Representation of Arabs and the Middle East in Western Media
By Giorgia Piantanida
From kid’s movies like Aladdin to family favorites like the Father of the Bride 2, and action-packed films like Rules of Engagement, Hollywood has long been crafting a specific and inaccurate image of “what an Arab looks and acts like”. Western media has long relied on the stereotype of a ‘bad Arab’ in order to create a villain, and have a character everyone can rally against. It is such a pervasive and engrained image that regardless of where one grew up, it is likely that the image of a ‘bad Arab’ was inherited to some degree.
Many movies with harmful depictions are set in a fictional landscape, which through the years has colloquially become known as ‘arabland’. This setting is characterized primarily by a desert and a busy bazaar, where poverty pervades the community and there is little to no democratic choice in day-to-day life. The land is barren and empty, and oftentimes, a white hero from the West swoops in to save the day.
This can most clearly be seen in the opening sequence of the children’s classic, Aladdin. Throughout the opening song, there are plenty of recycled stereotypes that are used as a platform for the rest of the movie. From the narrator’s tales of fabled magic carpets, snake charmers, and belly dancers--to the lyrics, “it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” Exposing young children to these stereotypes may seem harmless in the song and dance of Aladdin, but it becomes one of the first exposures many kids will have to the harmful stereotypes of the Middle East fabricated by Hollywood.
Hollywood imposes an image of destitution on this area of the world and perpetuates an inaccurate stereotype of the Middle East as a region of impoverished people in need of being saved. This inaccurate trope becomes increasingly problematic with the tacked-on ending that those who call this region home do not have the autonomy to better their lives on their own-- and can only be “saved” The characters that Hollywood inserts within ‘arabland’ are also based on racist archetypes that slightly change over the decades. Arab men are largely split into two groups; the lecherous Arab seeking to sleep with the innocent white woman or the stupid Arab who is immensely powerful and/or wealthy. Both types of men are created to be hated by the audience and act as the villain.
The lecherous Arab is often seen within the Indiana Jones franchise. In this film, the Arab character tries to steal the White woman's sidekick from Indiana. Indiana Jones also shows the ‘stupid’ Arab in the infamous scene where an Arab man brandishes a sword and waves it around while Indiana stares and chooses to shoot him dead to end the act. But the stupid, lecherous Arab does not only exist within “arabland” - Father of the Bride 2 shows an Arab man who tries to push Martin, played by Steve Martin, out of his house and begins renovations before Martin has even moved out. This man’s wife also appears shortly and speaks ‘Arabic’, which in reality was scripted gibberish-- and is told to shut up and go away by her husband. The stereotype of a marriage between an Arab man and woman is clear and encourages the audience to cheer for Martin and his family at the expense of the Arab characters.
Arab women were also originally highly sexualized in Hollywood. They were seen as foreign, unknown sex objects that worked to please the sheik or property master. In many movies prior to World War II, Arab women are shown as belly dancers and prostitutes; with no goal other than to please the men in the picture. This all began to change after WWII, as the news was permeated with content surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arab oil embargo, and the Iranian revolution with American diplomat hostages.
In more recent Hollywood media, Arab women are either portrayed as terrorists or as submissive women. When they are portrayed as terrorists, they are bolstered to play the part of the villain. However, when they are submissive, they are meant to inspire pity from the audience, while inspiring anger towards the society that keeps them in that position. Many movies create a clear message that veiled women are oppressed due to their dress, and they have no autonomy in their lives. Even as women in the Middle East change and advance, Hollywood continues to cage them in simplistic and reductive characterizations.
Outside of relying on stereotypes to create the setting and characters in movies, Hollywood does rely on funding from the Department of State and the American military. As the United States entered wars in the Middle East, movies began to mirror the violence of those wars by villainizing the communities and countries that the U.S. was fighting against. The opening scene of Back to the Future has Libyans shooting the protagonist’s sidekick, setting up the rest of the movie. However, the shooters’ country of origin is a completely unnecessary detail and irrelevant to the film’s plot.
One of the most egregious examples of villainization occurs in the movie Rules of Engagement. The movie begins with a shot of a young girl that the audience is meant to sympathize with as an American lawyer goes to Yemen to understand how a shoot-out occurred, and who was to blame. However, at the end of the movie, that very same girl is shown shooting American troops and is transformed into the villain. It all becomes a calculated dance to increase support for an increasingly larger military budget that funds violent bloodshed overseas.
The negative stereotyping of Arabs has gone on long enough and continues to harm generations of innocent people. Arab comedians have made attempts to release some of the tension built by Hollywood by deconstructing the harmful stereotypes through their acts. There is also a budding and increasingly strong movement within Hollywood to create more accurate portrayals of the MENA region and the people within it. This work to become more accurate aims to represent the diverse tapestry of life that exists within the large region, and gives more of a voice to the uniqueness held within the land. However, the damage and pain that Hollywood has created thus far are far from healed, and the healing process will require a concerted effort from the global community. Educating oneself on the widespread stereotypes and the ways they are perpetuated in the media is the first step in dismantling the oppression and pain caused by Hollywood’s harmful tropes.