Reel Bad Arabs


Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People is a documentary film directed by Sut Jhally and produced by Media Education Foundation in 2006. This film is an extension of the book of the same name by Jack Shaheen, which also analyzes how Hollywood corrupts or manipulates the image of Arabs. Documentary analyses 1000 films that have Arab and Muslim characters, produced between 1896 to 2000, out of which great majority, 936 titles, were negative in their portrayal, arguing that the slander of Arabs in American filmmaking has existed since the early days of the silent cinema and is present in the biggest Hollywood blockbusters today. Jack Shaheen analyzes a long series of "demeaning" images of Arabs through his presentation of various scenes from different American movies which he has studied. He argues that this image is characterized by showing Arabs either as bandits or as a savage, nomadic race, or shows Arab women as shallow belly dancers serving evil, naïve, and greedy Arab sheiks. Most important is the image of the rifle in the hands of Arab "terrorists". The film then attempts to explain the motivations behind these stereotypes about Arabs, and their development at key points in American history, as well as why it is so important today.
The film showed for the first time in Washington on 8 June 2007 and then in Los Angeles in the 20 June 2007. The run time of the film is 50 minutes, with Arabic and English subtitles. Soon afterward, the film was shown successively in more than a dozen of international film festivals between 2006 and 2009 The film's estimated budget is $100,000.

Synopsis

Shaheen speaks at the beginning of the documentary about the extent to which Arabs face slander and manipulation in Hollywood, commenting that he has formulated that view of his after having seen over a thousand films produced, in the past and in the present. He also talks about how bleak the views are, those of which are borne by the Western civilization, admittedly confessing how the views directly attack the Arabs' humanity. Furthermore, he mentions how the same image took shape in several patterns to feed the same substance that is continuously demonizing the Arabs, thus. The image had to repeat over and over and was depicted in scenes in several films that heavily abuse the Arabs' behaviors and morals.
All through the documentary, Shaheen's statements are illustrated by clips from the films he describes.
Shaheen reviews some of the images about Arabs he perceives as distorted, and argues this causes a process of feeding/poisoning the minds of the younger generations with these infected ideas about Arabs that characterizes them with such heinous and harmful descriptions as in the Disney motion picture, Aladdin. Shaheen also turns it around: what must viewers from the Arab world think of America and Americans when they keep seeing these images in American films?
Shaheen also argues that the image of the Arab woman is distorted and does not represent her. Arab women in films are either bellydancers or faceless, anonymous shapes in black robes. More recently Arab women are also portrayed as terrorists. The truth is, they are just like all other women in the world: talented, intelligent, and equal in all areas and fields.
Shaheen then argues that politics have a big role in affecting Hollywood's image about Arabs, and moreover, both Hollywood and politics feed and empower the other. He stresses that filmmakers openly acknowledge this interaction between Hollywood and American politics by citing Jack Valenti, longtime president of the Motion Picture Association of America: "Washington and Hollywood spring from the same DNA". Political and economic events like the crisis of high oil prices in the United States as a result of the Arabs refusal of exporting it to The States, the revolution in Iran as well as Al-Qaeda activities, the events of 11 September and others, all exported a bad, faded image about Arabs to every American home... It is a truly a very distorted picture. Both the book and the film to reveal the American film scene history, where they exposed a blatant pattern of profiling to stereotype the Arabs and they also showed the similarity of this stereotype with the racist, anti-Semitic caricature and cartoon art throughout history.
Alleging a political agenda, he says out of 1000 films that have Arab and Muslim characters, 12 were positive depictions, 52 were neutral portrayals of Arabs, and 936 were negative.
Although the negative imagery of Arabs and the Arab world in the film is a hundred years old, Shaheen also voices optimism about the future. Showing some examples of films that portray Arabs as ordinary people, he expects the negative images to change, due to the works of a new generation of filmmakers, who see things differently.

Arabs stereotypes reportedly found in movies

  1. The bad Arab character that is always evil and portrayed as a "terrorist" causing explosions, shootings, stabbings, offenses and attacks.
  2. The shallow or silly Arab character that is always naive, pursuing only fun, lust, and extravagance.
  3. The Bedouin Arab character, that is remotely far from civilization and science and is often accompanied by "tent" and "camel" images.
  4. The arrogant Arab character that is very nervous, repressive of women, and the farthest possible from emotions or romance.

    Films which reportedly depict these stereotypes include

Filmmaker information

Film festivals

The film festivals that showed the documentary are: