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Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
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Music Books > Arab Strap > Item 5
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Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
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by Jack G. Shaheen
Sales Rank: 407620
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List Price: $25.00
$16.50
At Amazon
on 12-29-2007.
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Features
Paperback: 574 pages
Publisher: Interlink Publishing Group July 2001
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1566563887
ISBN-13: 978-1566563888
Product Dimensions:
8.8 x 5.8 x 1.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
From Library Journal
Shaheen (mass communication, Southern Illinois Univ.; Arab and Muslim Stereotypes in American Popular Culture) has written a meticulous, passionate, and very articulate description of the persistent and prolonged vilification of Arab peoples in mainstream Western movies. Offering primarily reviews of the 900 films he has seen or researched over 20 years, he documents a century of offensive stereotypes and shows how the image of the "dirty Arab" has reemerged over the last 30 years, even as other groups have more or less successfully fought to eliminate the use of racist stereotypes. The appendixes include lists of the best and worst depictions of Arabs in popular films, alternate titles, a list of epithets thrown at Arabs in films, and a list of the fictional locations used in films. Although the work is aimed at a college-level audience, the clear writing and lack of jargon make it accessible to a much wider readership. Highly recommended for academic and large public libraries, as well as for other libraries with collections dealing with racism or Arab culture. [For more on Islamic culture, see "A Misundersood Faith," p. 82-83. Ed.] Andrea Slonosky, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn, N.
- Andrea Slonosky, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People is 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 nearly 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.
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
Jack Shaheen's blockbuster book "REEL BAD ARABS: How Hollywood Vilifies a People" blows the cover on the film industry's century-long free ride in smearing Arab Muslims. What Shaheen spent the past 20 years researching should have been and can now become grist for where it's vital to plant the seeds of understanding and tolerance, namely, in the groves of academia. Young Americans in film and communications courses need to face up to some pretty disturbing facts about how Hollywood has gotten away with defaming a people. The motion picture industry has made huge amounts of money by destroying the good name of nearly 300 million innocent men and women of the Arab world. As Shaheen's REEL BAD ARABS documents the shameful vilification of an entire people, tests for college students should include questions like these: 1. How do you think Americans form their ideas about what is taking place in the Middle East? 2. How effective do you think movies are in shaping the way Americans think about the Arabs, especially Palestinians, and about the "peace process" in the region? 3. Do such perceptions impact public opinion and policy? 4. What movies can you name that presented Arabs in anything but a bad light as terrorists, oil monopolists, lechers and other villains? 5. How effective do you think movies are in manipulating the way we Americans see 'The Other,' namely Arabs, as The Enemy? Besides the psychological and political side of his subject, Jack Shaheen has provided us with a wonderful guide to nearly 1,000 films. In spite of the bias this book lays out all too clearly, it nevertheless is guaranteed to provide much pleasure for the reader at the same time as it opens her eyes to the facts. REEL BAD ARABS should be in every library in America and abroad, as well as on film-studio reference shelves to prick the conscience of every film producer and director and script-writer from Hollywood to Haifa.
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Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
Updated on 12-29-2007.
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