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Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People

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Jack Shaheen's blockbuster book "REEL BAD ARABS: How Hollywood Vilifies a People" blows the cover on the film industry's century-long free ride in smearing Arab Muslims. What Shaheen spent the past 20 years researching should have been and can now become grist for where it's vital to plant the seeds of understanding and tolerance, namely, in the groves of academia.

Young Americans in film and communications courses need to face up to some pretty disturbing facts about how Hollywood has gotten away with defaming a people. The motion picture industry has made huge amounts of money by destroying the good name of nearly 300 million innocent men and women of the Arab world.

As Shaheen's REEL BAD ARABS documents the shameful vilification of an entire people, tests for college students should include questions like these:

1. How do you think Americans form their ideas about what is taking place in the Middle East?

2. How effective do you think movies are in shaping the way Americans think about the Arabs, especially Palestinians, and about the "peace process" in the region?

3. Do such perceptions impact public opinion and policy?

4. What movies can you name that presented Arabs in anything but a bad light as terrorists, oil monopolists, lechers and other villains?

5. How effective do you think movies are in manipulating the way we Americans see 'The Other,' namely Arabs, as The Enemy?

Besides the psychological and political side of his subject, Jack Shaheen has provided us with a wonderful guide to nearly 1,000 films. In spite of the bias this book lays out all too clearly, it nevertheless is guaranteed to provide much pleasure for the reader at the same time as it opens her eyes to the facts.

REEL BAD ARABS should be in every library in America and abroad, as well as on film-studio reference shelves to prick the conscience of every film producer and director and script-writer from Hollywood to Haifa.

Reel Bad Arabs is an essential read for anyone concerned about fairness, objectivity and stereotyping. A brilliantly gathered documentation of a little known or appreciated history of how "Hollywood vilifies people," in this case, Arabs and Arab Americans. Jack Shaheen is a great scholar. How anyone would have the patience to review so many films, over such a long period of time, simply escapes me. And he is not terribly ideological or biased himself! What he does is simply point out a consistent pattern, film by film, on how Arabs are depicted in film. The book is long overdue, extremely well documented, and an easy read. The alphabetized entries give a plot summary and then focus on the presentation or role of "the Arab" in the story. Sometimes history is rewritten, facts ignored, and truths disregarded just for the sake of vilification or plot continuity. To counter this in general, the book opens with needed information on who Arabs and Arab-Americans really are and how these facticities differ from their depiction as sheikhs, harem owners, villains, bandits, mummies, and, for the women, maidens in distress.

While not a goal of the author, the book is a history of Hollywood and the development of American political positions on the Middle East. Shaheen identifies Exodus as the most effective movie in shaping American perceptions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Hardly a balanced film, this Palestinian bashing movie and others that were filmed in Israel and/or produced by Israelis in cooperation with the Israeli government, illustrate how negative Arab mages impact our attitudes about Arab Muslims, Palestinians in particular, regardless of fact. If only Hollywood stopped there, but it didn't. like a runaway train, the defamation continues.

Shaheen's telling observations are supported by evidence: for more than a century, ever since camras started cranking, about one thousand Hollywood movies have dehumanized the Arab people. As the reviews indicate, Arab diversity is ignored, countries are misnamed or simply made up, and the language ill spoken. Shaheen actually includes a list of epithets used to describe or denounce Arab peoples.

Anyone interested in the cinema, injustice, in sociology and political science will find this book enormously useful. I loved it and recommend it without reservation. Let the evidence speak for itself and damn Hollywood!

-Philip Kayal Seton Hall University

Shaheen's book is a fact-based, detailed example of how the media can negatively distort the personality of an ethnic group. For all those looking to fight bigotry and racism, read this book as a rallying point. Let's face it: there is good and bad in every eithnicity, gender and race. There is good and bad in all people regardless of religious choice. There is good and bad in families, communities, cities, states, etc.

The more we segregate through negative, subliminal messages about the color of our skin or the language we speak or the religion we practice, then the more we build walls between people that have more in common than they have different.

