Ridouani Western Representation

After a horrible terroristic attack that shocked the whole world on September 11th in the center of New York City, Muslims in the Western world have been constantly fighting against prejudice. After September 11, media interest in Islam increased, where Islam was usually portrayed in a negative way. Before 9/11, many Muslims lived the normal, everyday life. However, the attack has changed lives of many people that belonged to the Muslim community, where they were the victims of guilt. Unfortunately, many Americans were introduced to Islam, after the 9/11 attack, thus even till today, Islam is associated with terrorism. For the past ten years, Muslims felt excluded from the American society by being rifled, attacked, discriminated, checked

Literary Analysis of Aladdin Disney’s Aladdin is a film that attempts to stereotype and westernize Arab culture. Using racially inaccurate stereotypes, an inaccurate depiction of The Middle East, as well as countless cultural generalizations, Aladdin creates a setting of “exotic orientalism” and Islamaphobia. “[Aladdin depicts…] the Arab world as backwards and irrational, the film’s distorted ethnic representations fuel the western world’s fear of alternity and perpetuates dangerous stereotypes.” (Heydt).

The animated classical Disney movie Aladdin has became one of the most successful movies since it was released in 1992. This movie may seem to be fairy-tale based and entertaining for children since they are the main target audience of Disney, but with a deeper look into its details this is not the reality of it. The ideas that children are exposed to from watching this movie help create and structure their mindsets as well as reinforcing unrealistic images of the Arabian world. In addition, Aladdin is a great illustrative tool in reflecting the concept of Orientalism, a term coined by Edward Said, which emphasizes on representing the Orient with certain clichés and characteristics that are misleading about the true nature of reality (Said, 1978). With that been said, this review paper will be focusing on the main characters and the way they are

The world of Disney it is not necessarily magic for everyone. In Western popular culture there is an endless buffet serving stereotypical ideologies for racially marked women. The media often relies on representation of articulation of ethnic women as animalistic, inferior and outside the natural. Films tend to utilize signifiers that express race, class and gender to develop characters. For this assignment, I have chosen to critically analyze Disney’s (1992) Aladdin; this movie exemplifies the racialization of female bodies through visual illustrations that reinforce ideas of stereotypical roles of Middle Eastern that have been over-looked through the eyes of children. Aladdin; is considered a modern example of Edward Said’s concept of orientalism from a Western perspective. In this paper I will examine how Disney’s Aladdin perpetuates ideas of ‘othering’ through orientalism, over-sexualized characters and reinforces islamophobia.

No student should have to suffer unfair consequences due to a teacher’s political view or the harassment of other students based on their background. This research paper will discuss the mistreatment of American Muslims before high school up until college, that includes elements such as subconscious harassment at a young age, instructors’ political views, direct attacks, and fear for their safety. It will also explain the differences between non-Muslim bullying versus Muslim bullying.

Historically, the United States of America has a long history of shaping its ideology from a series of significant events that hold unspeakable brutality. This leads Americans to draw conclusions, which often leads to denouncing a particular body of people. For example, the enslavement of African Americans, the decimation of Native Americans, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Currently, while enduring several years in the U.S., Muslim Americans face similar difficulties as a human being would. However, these hardships differ because they include U.S. discrimination triggered by 9/11, current terrorist events, and negative reinforcement from the media and the general public. Muslim Americans experience the harmful effects of terrorism because acts of terrorism influence the way the U.S. views and thinks about 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.

The topic of this essay was one that seemed the most relevant at this given moment in time. Post 9/11, Western media became very critical of Islam and the portrayal of Muslims and the negative associations made with them has dramatically increased.

