Evil Arabs In American Popular Film

Author : Tim Jon Semmerling
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2009-06-23
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780292774896

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Evil Arabs in American Popular Film by Tim Jon Semmerling Pdf

2006 — Runner-up, Arab American National Museum Book Awards The "evil" Arab has become a stock character in American popular films, playing the villain opposite American "good guys" who fight for "the American way." It's not surprising that this stereotype has entered American popular culture, given the real-world conflicts between the United States and Middle Eastern countries, particularly since the oil embargo of the 1970s and continuing through the Iranian hostage crisis, the first and second Gulf Wars, and the ongoing struggle against al-Qaeda. But when one compares the "evil" Arab of popular culture to real Arab people, the stereotype falls apart. In this thought-provoking book, Tim Jon Semmerling further dismantles the "evil" Arab stereotype by showing how American cultural fears, which stem from challenges to our national ideologies and myths, have driven us to create the "evil" Arab Other. Semmerling bases his argument on close readings of six films (The Exorcist, Rollover, Black Sunday, Three Kings, Rules of Engagement, and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut), as well as CNN's 9/11 documentary America Remembers. Looking at their narrative structures and visual tropes, he analyzes how the films portray Arabs as threatening to subvert American "truths" and mythic tales—and how the insecurity this engenders causes Americans to project evil character and intentions on Arab peoples, landscapes, and cultures. Semmerling also demonstrates how the "evil" Arab narrative has even crept into the documentary coverage of 9/11. Overall, Semmerling's probing analysis of America's Orientalist fears exposes how the "evil" Arab of American popular film is actually an illusion that reveals more about Americans than Arabs.

Author : Tim Jon Semmerling
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2009-06-23
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780292795730

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Evil Arabs in American Popular Film by Tim Jon Semmerling Pdf

2006 — Runner-up, Arab American National Museum Book Awards The "evil" Arab has become a stock character in American popular films, playing the villain opposite American "good guys" who fight for "the American way." It's not surprising that this stereotype has entered American popular culture, given the real-world conflicts between the United States and Middle Eastern countries, particularly since the oil embargo of the 1970s and continuing through the Iranian hostage crisis, the first and second Gulf Wars, and the ongoing struggle against al-Qaeda. But when one compares the "evil" Arab of popular culture to real Arab people, the stereotype falls apart. In this thought-provoking book, Tim Jon Semmerling further dismantles the "evil" Arab stereotype by showing how American cultural fears, which stem from challenges to our national ideologies and myths, have driven us to create the "evil" Arab Other. Semmerling bases his argument on close readings of six films (The Exorcist, Rollover, Black Sunday, Three Kings, Rules of Engagement, and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut), as well as CNN's 9/11 documentary America Remembers. Looking at their narrative structures and visual tropes, he analyzes how the films portray Arabs as threatening to subvert American "truths" and mythic tales—and how the insecurity this engenders causes Americans to project evil character and intentions on Arab peoples, landscapes, and cultures. Semmerling also demonstrates how the "evil" Arab narrative has even crept into the documentary coverage of 9/11. Overall, Semmerling's probing analysis of America's Orientalist fears exposes how the "evil" Arab of American popular film is actually an illusion that reveals more about Americans than Arabs.

Author : Jack G. Shaheen
Publisher : Interlink Publishing
Page : 637 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-31
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781623710064

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Reel Bad Arabs by Jack G. Shaheen Pdf

A groundbreaking book that dissects a slanderous history dating from cinema’s earliest days to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters that feature machine-gun wielding and bomb-blowing "evil" Arabs Award-winning film authority Jack G. Shaheen, noting that only Native Americans have been more relentlessly smeared on the silver screen, painstakingly makes his case that "Arab" has remained Hollywood’s shameless shorthand for "bad guy," long after the movie industry has shifted its portrayal of other minority groups. In this comprehensive study of over one thousand films, arranged alphabetically in such chapters as "Villains," "Sheikhs," "Cameos," and "Cliffhangers," Shaheen documents the tendency to portray Muslim Arabs as Public Enemy #1—brutal, heartless, uncivilized Others bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners. Shaheen examines how and why such a stereotype has grown and spread in the film industry and what may be done to change Hollywood’s defamation of Arabs.

Author : Ella Shohat,Ali Mirsepassi,Amita Manghnani,Jack G. Shaheen,Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives,John Kuo Wei Tchen
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 71 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2012-09-28
Category : Arabs
ISBN : 0615699693

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A IS for ARAB Stereotypes in U. S. Popular Culture by Ella Shohat,Ali Mirsepassi,Amita Manghnani,Jack G. Shaheen,Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives,John Kuo Wei Tchen Pdf

Author : Jack G. Shaheen
Publisher : Olive Branch Press
Page : 638 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : STANFORD:36105124175253

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Reel Bad Arabs by Jack G. Shaheen Pdf

Secondary edition statement from table of contents.

Author : Jack G. Shaheen
Publisher : Interlink Publishing
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2012-12-28
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781623710200

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Guilty by Jack G. Shaheen Pdf

“Nothing will be the same again.” Americans scarred by the experience of 9/11 often express this sentiment. But what remains the same, argues Jack Shaheen, is Hollywood’s stereotyping of Arabs. In his new book about films made after 9/11, Shaheen finds that nearly all of Hollywood’s post-9/11 films legitimize a view of Arabs as stereotyped villains and the use of Arabs and Muslims as shorthand for the “Enemy” or “Other.” Along with an examination of a hundred recent movies, Shaheen addresses the cultural issues at play since 9/11: the government’s public relations campaigns to win “hearts and minds” and the impact of 9/11 on citizens and on the imagination. He suggests that winning the “war on terror” would take shattering the centuries-old stereotypes of Arabs, and frames the solutions needed to begin to tackle the problem and to change the industry and culture at large.

