Recently my son and I went to the movies. While waiting for the main feature, a trailer for a newly produced film appeared. My son looked at me and said, “Dad, that looks like the compound that we lived on in Saudi Arabia.”
Then the bullets started flying and the bombs started exploding while a group of Americans was shown playing a softball game on a Western compound in Riyadh.
Country singer Tim McGraw acting as a participant in the game was seen gasping and the Americans were all scrambling for safety as various Arabs were seen shooting and bombing the compound.
Never fear as later in the trailer, Academy Award winners Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper along with superstar Jennifer Garner, acting as US agents, are seen pursuing the culprits of these acts of terrorism and attempting to bring them to justice. Movies are bigger and better than ever and this one looks to be a real blockbuster.
The name of the movie is “The Kingdom.” It is scheduled for release in the United States on April 20. It is being made with a budget of over $80 million and was filmed in Arizona, Washington, D.C., and the United Arab Emirates. This well funded movie has a stellar cast and production crew and will be released by Universal Studios, a major film house in the US.
On the official website for the movie, it states that an elite American team (played by Foxx, Cooper and Garner) “go to Riyadh to hunt down and capture the terrorist mastermind behind a deadly attack on Americans working in Saudi Arabia. The feds have only one week to infiltrate and cripple a cell bent on jihad to Western society.”
Saudi Arabia is described on this website as a “scorching foreign land — a byzantine maze of profiteering politicians and storefront terrorists.” The official film description continues, “Bound by handlers who refuse to play ball with the US, the agents quickly find the local law enforcement more hindrance than help and soon grow uncertain of anybody’s allegiance.” Later “The Kingdom” website mentions in that the US agents find a sympathetic Saudi police captain who helps them in spite of the official Saudi “hindrance” on the case.
Moving throughout the blogosphere on the discussion of the film, one finds that the movie is loosely based on the real-life attack on compounds in Riyadh in May of 2003 where nine Americans were amongst the 23 people killed by terrorists. However, very little of the rest of the movie appears to be historically accurate and stereotypes abound in the trailer and official film write up. The big question here is, do we have another “True Lies” which depicted all Arabs in the movie as dirty, demonic and despicable people, or will this movie be more like “The Kingdom of Heaven” which focused on Saladin and was universally praised by Arabs and Muslims as presenting valid images and not keying on negative stereotypes.
American popular culture and the American film industry have consistently depicted Arabs and Muslims in a negative light. Many activists over time have confronted these issues but as individuals, they saw little success. Finally, various organizations were formed that began to present a more united front on fighting the negative stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims.
Individuals writing about the negative images have included such luminaries as Edward Said and Jack Shaheen. Organizations working for fair images of Arabs and Muslims included the Arab American University Graduates (AAUG), the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA), the Council on Islamic American Relations (CAIR), and the premier organization in this field, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).
ADC was formed with the express purpose of correcting false stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims and fighting discrimination against the same groups. ADC was founded by Sen. James Abourezk in the aftermath of the so-called “Abscam” scandal with the US Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Abscam was an FBI sting operation which used alleged “Middle Eastern” businessmen with Arabic surnames to offer bribes to members of Congress.
Had any other ethnic group been used in that scam, wholesale protests would have been heard. However, after the formation of ADC in response to the Abscam debacle, defamation and discrimination against Arabs and Muslims were now being specifically addressed specifically by a national organization.
ADC worked closely with Shaheen to confront the film industry and the media when negative images of Arabs and Muslims were being portrayed. Shaheen is professor emeritus of Mass Communications at Southern Illinois University and the author of “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.” Together they have gotten Hollywood to alter scripts and even change music lines in movies where Arabs and Muslims are improperly stereotyped. ADC has sent a letter to the chairman of Universal Studios, Marc Shmuger, asking to review the script of “The Kingdom” and see advance copies of the film.
Friends of Saudi Arabia (FSA), a US nonprofit organization which addresses cultural and educational issues between Saudi Arabia and the US, and of which I am the executive director, has also written the chairman of Universal Studios questioning the use of stereotypes and false information about Saudis and Saudi Arabia in the film.
In the letter to Shmuger, FSA states that as a major organization that deals with friendship between the United States and Saudi Arabia and monitors media and film presentations about Saudis and Saudi Arabia, they would like to meet with the chairman and review the script and film clips. FSA says in the letter, “We are very concerned that the movie might present negative stereotypes about the people of Saudi Arabia. We hope that this not the case, but we would like to review the script and see an advanced viewing of the movie.” FSA goes on to say that US spokesman and board member, H. Delano Roosevelt and the staff of FSA would be glad to assist Universal Studios in any way to present a fair and true picture of the people of Saudi Arabia.
Organizations such and ADC and FSA say that they are united in their concern for these improper stereotypes presented in films and the media and are working together to help correct improprieties in this film and the media in general.
As I was finishing this article, a friend asked me about the film and when it was scheduled to debut. I told him April 20th. He said, “Oh that’s interesting. That’s Hitler’s birthday, you know.”
