Terrorists, thieves and barbarians; violent, backward and religiously unhinged — this could easily sum up how Arabs and Muslims are portrayed on screen, be it the big screen of Hollywood or the little screen of television. Or quite simply extreme.
There is no such thing as a “normal” Arab or Muslim character. When one pops up, it is usually in order to blow up the world or — if the mood is more romantic — to kidnap a white woman and whisk her off to his harem.
So what? Why should it matter that films portray Arabs and Muslims as caricatures? Should we not just laugh and shrug it off?
I remember back in 1994 when the film True Lies was released. I saw the film in a packed movie theater in London’s Bayswater area. Three-quarters of the audience was Arab. Boy did we laugh! Not only was the plot ludicrous but Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke Arabic! Take his heavily accented English and multiply by a factor of ten and you get an idea of what he sounds like pronouncing Arabic words he does not understand. Not only that but the lines they gave him were so hilarious. We didn’t get offended, we were too busy laughing.
Not anymore though. Last week Britain’s Islamic Human Rights Commission released a report entitled “The British Media and Muslim representation: The ideology of demonization.” The report argues that Muslims are consistently portrayed as violent, dangerous and threatening in Hollywood movies and that this reinforces prejudice against Muslims. No surprises there then.
There have been a number of studies that have looked in detail at how Arabs and Muslims are portrayed in films. From the silent films of the 1920s that showed Arabs as brigands and thieves to present day films that show Arabs as ruthless terrorists intent on world domination, Hollywood rarely portrays Arabs sympathetically. That in itself is not news. But what strikes me about this report is — dare I say it — how oversensitive Muslims have become.
Being able to laugh at yourself is a sign of security. Being easily offended is a sign of being threatened. Clearly — and understandably — Muslims in Britain feel threatened. In fact the most interesting part of this report is the accompanying survey of British Muslims which shows how convinced they are that the media is biased against them. Not only that but there is a pervasive belief that stereotypes in film and television are directly linked to their experiences of discrimination and religious hatred.
Stereotypes are not in themselves harmful. In fact they are necessary; they help us make sense of the world we live in. We all use them, be it consciously or not. When we meet someone new, we build up a profile for them based on the little we know of them. Stereotypes fill in the blanks. Then as we get to know people, we rely less on stereotypes and more on direct experience.
Moreover our direct experience updates our stereotypes and makes them more accurate representations.
There is no denying that screen depictions play a significant role not only in reinforcing stereotypes but in creating them in the first place, particularly of ethnic groups we are unfamiliar with. The problem with portrayals of people from the Middle East is, for one, thing their homogeneity. There is little differentiation between an Arab, an Iranian or a Turk; they are all lumped into one, let alone differentiation between say an Algerian and a Saudi, though our national characters are quite different. As for Muslim, though the Muslim world is immense in its cultural diversity, we are once again lumped into one indistinguishable whole. More important, these portrayals which paint us all with one brush paint us in rough black and white strokes. This creates and reinforces stereotypes that are not only inaccurate and crude but also wide in their reach.
So why do I think Muslims are being oversensitive? The answer is that we seem to be finding it harder and harder to accept criticism. There is a tendency to cast ourselves as the victims and this polarizes our views of everything that is said or written about us. A negative portrayal is not offensive in itself. A film in which the baddies are a band of Muslim terrorists cannot be objected to just because it shows Muslims in a way that does not accurately represent Muslims today. What can be objected to is that these are the only portrayals.
The problem is compounded by a culture, at least in the Arab world, which is deeply averse to criticism.
We believe in presenting our best side; airing our dirty laundry so to speak is just not in our genes. We also take things personally.
I have not seen the film East is East which was singled out for criticism by the report but I did see the play it was based on. I did not like the play at all. I felt uneasy and yes, offended. It showed Muslims in a way that did not correlate with my own personal experience of being a Muslim and I resented the idea that audiences would tar me with the same brush, that this play would form a basis for how non-Muslims understood Muslims to be. But I could not object to the play. It was autobiographical and a valid depiction of someone else’s experience of growing up as a Muslim in Britain.
If we want to see more accurate representations of Arabs and Muslims in the media and on screen, we need to accept that negative portrayals are here to stay. What is needed is to move portrayals of Arabs and Muslims from the unidimensional ones we see today to multidimensional depictions that show the full variety of what it means to be Arab and or Muslim. This requires understanding that stereotypes are altered by personal experience. One step is to encourage Arab and Muslim filmmakers, not to make soft-focus PR exercises, but to make hard-hitting honest films like the Palestinian film Paradise Now or the Algerian film Days of Glory or the Iranian film The Lizard and to support the distribution and success of these films. We could also encourage anything which shares our life experience with others, for instance documentaries, journals, books, songs and magazines, all of which help make Arabs and Muslims more familiar to those who do not know us — so long as these are honest accounts.
We also need to encourage the film industry to include more ordinary Arab/Pakistani/Turkish/Iranian characters who lead normal lives, secondary characters who are boring law-abiding citizens rather than colorful caricatures on center stage. In other words we need to make realistic portrayals more accessible to filmmakers by providing them with more material to play with.
And as for our anger, it is justified and should be expressed, but constructively.