Author : Jack G. Shaheen
Publisher : Interlink Publishing Group
Page : 586 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1566563887

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Reel Bad Arabs by Jack G. Shaheen Pdf

How hollywood has portrayed Muslin Arabs as evil.

Author : Jack G. Shaheen
Publisher : Popular Press
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 1984
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0879723092

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The TV Arab by Jack G. Shaheen Pdf

Dr. Shaheen, studying over 100 different popular entertainment programs, cartoons and major documentaries telecast on network, independent and public channels, totaling nearly 200 episodes that relate to Arabs, has thrown new and revealing light on the stereotypes of people from the Middle East.

Author : Evelyn Alsultany
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2012-08-20
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780814707319

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Arabs and Muslims in the Media by Evelyn Alsultany Pdf

After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of “the enemy” during the War on Terror. Evelyn Alsultany explains that a new standard in racial and cultural representations emerged out of the multicultural movement of the 1990s that involves balancing a negative representation with a positive one, what she refers to as “simplified complex representations.” This has meant that if the storyline of a TV drama or film represents an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist, then the storyline also includes a “positive” representation of an Arab, Muslim, Arab American, or Muslim American to offset the potential stereotype. Analyzing how TV dramas such as The Practice, 24, Law and Order, NYPD Blue, and Sleeper Cell, news-reporting, and non-profit advertising have represented Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans during the War on Terror, this book demonstrates how more diverse representations do not in themselves solve the problem of racial stereotyping and how even seemingly positive images can produce meanings that can justify exclusion and inequality.

Author : Michael Malek Najjar
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2015-01-09
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781476618654

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Arab American Drama, Film and Performance by Michael Malek Najjar Pdf

Beginning with early Arab American playwright, poet and novelist Kahlil Gibran and concluding with contemporary playwright Yussef El Guindi, this book provides an historical overview and critical analysis of the plays, films and performances of self-identified Arab Americans. Playwrights, filmmakers and performers covered include Ameen Fares Rihani, Danny Thomas, Heather Raffo, Ahmed Ahmed, Mona Mansour and Cherien Dabis. These artists, traditionally underrepresented in entertainment, publishing and academia, have created works that exemplify the burgeoning Arab American arts movement. By addressing cinema, stand-up comedy and solo performance, the author introduces audiences to contemporary genres that are shaping Arab American culture in the United States.

Author : Waleed F. Mahdi
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2020-05-15
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0815636717

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Arab Americans in Film by Waleed F. Mahdi Pdf

It comes as little surprise that Hollywood films have traditionally stereotyped Arab Americans, but how are Arab Americans portrayed in Arab films, and just as importantly, how are they portrayed in the works of Arab American filmmakers themselves? In this innovative volume, Mahdi offers a comparative analysis of three cinemas, yielding rich insights on the layers of representation and the ways in which those representations are challenged and disrupted. Hollywood films have fostered reductive imagery of Arab Americans since the 1970s as either a national security threat or a foreign policy concern, while Egyptian filmmakers have used polarizing images of Arab Americans since the 1990s to convey their nationalist critiques of the United States. Both portrayals are rooted in anxieties around globalization, migration, and US-Arab geopolitics. In contrast, Arab American cinema provides a more complex, realistic, and fluid representation of Arab American citizenship and the nuances of a transnational identity. Exploring a wide variety of films from each cinematic site, Mahdi traces the competing narratives of Arab American belonging—how and why they vary, and what’s at stake in their circulation.

Author : Waleed F. Mahdi
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2020-10-21
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780815654964

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Arab Americans in Film by Waleed F. Mahdi Pdf

Selected for Arab America's Best Arab American Books of 2020 list. It comes as little surprise that Hollywood films have traditionally stereotyped Arab Americans, but how are Arab Americans portrayed in Arab films, and just as importantly, how are they portrayed in the works of Arab American filmmakers themselves? In this innovative volume, Mahdi offers a comparative analysis of three cinemas, yielding rich insights on the layers of representation and the ways in which those representations are challenged and disrupted. Hollywood films have fostered reductive imagery of Arab Americans since the 1970s as either a national security threat or a foreign policy concern, while Egyptian filmmakers have used polarizing images of Arab Americans since the 1990s to convey their nationalist critiques of the United States. Both portrayals are rooted in anxieties around globalization, migration, and US-Arab geopolitics. In contrast, Arab American cinema provides a more complex, realistic, and fluid representation of Arab American citizenship and the nuances of a transnational identity. Exploring a wide variety of films from each cinematic site, Mahdi traces the competing narratives of Arab American belonging—how and why they vary, and what’s at stake in their circulation.

Author : Kerem Bayraktaroğlu
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2018-08-10
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781476633633

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The Muslim World in Post-9/11 American Cinema by Kerem Bayraktaroğlu Pdf

Focusing on the decade following 9/11, this critical analysis examines the various portrayals of Muslims in American cinema. Comparison of pre- and post-9/11 films indicates a stereotype shift, influenced by factors other than just politics. The evolving definitions of male, female and child characters and of setting and landscape are described. The rise of the formidable American female character who dominates the weak Muslim male emerges as a common theme.

Author : Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad,Jane I. Smith
Publisher : Oxford Handbooks
Page : 577 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780199862634

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The Oxford Handbook of American Islam by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad,Jane I. Smith Pdf

In this volume 30 of the field's top scholars examine historical and contemporary aspects of American Islam, and explore the meaning of religious identity in the context of race, ethnicity, gender, and politics.

Author : Jack G. Shaheen
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 112 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : Psychology
ISBN : UOM:39015047705424

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Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture by Jack G. Shaheen Pdf