Shaheen's book should be a call to action for media moguls to change their mode of operations. Fine, depict arabs as villians, but also depict them as heroes....heroes fighting fires, hereos saving lives in an ER, heroes coaching a bunch of high school kids to a championship football game, heroes as police officers...or as senators, congressmen and cabinet members. All these types of heroes exist as Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Irish-Catholic Americans, Jewish Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, etc.. Not all Italian-Americans are mafia killers -- right? Not all Catholic priests are bad...the overwhelming majority are hard-working practicing Christians.

Seems ludicrous that these point shave to be made, but the reel bad ememies are those that generalize and throw a hate blanket over the masses. Read this book not only if you're an Arab, but also if you're looking to fight bigotry in general. You will gain confidence that there are a lot of examples to support your cause...a common cause.

I am amazed as I read this. How much have I missed. Movie after movie, that I've seen, long before I became culturally aware of Arabs and anti-Semitism and the beauty of that culture and the awfulness of racism. And I did not know. But Shaheen lays it out too clearly to contradict, in an introduction that lays out the philosophical base for his arguments, and then in copious notes on 900 different movies. And suddenly I realize that the Black Stallion, a movie I loved as a kid, stigmatizes Arabs. Suddenly I realize those Porky Pig cartoons where he's a legionnaire are anti-Semitic. Suddenly I realize that Back to the Future really engages in the classic stereotypes of the evil, bad, terrorist Arab. And I mourn.

As Shaheen makes it clear, it is not that he is arguing that Arabs should never be portrayed as the bad guys. It is only that, when we see them in the movies, they almost always are. And when they're not, we see only a stereotype, of a greedy, lust-driven Arab surrounded by a harem, which has nothing to do with real harems but everything to do with American preoccupation with sex, and perhaps reveals more of who we in the West are than who the Arabs are.

This isn't the kind of book you read cover to cover- it's a resource book, and extremely extensive in the information and racism in each movie presented. It's ideal for picking up right before you watch a video, or right after, to contemplate another perspective than that of the movie, and to discuss. But there are some times I think when Shaheen misses. He lambastes farces, like Ishtar, which are true to the nature of a farce, and poke fun at Arabs and song-writers and the CIA and camels and the West- everyone in the movie. At other times I think he misses the point of a movie made in American culture, like The Siege. While Arabs are the terrorists in The Siege, it is quite clear that Bruce Willis, the military leader, is the true bad guy, and the greatest tragedy in The Siege is when Americans decide to remove freedom in place of security, as Benjamin Franklin said, "Any society which gives up it's freedom for the sake of security, deserves neither." The movie is writ on the backbone of our collective shame for what we did to the Japanese in World War II; and written on the collective forgetfulness we have as we now do the same thing to Arabs.

But small points, on a few movies. Overall, it is impossible to come away from this book with the thought that Hollywood is at all equitable in it's treatment of groups, especially Semites. It is impossible to view movies the same way again. I wait with dread the next great production of Hollywood, where out of nowhere, Arabs will again appear as the caricatured, ignoramus villains- perhaps the bad guys in Ironman, perhaps responsible for all of Indiana's troubles in the next Jones installment. I am left with sadness, and a question I do not have an answer to: Which is worse- that there are 900 movies portraying Arabs, and 50 portraying them positively; or that the majority of movies I have seen in my life are on Shaheen's list?

After September 11, it became clear that Arabs were among the most "hated" people in America. Stereotypes and misconceptions abounded, and still do. Sadly not enough people have taken the time to educate themselves and would prefer to lump all Arabs into one category: terrorists. Jack Shaheen's Reel Bad Arabs takes an historic look at the villification of Arabs in the film industry over the years. Such stereotyping has only led, and fueled, the general public to view Arabs as terrorists and a fanatical people. In reality, the majority of Arab Americans are hard-working, intelligent, educated people that take being "American" seriously. Unfortunately, as Shaheen so clearly illustrates, one would be hard pressed to find such truly accurate portrayals in film. I applaud Mr. Shaheen for his effort. We need more books like this one. And, on a separate but related note, for those who have the nerve to say those who suffered in the tsunami deserved it. First of all, if you were not so ignorant, you would realize how few of the victims were actually Arab. Second of all, shame on you. Human life is human life, no matter a person's race or religion.

