoting the anti-Islamic and anti-Arab bigotry and prejudice of such public figures as Ann Coulter, Donald Rumsfeld and Tom Tancredo. The inflammatory remarks clearly led to an increase in hate-crimes, which frequently spill over against other darker skinned, and "different-looking" people like the Sikhs. Shaheen also reminds us of similar negative depictions of other ethnic groups: American Indians, Blacks, Orientals, Latinos and Jews. For the Arabs, the four negative stereotypes that are constantly promoted, as Shaheen says, are that they are all fabulously wealth; barbaric and uncultured; sex maniacs; and revel in acts of terrorism.
In his chapter on the negative movies about Arabs since 9-11, he identifies a separate category, which he calls "cameos." These are gratuitous slurs against Arabs and Islam in movies that have nothing to do with this subject, or even "terrorism." I was first struck by this concept when I read Theodore H. White's "In Search of History - A Personal Adventure" in which he made the passing remark about the "so-called" government of Kuwait. Nothing before, or after, on that subject, and certainly no comparisons with the deficiencies of other governments. All is not negative however, and Shaheen devotes an entire chapter to improved Hollywood coverage of the Arabs - certainly one of the best movies, in my opinion, as well as Shaheen's is `Rendition', released in 2007, which shows an Egyptian-born American engineer kidnapped and tortured, and one of the lessons his CIA capturers learn is that torture does not work.
Shaheen devotes a major chapter to "solutions", that is, how change may be affected. Some of his ideas seem wildly impractical in the current political climate, but he reminds us how the same could have been said about the other ethnic groups, and how they eventually were able to change their portrayal in Hollywood, and on TV. Unfortunately he does not address what the economists call "the sunk costs", that is, the tremendous economic interests in maintaining the status quo, the need to have enemies and promote conflict, all of which President Eisenhower famously warned us about in his farewell address. Nonetheless, Shaheen lists several positive steps, from new films, re-makes, to an Arab American Entertainment summit that individuals of good-will can take to change the current situation.
The second half of the book is a detailed analysis of specific movies in the post 9-11 period. Encouragingly, as he says, one-third of the movies fall into the "recommended" or "even-handed" category. He identifies the 2007 release, "The Kingdom" as the most anti-Arab movie in the post 9-11 period, and he devotes almost five pages to his analysis. What he did not discuss however was that the movie received a positive review in Saudi Arabia's `Arab News.' I too thought the movie terrible, and so was even more stunned by the positive review. Living in New Mexico now, I have seen video narratives from American Indians, who tell of their own childhood, and how they would actually root for the cowboys, when they were attacked by the "savages." Ah, the awesome power of propaganda. Clearly a bit of "consciousness raising" is still needed in the Arab world.
Shahaan's meticulous documentation of the movies and TV shows that shape our view of reality is an essential read for those who desire a better understanding of the workings of "The Masters of War."
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hollywood has always used the public's fear and loathing to create interest in it's film projects., May 4, 2008
This review is from: Guilty: Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs After 9/11 (Paperback)
Hollywood has always used the public's fear and loathing to create interest in its film projects. In the 1980s, the communists were the most common villain in big budget Hollywood action movies. In the 2000s...Middle Eastern Terrorists have taken over that role - "Guilty: Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs after 9/11" is a scholarly look at this most common trend and how it both impacts and represents society. It also gives an optimistic look as the generic terrorist isn't the only Arabic representative in American film, but characters with real human motivations seem to be making an effort at becoming the norm. "Guilty: Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs after 9/11" is highly recommended to both social issues and film collections for community libraries.
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