Reel Bad Arabs - Hollywood`s Most Maligned Group? from Planck's Constant

Flames and smoke poured from the Taj hotel in Mumbai, India
Photo Credit: The New York Times

Jack Shaheen in his book Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies A People makes the unwarranted assertion that Arabs are the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood. In his study of over 900 Hollywood films in the last century, he alleges that less than 62 were positive or even-handed in their portrayal of Arabs and Muslims.

The mistake Dr. Shaheen makes is in assuming there are only three categories of depiction: positive, negative or even-handed. There is a fourth: truthful.

If a movie portrays real life characters truthfully and accurately then one cannot say that the portrayal is either negative or positive or even-handed. Those are value judgments while the truth is not biased. For example, let's say a film portrays Adolf Hitler as a madman bent on world domination who directed the killing of millions of Jews, Polacks, gypsies and others. One cannot say this is a negative portrayal, it is a truthful portrayal. The only way Hollywood can make a positive or negative portrayal of a real person is to lie, fabricate, or fictionalize the story.

So when Hollywood shows Arab or Muslim terrorists blowing up women and children, or beheading journalists, or driving trucks into embassies, this is not a negative portrayal of Arab or Muslim terrorists it is merely a truthful re-creation, nothing personal.

As proof, if you were to read the script of a typical Hollywood film involving Arab terrorists and then read the text of the news report about the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks to someone who was in a coma for 20 years, and told that person that one story is Hollywood fiction and the other actually happened, I bet you a thousand dollars to your one dollar that the person in the coma would pick the Mumbai attacks as being completely Hollywood and outrageously unbelievable while the Hollywood film would be picked as being obviously a bland news story about typical Muslim terrorists.

If you eliminate truthful representations of Arab and Muslim terrorists in Hollywood films, then there is not even a handful of films that are negative toward Arabs and Muslims.

It is not Arabs or Muslims who are the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood; it is the rich white man.

So yes, there are many times when Hollywood is neither honest nor accurate in its depiction of a certain group as when it depicts character types that do not exist in reality. For example, a CEO of a corporation who uses the technology of his company to control the world and who kills anyone who stands in his way as in such films as Quantum of Solace (2008), Paycheck (2003), and Scanners (1981).

In the history of mankind there has never been a CEO of a company bent on world domination and who ruthlessly kills those who oppose him. It NEVER happened - the archetype only exists in the imagination of Hollywood writers. This is an instance when the claim of a stereotype can legitimately be laid.

But as for Arabs and Muslims, Jack, don't blame Hollywood for inserting them into a film about the taking of United 93, blame Arabs and Muslims for inserting themselves into the real airplane.

Don't blame Hollywood for dramatizing news headlines, blame your compatriots for making those headlines.

This is post number 10 in the category Muslim Stereotypes.