Arab and Muslims and Stereotypical labels in Movies

In this tedtalk, Melissa Boigon, who studies Islam and its relationship to the Arab-Israeli conflict, talks about how Islamophobia has become more of a fear of Arabs over the last 10 years. She thinks that has to do with the connotation to terrorists groups such as Al-Qaeda, and the way middle east conflict is portrayed in The United States today. She also discusses how American Entertainment portrays Arabs, saying that it's propaganda in the form of entertainment.

The film Ethnic Notions examines the various caricatures of African Americans in popular culture and the consequences of these representations from the 1800s to the 1980s. The film showed how America went through a face of injustice for a period of time. The internet defines stereotype as qualities assigned to groups of people related to their race, nationality and sexual orientation, to name a few. (Kemick) Throughout American history, African Americans have been victims of stereotypes in many ways. White majority use violence caricatures, stereotypes, dominance, subordination and the media as ways to overpower African Americans.

By continually representing the Muslim or the Arab as the heartless villain, even cartoon movies contain a biased perspective against the Muslim image in America. All that glitters is not gold, and this is true for films fresh off the reels of Hollywood, as some contain an unfair perspective of Muslims.

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, media approaches have altered. On Television shows and movies, in newspapers and on the radio, there has been an increase in hate crimes targeting Arabs and Muslims. Most coverage today follows a script that represents Arabs and Muslims only in the context of terrorism. Evelyn Alsultany wrote a book called Arabs and Muslims in the Media in 2012. The stories explained the new standards in racial and cultural representations after 9/11.

After several incidents that happened around the world, peoples view on Arabs changed. The media played a big role in “the stereotyping of Arabs”. It is one of the main reasons for people to think the way they are about Arabs. Many

"Washington and Hollywood spring from the same DNA." That statement, coming from a man who was a past president of Motion Picture Association of America, is an automatic sign that movie accuracy is not always the top priority of filmmakers. Something shown once in film can hardly sway someone view on a topic. However, the continuous repetition of a cut out stereotype has the power to make minds think a certain way. Since the beginning of Cinema, that has been the case of viewing the people of Arabian and Middle Eastern decent. Aside from the cliché turban and robe, what is shown is a consistent connection between any form of evil and those two particular groups of people. The reasoning for that falls behind America's political agenda.

Arab Americans have been targets of discrimination long before the 9/11 event happened. If they are immigrants in America, they are seen as bombers or terrorists. And if they are American citizens, they are seen as spies. The way Arabs are portrayed in Hollywood movies have been reflected in the way the government and society as a whole view them. And the way Americans show their discrimination is by rejecting or denying Arabs in all aspects of society which makes it harder for them to succeed. Overall, Arab Americans are seen as dangerous and threatening to Americans. Because they were being harassed all the time, they have a harder time adapting and participating in the American society. All young Americans have a hard time finding

Stereotype on Race What is Stereotype? To many, it might be defined as the idea of a particular type of person or thing such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual preference, and many more. For centuries, stereotypical issues have had a great impact in our lives.

Within days of the attacks every news channel was showing pictures of the hijackers. From these pictures Americans turned their fear and hatred on to anyone who looked like the attackers. During the process of adjusting to the aftermath of September 11, Muslim Americans faced an upsurge in negative stereotypes expressed by the larger society (American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, 2003; Cassel, 2006) and Muslim immigrants, more than any other Immigrant group, were met with negative attitudes (Council of American Islamic Relations, 2003; Saroglou & Galand, 2004). But there is still discrimination present throughout the U.S , we all see it on the news or in person at school. There language is different so people discriminate against them. It does not matter if you are actually Arab or if you just look Arab or had a foreign name that sounded Arab they would look at you bad. This was a problem at airports, jobs, and schools because people were suspicious. Life was hard for Arab-Americans because people could not trust them. Many Arab- Americans and those who looked like Arabs were directly and adversely

Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People by Jack G. Shaheen discuses how Hollywood cinema has portrayed Arabs the exact same way in over 900 films for the past century. Shaheen believes Hollywood films perpetuate stereotypes on Arabs, and with the use of repetition, filmmakers can convince moviegoers to believe that all Arabs are the same. In the article Shaheen states that Arabs are demonstrated as evil, sex-crazed, murderous, and wealth obsessed villains, and he wants audiences to see that just like Whites, African Americans, and Latinos, not all Arabs are the same. Shaheen fears people as a whole have a tainted view on any and all Arabs who one would come across due to the increasingly similar movies that portray them as bad people. It is easy to believe this because if one watches any two movies about mummies in the Middle East, the characters and plot are the same, just like

How the has media poisoned peoples’ brains to think like this. Media has created this mental construct, in which all Muslims are the “bad guys”. Media plays a big role in a lot of different situations. Media mostly portrays African American as “thugs, and drug dealers”, media portrays Latinos as all being “illegal”. Media plays an essential role in the development of the young children, who’s brains are still developing. It really affects their world view.

Famous movies going from Hollywood blockbusters to kids' toons are portraying "unrefined and overstated" generalizations of Muslims and propagating Islamophobia, as indicated by a review distributed today.

Syed Soharwardy asserts that “Media always tried to portray Islam as a religion of terror and all the Muslims as terrorists. The way the talk-show programs and news are produced and presented, it seems that the media has already decided the guilty verdict, regardless what would be the outcome of an investigation” (Soharwardy). So too do members of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee recognize the media’s predisposition toward bias, as is pointed out in this statement, found on their website: “Key industries of American mass culture, Holllywood and television, for decades have been bastions of anti-Arab stereotyping, and have consistently resisted positive or realistic representations of Arabs and Arab Americans. (Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee).”

The misrepresentation of minorities is frequent in Hollywood films and Arabs are one of the many minority groups Hollywood misrepresent. Arabs are portrayed negatively in films for long time even before 9/11. The Arabs characters are portrayed with always having accent, wearing traditional attire, untrustworthy, aggressive and almost always associated with terrorism. The continuously falsification could lead to stereotypes, misjudgment, and damage to Arabic culture.

"The US media has been clubbing together terrorism and Islam, influencing the American public to think that all Arab Muslims are "crazy and violent terrorists"… The American media has been a primary agent responsible for creating racist stereotypes, images and