Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People

by Jack G. Shaheen

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566567521
• ISBN13: 9781566567527
• Release Date: December 2012
• Publisher: Olive Branch Press
• Length: 672 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent, well-written book

After September 11, it became clear that Arabs were among the most "hated" people in America. Stereotypes and misconceptions abounded, and still do. Sadly not enough people have taken the time to educate themselves and would prefer to lump all Arabs into one category: terrorists. Jack Shaheen's Reel Bad Arabs takes an historic look at the villification of Arabs in the film industry over the years. Such stereotyping has only led, and fueled, the general public to view Arabs as terrorists and a fanatical people. In reality, the majority of Arab Americans are hard-working, intelligent, educated people that take being "American" seriously. Unfortunately, as Shaheen so clearly illustrates, one would be hard pressed to find such truly accurate portrayals in film. I applaud Mr. Shaheen for his effort. We need more books like this one. And, on a separate but related note, for those who have the nerve to say those who suffered in the tsunami deserved it. First of all, if you were not so ignorant, you would realize how few of the victims were actually Arab. Second of all, shame on you. Human life is human life, no matter a person's race or religion.

A Common Cause

Shaheen's book is a fact-based, detailed example of how the media can negatively distort the personality of an ethnic group. For all those looking to fight bigotry and racism, read this book as a rallying point. Let's face it: there is good and bad in every eithnicity, gender and race. There is good and bad in all people regardless of religious choice. There is good and bad in families, communities, cities, states, etc.The more we segregate through negative, subliminal messages about the color of our skin or the language we speak or the religion we practice, then the more we build walls between people that have more in common than they have different.Shaheen's book should be a call to action for media moguls to change their mode of operations. Fine, depict arabs as villians, but also depict them as heroes....heroes fighting fires, hereos saving lives in an ER, heroes coaching a bunch of high school kids to a championship football game, heroes as police officers...or as senators, congressmen and cabinet members. All these types of heroes exist as Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Irish-Catholic Americans, Jewish Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, etc.. Not all Italian-Americans are mafia killers -- right? Not all Catholic priests are bad...the overwhelming majority are hard-working practicing Christians.Seems ludicrous that these point shave to be made, but the reel bad ememies are those that generalize and throw a hate blanket over the masses. Read this book not only if you're an Arab, but also if you're looking to fight bigotry in general. You will gain confidence that there are a lot of examples to support your cause...a common cause.

A sharp and acerbic look at negative movie stereotypes

The overwhelming majority of Arabic people around the world are peaceful, law-abiding citizens, but you'd never deduce that from their consistently, overwhelmingly villainous portrayal in the nearly one thousand Hollywood movies analyzed by Jack Shahenn (Professor Emeritus of Mass Communications at Southern Illinois University) in Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies A People, a sharp and acerbic look at negative movie stereotypes of an entire ethnicity. Meticulously taking apart the origins of these stereotypes in cinema's earliest days, Reel Bad Arabs pursues the recurring theme of vilifying the unfamiliar up to the present day. Starkly relevant, soberly honest, and highly recommended for students of popular culture, the film industry, and sociology, as well as the non-specialist general reader with an interest in today's political and cultural problems of distinguishing Arab terrorists from non-terrorists.

Evidence of Discrimination

Reel Bad Arabs is an essential read for anyone concerned about fairness, objectivity and stereotyping. A brilliantly gathered documentation of a little known or appreciated history of how "Hollywood vilifies people," in this case, Arabs and Arab Americans. Jack Shaheen is a great scholar. How anyone would have the patience to review so many films, over such a long period of time, simply escapes me. And he is not terribly ideological or biased himself! What he does is simply point out a consistent pattern, film by film, on how Arabs are depicted in film. The book is long overdue, extremely well documented, and an easy read. The alphabetized entries give a plot summary and then focus on the presentation or role of "the Arab" in the story. Sometimes history is rewritten, facts ignored, and truths disregarded just for the sake of vilification or plot continuity. To counter this in general, the book opens with needed information on who Arabs and Arab-Americans really are and how these facticities differ from their depiction as sheikhs, harem owners, villains, bandits, mummies, and, for the women, maidens in distress. While not a goal of the author, the book is a history of Hollywood and the development of American political positions on the Middle East. Shaheen identifies Exodus as the most effective movie in shaping American perceptions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Hardly a balanced film, this Palestinian bashing movie and others that were filmed in Israel and/or produced by Israelis in cooperation with the Israeli government, illustrate how negative Arab mages impact our attitudes about Arab Muslims, Palestinians in particular, regardless of fact. If only Hollywood stopped there, but it didn't. like a runaway train, the defamation continues.Shaheen's telling observations are supported by evidence: for more than a century, ever since camras started cranking, about one thousand Hollywood movies have dehumanized the Arab people. As the reviews indicate, Arab diversity is ignored, countries are misnamed or simply made up, and the language ill spoken. Shaheen actually includes a list of epithets used to describe or denounce Arab peoples. Anyone interested in the cinema, injustice, in sociology and political science will find this book enormously useful. I loved it and recommend it without reservation. Let the evidence speak for itself and damn Hollywood! -Philip Kayal Seton Hall University

Required Reading for Film and Communication Students

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.