Does Hollywood Vilify Arab Terrorists?

Jack Shaheen, an American of Lebanese descent and the author of Reel Bad Arabs, thinks Hollywood films and TV dramas, especially those made since 9/11, vilify Arabs. If by "Arabs" it is meant "Arab terrorists" one can only respond, would that it were so.

Te problem with Hollywood is not that there is a myriad of movies and TV shows with Middle Eastern villains. The problem is that during the War on Terror, which is being fought against Middle Eastern Islamo Fascists, there is a distinct lacking of movies and TV shows with Middle Eastern Islamo Fascist bad guys.

Shaheen, indeed, could only pick out a couple of movies, such as last years The Kingdom, and TV's suspense drama 24 to direct his ire at. He apparently didn't remember that both the movie and the TV show also have featured Middle Eastern characters in a positive light. The Kingdom, for example, had a Saudi police officer character who helps the FBI agents hunt down the terrorists. In one episode of 24, the show's hero Jack Bauer is helped by a pair of Arab-American shop owners in a battle against terrorist mercenaries.

Oddly enough, Shaheen did not mention the film Flight 93. One supposes it was because even someone who likes to play the ethnic card like Shaheen could not spin away the fact that Flight 93 depicted real events.

The norm for Hollywood, Shaheen's complaints notwithstanding, is to avoid using Middle Eastern characters as villains or to even depict the War on Terror as America's fault. The film version of Sum of All Fears, which came out just before 9/11, is an example of the first phenomenon. The Middle Eastern terrorist characters depicted in the Tom Clancy novel were replaced by an absurd group of Central European Neo Nazis. Films like Syriana and Rendition, which Shaheen praises, blame America for the War on Terror with the same fervor as Jeremiah Wright.

It's a cliché but a true one that Hollywood is dominated by left wingers. The people who determine what movies and TV shows get made by and large do not regard the War on Terror as being good (that's the West and its allies) against evil (being the Islamo Fascists.) Many in Hollywood actually hold some sympathy for the terrorists, believing that they are driven to do what they do by American foreign policy. In any case, very few in Hollywood are brave enough to risk being called "racist" by people like Jack Shaheen by green lighting a War on Terror film with Americans as the good guys and the Islamo Fascists as the bad guys. Films like The Kingdom and the pre 9/11 action thriller True Lies are anomalies, not the norm.

Indeed, Hollywood has come out with a slew of anti war films like Rendition, Redacted, and Lions for Lambs that depict the United States as the heavy. None of these films have made any money at the box office. That has not stopped Hollywood from churning them out.

It was not always so. During World War II, Hollywood started making patriotic films, with Germans and Japanese as the heavies (with the occasional comedy relief Italian) practically before the smoke of Pearl Harbor cleared. Most of them were forgettable, filled with stereotypes and propaganda bombast. Some, like Casablanca, will live forever.

So Jack Shaheen should stop his whining and thank God that he lives in a world where film makers are too politically correct or maybe just too afraid to make the kind of movies and TV shows he finds appalling. If anyone were to make the kind of movie (i.e., one in which we're good, they're bad, and we win), Shaheen might be more unhappy than he already is. But one suspects that movie goers would love it, attend it in droves, and make a lot of money for those film makers brave enough to produce it.

Source: Critic Accuses Hollywood of Vilifying Arabs, Tom Perry, Reuters, May 1, 2008