Stereotypes In Hollywood Essay

Negative portrayals of Muslims in the mainstream media have led to widespread islamophobia in society. The way the media have illustrated Islam and Muslims in the media has influenced citizens to be misinformed about the true nature of both Muslims and Islam. As a result of the negative representations of Muslims in the media, societies views of Muslims have been adversely rendered and caused an unnecessary fear of Muslims in society. Exacerbation of islamophobia in the media has also led to a number of hate crimes towards Muslims (McQueeney, 2014). Instead of focusing on real news, medias often narrate stories

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.

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.

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.

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

The representation of Middle Eastern men and women in Hollywood, as either terrorists or oppressed housewives, further perpetuates stereotypes people have of the Middle East. Portrayals of the The Arabian Peninsula are a deserted war-torn desert, where people still live like Bedouins using camels as their only form of transportation. The depiction is much like the mythical city of Akraba in Disney’s Aladdin. Aladdin illustrates Arabs as malevolent greedy beings. I can recall numerous time people have asked if where I'm from is “safe”.

Arabs, Arab Americans, and Muslims are often stereotyped in movies as sheiks, barbarians, or terrorist. As many Muslim Americans are visibly culturally distinct, it would be of value to explore whether attitudes of non-Muslims toward Muslim Americans resemble attitudes expressed by European non-Muslims toward members of these minority groups.

‘Media discourse is the main source of people’s knowledge, attitudes and ideologies and although media coverage might not generate racism, it can certainly reinforce it. One-sided portrayals and news articles could easily become the reality in the minds of the audience’ (Van Dijk, 2000, pp. 36).

lthough survey respondents did feel that media bias against African Americans (40%) and Jewish people (23%) remains a problem, it is clear that Muslims and Arabs are currently in the (negative)

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

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

Examples of movies that stereotyped Arabs include: the sheikh; the sheikh who has a long flowing robe, his pockets are stuffed with money, has a beard and drives a giant expensive car. The terrorist, this story is about a mad dog who is pleased to give up his life to kill women and children because hell get 79 virgins in heaven. The burka, a burka is a robe with only a web opening for the eyes, and women wear it so that way they don’t excite men who cant controls their sexual

The representation of Muslims and Islam in the mainstream media such as films has been constantly depicted in a stereotypical way even after the 9/11 incident. Having reviewed more than a thousand films made since 1896, Dr Jack G. Shaheen, a former CBS News consultant on Middle East affairs (2008), claimed that Muslim characters in American cinema, despite a varied background of nationality and culture, have consistently been skewed into the Arab cycle of identification, ignoring the role of other Muslims, and marginalized in a plot

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 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