Another way conflict has made the ethnic visibility of muslims portrayed through media is the Jiljab controversy of 2002 (Tarlo 2010). In September of 2002, a 13 year old girl of Bengali origin and her brothers, threatened the head principal of an London high school, for not allowing their sister to wear the hijab, because they said the Shalwar kamiz was not legitimate enough for their sister to express her religious beliefs. This matter was taken to court in 2004 where the brothers and their sister pleaded their case and walked out winners (Tarlo 2010). This controversy attracted major media attention and was featured in newspapers and television documents around the world (Tarlo 2010). This could be seen to exemplify the visibility of muslims in a way that portrays them to be people who ‘actively, publicly and consciously advocate their religious identity’ to the world (Schmidt 2011) showing that due to the conflict that had risen between a girl, her brothers and the school principal the medias effect portrayed this conflict to the whole world, representing muslims in a light that portrayed them as uncompromising and unreasonable, demanding people, which were at odds with ‘western liberal values’ (Tarlo 2010)

Islam is a monotheistic religion, centered around the teachings of the Qu’ran and serving Allah (meaning God in Arabic). However, this Abrahamic religion has been harshly discriminated against in the United States for years. Most prominently throughout the last twelve years, post September 11th, 2001. Unfortunately, issues such as socialization through the media, power distribution, religious ignorance, stereotyping and visible differences have contributed to the ill attitudes towards Muslims. This paper will examine how Americans have been socialized in islamophobia within the United States.

When it comes to the illustrations of his popular characters in Aladdin, Disney proves to be quite racist. Most of the small-part, background characters and especially “the bad guys”, such as Jafar and the palace guards, all have incredibly distinct Arabic appearances. Every one of them stereotypically consists of “beards, large noses, sinister eyes, and heavy accents, and they’re wielding swords constantly” (Giroux, 104). In contrast, Aladdin the hero, looks and talks like an All-American man. His skin is pale and he wants to be addressed as Al, which is an American name rather than Arabic. He does not have a beard, big nose, turban, or accent. The key point in this illustration is that Disney is establishing that Aladdin looks right for the part of a hero, while Jafar looks right for a villain.” Jack Zipes, author of the essay “Breaking the Disney Spell”, clarifies that “though the characters are fleshed out to become more realistic, they are also one-dimensional. There is no character development because the characters are stereotypes, arranged according to a credo of domestication of the imagination”

Since Islam is a religion that promotes peace and kindness, one could ask where the stereotype that all Muslims are terrorists originated. Following the tragedies of September 11, 2001, Arabs and Muslims have been presented as potential terrorists. This idea stemmed from the theory that, “media bias increases when a specific ethnic, religious, or racial group is seen as a threat to national security.” (Stiffler, 2013). Since the attacks on September 11, 2001 Muslims and Arabs have been “hyper-visible” in the media as potential terrorists. Due to the negative media attention and failure of most media platforms to

Thinking as a sociologist, you might ask yourself, why does this happen? What causes people to categorize a whole group of people solely based on their faith? What exactly causes someone to not want to sit with someone, because the other person may be wearing a hijab? When did Islamophobia spread and became an issue? What are some possible solutions?

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 connection between Islam and terrorism was not intensified until the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center that pushed the Islamic faith into the national and international spotlight (Smith, 2013). As Smith (2013) articulated, “Many Americans who had never given Islam a second thought before 9/11 now had to figure out how to make sense of these events and relate to the faith tradition that ostensibly inspired them” (p. 1). One way in which people made sense of these events was through the media channels that influenced their overall opinions by shaping a framework of censored ideas (Yusof, Hassan, Hassan & Osman, 2013). In a survey conducted by Pew Forum (2012), 32% of people reported that their opinions of Muslims were greatly influenced by the media’s portrayal of Islam that depicted violent pictorials and fundamentalist Muslims. Such constant negative depiction is likely to lead to the inevitable—prejudice and hate crime. For instance, in 2002 alone there were approximately 481 hate crimes that were carried out against Muslims (Smith, 2013). Ever since the 9/11 attacks Muslim people have been the target of “suspicion, harassment and discrimination” (Talal, n.d., p. 9).