Stereotypes and Communication

I thought the film that we watched in class about how Hollywood stereotypes Arabs was enlightening. As naïve as it sounds, I had never really considered Arabs as being a group that had been significantly marginalized. In my classes, if there was talk about discrimination, then the African-American or Asian-American experience usually was at the center of the discussion. My interaction with Arabs had also been limited. Growing up in middle school and high school, I had only a few friends from the Middle East. I was fairly good friends with one man in particular, but there did not appear to be anything remarkably different between the two of us. Besides celebrating different holidays, we grappled with and talked about the same issues and problems I imagine a lot of young students did back then. This is part of the reason why I was taken aback at the portrayals of Arabs in movies and how they are stereotyped, despite having watched a few of the movies (like Aladdin) that the film had discussed.

While acknowledging that these stereotypes have existed, however, I would also contend that Hollywood is not entirely to blame for their creation. If somebody wants to make a movie about terrorists or terrorism, then that somebody is not going to cast farmers from the American Mid-West. Nobody would believe that farmer Joe would become upset by the exploitive policies the U.S. government had employed against him and others, and thus would result to hijacking an airplane. It does not make sense why farmer Joe would do such a thing, which is probably the reason why there have been no farmer Joe’s that have hijacked airplanes. If one is going to make a movie about said topic, then there has to be some historical backing behind it otherwise the audience won’t buy the storyline. Unfortunately, there have been some Arabic individuals in groups that have employed such methods in the past, and since Americans are aware of this history, such a plot line is more acceptable to them. I think that if one were to actually ask these people after the movie whether they thought all Arabs were terrorists, one would be hard pressed to find somebody who would make such a ridiculous claim.

Now I know that Arabs have not just been stereotyped as terrorists and that the film mentioned a lot of other qualities that Americans (or Westerners in general) ascribe to Arabs. Spirituality is another characteristics that Hollywood has consistently employed in their portrayal of Arab characters. However what is the basis for this particular stereotype? The fact that theocracies still exist in the Middle East while in most other places of the world they have been done away with, shows that faith does play a large role in many Arabs’ lives. On top of that, the fact that governments in many of these countries compete with fanatical religious groups in terms of how strictly they can follow religious practices and beliefs also speaks to this issue. This is not necessarily wrong in any sense, it is just more foreign to Americans and Westerners who have more secular governments and practices. So, it makes sense why Hollywood would pick up on these facts and translate them into believable characters. Is it wrong to think that all Arabs are this way? Yes, morally and literally. However, stereotypes have to have some sort of basis – the do not just simply fall out of the sky. Also, if people are concerned that there are only negative images of Arabs in American and Western movies (and sometimes other media), then people have to remember that cross-cultural communication is a two-way street. It is a dialogue between two different groups of people. And, as we talked about in class how America wants to reshape its image abroad so that people better understand and appreciate the American life, it only makes sense that Arabic nations should wish to do the same.