Ideological Criticism In The Documentary “How Hollywood Vilifies Arabs”
The documentary “How Hollywood Vilifies Arabs” is an example of ideological criticism that had a great deal of impact on me. It was a comprehensive and critical of the Arab representation in Hollywood; furthermore, the video also led me to think about how Arab people represent themselves. This documentary deals with the distortion of Arab cinematic history that has run practically unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today's Hollywood production. It reflects how some political conflicts during history affects the depictions of the Arab people in media. The producer of this documentary does a good job at pointing out discrimination in Hollywood productions, and this documentary is successful in initially attributing the discrimination toward Arab and Muslims in different countries. Without a doubt, one of the most important functions of media is helping people to make sense of worlds they do not know. Hollywood presents stereotypes of gender and environment, both pre and post-WWII.
The documentary showed that the environment was always depicted as a desert surrounded by palm trees. Another environment that was shown was a palace that had a torture chamber in the basement, and the pasha sat in a special place. From the beginning, Arab women were often presented as belly dancers and highly sexualized, while other women were presented in black veils, behind wooden windows in the background in the shadows. The majority are presented as they marginalized and oppressed in public life. The men are always barbaric. They are rich and unintelligent sheikhs who do not know the value of money, and they usually wear traditional clothing. These images changed after World War II but for the worse.
Arab depictions are presented as violent, especially after Israel-Palestine conflicts. The movies repeatedly depict the whole Arab world, but specifically Palestinians as savage. Violence is the main theme of Arab depictions, even for children’s characters. A primary theme of Alibaba, the famous character, is violence. In this cartoon, children hear “they cut off your ear if they don't like your face. ” To show a fair image of Arab people, the producer ended the documentary by including shots that prove how much Arabian justice issues are unlike their representations in Hollywood. The first example is a shot of Muhammad al-Durrah, a Palestinian child who was hiding himself behind his father and shooed by an Israeli gun. Another shot is for women who go to learn, teach, and contribute to building the society with their husbands. While the documentary presents Hollywood representations of Arabic people, it does not address the fact that Arab producers also exploit such stereotypes to attract foreign audiences. Arab producers should be blamed for bad representations of themselves in cinema and drama. The reality in which Arabs are rich yet unintelligent and uncultured unfortunately is the image some Arab films produce to satisfy the audience’s needs.
Also, the belly dancers are significant characters in theater and films, although the percentage of women who dance in public places is limited, so this is not such a popular phenomenon at all. Even if Arab producers target foreign people, they present the complications of their countries. Some Egyptian producers recently support their movies with subtitles in English. These movies reflect some complications that occur there like poverty, violence, corruption, and starvation. This supports the idea that producers work for profit more than improving Arab images. Saudi producers also discuss Saudi society complications when they target foreign people. Haifaa Almansoor, the first Saudi director who produced “Wajdaa, ” a movie that was presented in American movie theaters in 2013, focused on some of the complications. The main theme of the story is a girl suffering from discrimination, oppression and inequality in a conservative Saudi society. She could not drive a bike because her mother prevented her from doing so. She memorized the holy book for her school competition to get the money, but her school forced her to donate this money to Palestinian children. Her father left them and got married to another woman. There is no positive aspect reflected in this movie.
Another example is “Ladies First: Saudi Arabia’s Female Candidates” video that was presented in the New York Times. This film explores Saudi women suffering in election even though women have recently been allowed to be chosen in elections. Instead of focusing on enabling women to be selected in the election, the producer focused on the obstacles they face. Even the news contributes to the subversion of positive Arab images. Most of the news is exported from the north to the south, so as Arab people know more about people in advanced countries more than they do. Also, most of our news focuses on violence, war, and problems. Coverage for achievements and progress in any respect assumes nonpriority at all.
In conclusion, cultural scholars need to recognize the reasons for discrimination toward a given race or group, and they should analyze the representations of these groups in media. Media coverage can reveal the reason because it provides a picture of the world, which people do not know about it. While media can succeed in doing so, Arab youth can change our image if they consider making the correction of Arab images a priority.
