Muslim Stereotypes from Planck's Constant Archives

Posted on November 4, 2010 04:58 PM

Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People

Hollywood's only fault is being too accurate and too truthful in regard to how it depicts Arabs and Muslims. It reminds me of reading that many Arabs and Muslims complain when newspapers and TV shows label Muslims who commit terror acts as "Muslim Terrorists." These whiners are addressing the wrong audience. They should not be complaining to those who report the news, they should complaining to those who make the news.

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs - Conclusion

Posted on October 24, 2010 09:44 PM

The year is 2008 and President Walter Emerson and his entourage are stuck in a small Colorado diner because of a raging snowstorm. While there, a TV broadcast cuts to a story that Uday Hussein, the current Iraqi dictator and son of Saddam Hussein, has sent his troops into Kuwait, and is preparing to overrun Saudi Arabia and then attack Israel.

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs - Deterrence 2000

Posted on October 17, 2010 10:53 PM

Donald Duck as a Hitler-saluting Nazi in the 1942 Disney propaganda cartoon Der Fuehrer's Face

My younger readers will probably be shocked to learn that Donald Duck was once depicted as a Hitler-saluting Nazi in the 1942 Disney propaganda cartoon Der Fuehrer's Face.

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Germans - Der Fuehrer`s Face

Posted on October 10, 2010 11:08 PM

The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story

If a film is based on real events, on real people, and the dramatization and combination of characters only enhances the plot action but does not materially change the true nature of the participants, then even if the characters are portrayed doing evil things, the film cannot be categorized as being negative.

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs - The Taking of Flight 847 1988

Posted on October 6, 2010 11:00 PM

Flames and smoke poured from the Taj hotel in Mumbai, India

There have been hundreds of Hollywood films where some corporate CEO is intent on taking over the world and has henchman going around killing anyone who gets in his way. No one has ever complained that this stereotype is complete nonsense: there has never existed in real life, a CEO of a corporation involved in trying to take over the world. Yet Hollywood keeps churning out films like Scanners (1981)

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs - Hollywood`s Most Maligned Group?

Posted on October 5, 2010 11:08 AM

In his 2001 book Reel Bad Arabs, Jack Shaheen cites The Delta Force (1986) as one of the four most anti-Arab Hollywood movies ever made.

But is it?

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs - The Delta Force 1986

Posted on September 30, 2010 07:44 PM

If Arab terrorists existed only in Hollywood films, then Planet of The Arabs might have some legitimate claims. Otherwise we see their complaint for what it really is: a desire for Hollywood never to present the truth about Muslims and Arabs.

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs - Bulletproof 1988

Posted on September 29, 2010 05:55 PM

In my previous 6 articles I showed that Hollywood and its Jews portray Arabs and Muslims honestly and accurately, despite the claims alleged in the YouTube video Planet of The Arabs.

Anyone who has seen the film Exodus (1960) based on the 1958 novel, Exodus, by Leon Uris, is probably quite surprised to see this particular film included as an example of Hollywood stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims.

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs - Exodus 1960

Posted on September 28, 2010 10:07 PM

The film does not say that all Arabs or Muslims are terrorists. Just this guy Omar who happens to be Arab because if the writers made him the Norwegian Ruler of a mythical Arab desert kingdom the audience would have left the theater in the first ten minutes. One can only distort reality in films so much before the audience decides to stop the willing suspension of disbelief.

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs - The Jewel of the Nile 1985

Posted on September 27, 2010 10:44 PM

So when Arabs, Muslims, or Middle Easterners see themselves depicted in films as evil terrorists, they do not understand that this has nothing to do with racism or bigotry but rather is simply a plot device. Hollywood needs villains.

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs - The Hitman

Posted on September 26, 2010 05:52 PM

Eugène Delacroix. The Death of Sardanapalus. 1827-1828. Oil on canvas. Louvre, Paris, France

Its dominant feature is a large bed on which a nude prostrates herself and beseeches the apathetic Sardanapalus for mercy. Sardanapalus had ordered his possessions destroyed and sex slaves murdered before immolating himself, once he learned that he was faced with military defeat.

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies A People

Posted on September 24, 2010 10:48 PM

here we are treated to a scene from the 1985 film Back to the Future, where Doc is ready to make a trip twenty five years into the future when he is interrupted by the arrival of Libyan terrorists who want to retrieve the Plutonium Doc stole from them.

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs - Back to the Future 1985

Posted on September 23, 2010 12:10 PM

Publicity still of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Art Malik in True Lies

in 1991 Ramzi Yousef, a Muslim born in Kuwait, started planning a bombing attack within the United States. According to journalist Steve Col, Yousef mailed letters to various New York newspapers just before the attack in which he made various demands, one of which was for the United States to end interference "with any of the Middle East countries' interior affairs." He stated that the attack on the World Trade Center would be merely the first of such attacks if his demands were not met.

Read the Rest: Reel Bad Arabs - True Lies 1994

Posted on September 22, 2010 08:40 PM

Rules of Engagement is a 2000 American film directed by William Friedkin, and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L. Jackson and Guy Pearce. The movie, a military, political, and legal drama, is about Marine Colonel Terry Childers, played by Jackson, who is brought to court-martial on charges of disobeying the rules of engagement in a military incident at an American embassy in Sana'a, Yemen, resulting in the slaughter of many civilians [who obviously deserved it] by Childers' men.