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Arab Stereotypes:
The eternal enemy
Following the screening of his documentary – Reel Bad Arabs – Dr Jack Shaheen, celebrated author and media critic, gave an engaging talk at the Qatar National Convention Centre, on how Hollywood has been vilifying and dehumanising Arabs for over a century.
“T
Dr Jack Shaheen 64 > qatar today > november 2013
hose who tell the stories, rule society,” Dr Shaheen began in a quiet voice, pausing for effect. The documentary, adapted from his book by the same name, had just come to its conclusion. There was a stunned silence. Though it might have been common knowledge that the perception of Arabs in the West was skewed, watching how the image took shape through clips from over 60 movies from the turn of the 20th century up until 9/11 was a revelation. Film after film, churned out from America’s most effective propaganda vehicle, Hollywood, depicting Arabs as lecherous sheikhs, sexualised belly dancers, nomadic Bedouins, spoilt rich boys, faceless and voiceless women, and terrorists. “We never see an Arab man with his wife and children, at a playground, at a picnic,” says Dr Shaheen, “or as doctors and nurses saving lives. Just being everyday humans. Because when we humanise them they become difficult to stereotype.” And these were just 60 films out of over 1,100 that he has analysed. “If we were to host a film festival and screen three anti-Arab Hollywood films a day, we’d have enough for over a year,” he says. At first there is a tendency to dismiss his concerns. Maybe he is being over-sensitive. They are just movies after all. Meant purely for entertainment. But Dr Shaheen illustrates how cinema has been used for propaganda since the days of World War I. “Lenin recognised the importance of cinema, even in the era of silent films,” he says. “Around the same time, the president of Paramount Pictures observed how movies were a channel for conveying thought and opinion. Ten