The overwhelming majority of Arabic people around the world are peaceful, law-abiding citizens, but you'd never deduce that from their consistently, overwhelmingly villainous portrayal in the nearly one thousand Hollywood movies analyzed by Jack Shahenn (Professor Emeritus of Mass Communications at Southern Illinois University) in Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies A People, a sharp and acerbic look at negative movie stereotypes of an entire ethnicity. Meticulously taking apart the origins of these stereotypes in cinema's earliest days, Reel Bad Arabs pursues the recurring theme of vilifying the unfamiliar up to the present day. Starkly relevant, soberly honest, and highly recommended for students of popular culture, the film industry, and sociology, as well as the non-specialist general reader with an interest in today's political and cultural problems of distinguishing Arab terrorists from non-terrorists.

Dr. Jack Shaheen accurately portrays the facts about prejudice against Arabs and Muslims in American film. He is very fact-based detailing vivid scenes in some of our most popular movies. "Most popular" means the film reaches a very wide audience; reaching a "very wide audience" ensures increasing the level of bias and prejudice that everyone brings to their daily interactions. "Increasing the levels of bias and prejudice" promotes hatred.

As a former Captain and Army Ranger having served in Iraq and Bosnia, I can tell you that the kind of psyops (psychological operations) that Hollywood producers engage in is counter-productive to those of us promoting goal-directed dialogue to learn about one another...those of us committed to reducing the stereotypes and myths that support injustice. Dr. Shaheen's "Real Bad Arabs" book is a must read for those of us engaged in fighting bigotry because the author exposes the extent to which Hollywood will smear people.

Prejudice has many faces in our great country. Reading Dr. Shaheen's book made me indirectly aware that we are either pro-diversity or anti-diversity. There is no in-between; otherwise, we are living the lives of hypocrites. Sure, we need to have "bad guys" in film, but there is an inconsistency in the ethnic and religious faces and images that mark our minds. The call to action is a call for more of a balance in film and the media in general. Well-done Dr. Shaheen!

I LOVE THIS BOOK. It really gives you a great understanding of how Hollywood depicts Arabs in such a negative light. I read some of the other reviews that spoke negatively about it. All i have to say is I challenge you to go for your self to an Arab country or be friends with an Arab and dont lie about it. I promise you will think twice about what you wrote. This book gives an honest look at how Hollywood consciously and subconsciously feeds us negative images of Arabs. Every student in high school and college student should read this BOOK. This book opens your eyes to see things clearly and not with blind eyes. We need to be critical about what we see. The Nazis did the same about Jews before they killed them. They dehumanized them and that is what Hollywood is doing with the Arabs stereotypes.

While Jack Shaheen outlines the tragic negative stereotypes of Arabs with hundreds of movie examples, his book is truly illustrative of how racism, in general, is constructed and fostered. REEL BAD ARABS has significant academic value to anyone interested in international affairs, social sciences, or communications / mass-media. But it is simply A MUST HAVE for film-makers!

This book makes clear that there is an intention of portraying Arabs as evil people, not only as a group, but as individuals. Why? I wish I knew why. But the compelling research Shaheen did is an evidence not to be overlooked. When I was growing up, I used to think that Arabs, Native Americans, Russians, Japanese, Germans, were evil people, all due to the movies I watched on tv. Also when I was a teenager I used to sadly and wrongly think that all Colombians were evil drug dealers, all due to the movies and the media. Also we saw how the movie industry tried to win Vietnam's War in the screen, after they lost in the fields. Fortunately Books like this, and our own experience let us see the truth, that there is so much hate and intolerance, and the movie industry can be so irresponsible for the way they handle the mind of millions of people who trust them. This book show how the intention of manipulating people's minds with this movies has paid and achieved its goal by making people take side in the story they are watching..