Essay on The Media's Distorted Image of the World

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).

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 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.

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

according to saheen cinema is a vehicle which fosters the stereotype of the evil arab. Post 9/11 attack the whole image has been changed . Saheen also says that the Hollywood accepts African American actors but express racist slurs towards arabs (Shaheen, J. G. (2003). Reel bad Arabs: How Hollywood vilifies a people. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 588(1), 171-193.) There is no shortage of muslim villains and terrorists in Hollywood films and television programs. All of the muslims are pictured in Terrorists or villians or Barbaric or foreigners . The media potrays muslims in a very narrow boundry, a muslim women is either shown as belly dancer or a women wearing a hijab while mens are mostly shown as terrorist or either sheiks having huge oil spills in arab . the media never shows how good and how bright the muslim community has flourished with knowledge that they precive. One of the biggest media example is Disney potryaing muslins in Aladin. They present this community living in deserts and having swords with them all the time . did anyone has ever seen an ordinary muslim guy who carries a big sword with him always? No

Viewing Arabs and Muslims as evil and threatening people began long before the terrorist attacks on September 11 (Akram, pg 61.) It can be traced back to myths created by film and media. Individuals of Middle Eastern descent were often the villains in older American films and have been consistently misrepresented for many years. There have also been multiple government laws and policies dating back to the 1970s that have “steadily targeted Arab and Muslim non-citizens for selective interrogation, detention, harassment, presumption of terrorist involvement, and removal from this country” (Akram, 61).

Hollywood adapts, validates, and creates such crude representations of the Islamic world. That has been its primary concern and its sole perspective regarding the Arab other. Such dehumanization used to be merely cultural and biased. In fact, such injustices have always existed both in Hollywood and in other film industries around the world especially by the French and the British. Modern and present day representations, however, are driven by greater motifs and are chiefly political. Following the 9/11 attacks, the demonization of Islam and Arabs has gone wild. The images the media propagated and continues to spread are full of both implicit and explicit messages to trigger hate and anger against the Muslim world and to justify the new burden

Before people can appreciate, respect, and diminish the fear of different cultures; the representation of stereotypical views needs to eject from the media's portrayal. Cultural groups in U.S. Society need to have an unambiguous perceptive of what stereotyping means and how it appears. Namely, history, the media, and movies demonstrate stereotyping, and over time, it becomes part of a narrative and anticipates negative perceptions of minorities. Various cultures categorize as being wrong, evil, untrustworthy and deviating from the norm of the dominant culture. The inclination continues in several areas with bigotry and prejudice leading to violence and discrimination. Stereotyping regularly comes about because of prompts, biases, and fanaticism.

For over a century, Hollywood has given its audience a negative perception of Arabs. With its systematic dehumanization of minority groups, Hollywood has distinguished negative stereotypes of Arabs in their featured films. Most notably, filmmakers have indicated all Arabs as a public enemy. As reported by the article Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People by Jack Shaheen, the stereotypes deeply ingrained in American cinema not only sabotages the targeted group but also gives unfavorable ideologies to those in other groups. Therefore, when certain people think of an Arab, the first thing that comes to mind is someone who looks different and is threatening. Because of the unfair treatment given to Arabs and other minority groups, Shaheen

Nowadays, racial, societal, and cultural stereotypes are, unfortunately, becoming more and more common. Whether it be about something as insignificant as every high schoolers’ supposed immaturity, to something as substantial as a gender stereotype that denies people their rights, these misconceptions are hurting people every single day. One popular group to stereotype recently has been the Middle East. Almost everything people say about them is factually incorrect. The political world does not help much either. Many biased or misinformed politicians say things that aren’t true, which then imprints society, which causes these misconceptions to bloom. Some of the most common misconceptions are what defines an Arab, all Middle Easterns hate Americans and are out to bomb them, and more. Middle Eastern stereotypes are misguided due to assumptions made with a lack of information, biases in the news, and implications made by our government, and other citizens only speak what they hear.

I was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina in the United State of America. I was an American, but society did not agree with me because I was born with a Middle Eastern bloodline. Middle Eastern Americans are victimized because they are misunderstood by their surrounding society. This lead to bumps in my own life which could have been avoided, but because society did not understand us they did not like us. Research conducted explains why Middle Easterners are always referenced in a negative context and the effects of those negative views. The research concludes that Middle Easterners are victimized on an account of stereotypes, racial profiling, skewed reports in the media, false associations of Arabs with terrorism. My personal experiences

One of the greatest revolutions in the twentieth century was not political in nature, however, it aided in many different political revolutions. This revolution was the communications revolution. The twentieth century has experienced one of the greatest changes in means of communication including technologies such as radio, motion pictures, the Internet, advanced communications and most importantly the television. Sadly, political leaders and the government to convince or persuade the masses that their ideas supercede those of others have utilized these technologies.

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.