MovieChat Forums > Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2006) Discussion > Don't disagree with Shaheen but....

Don't disagree with Shaheen but....

posted 11 years ago by Stan_Kubricks_Mentor
2 replies | jump to latest

Shaheen could've just cut to the chase and state that the crap movies that he uses as example are just pure garbage that is put out by rightwingers to appeal to the stupidity of the baser elements. EVERY one of the movie examples Shaheen uses is just dreck and when I've been unfortunate enough to run across that garbage I always end up rolling my eyes at the stupid ridiculousness of them.

ALSO, while Shaheen is going off on the vilification of arabs by the film industry/media, Shaheen should also point out how hollywood lumps all arab/muslim/indian/"dark" people together. How hollywood just blurs these "darkies" such that the average idiot american thinks a hindu indian or sikh indian IS "an arab". Or the "orientals"? Shaheen should point out how hollywood/the media doesn't see chinese or korean or japanese or vietnamese, but instead sees "oriental"? And I don't even need to start with how persons from South/Latin America are portrayed by hollywood.....when a person that is supposedly argentinean in a hollywood film looks awful more of an indo-american person from Central America or Peru......

Then, of course, there is hollywood "darkening" "our enemies". During the cold war, russians were universally portrayed with "dark features" so that russians had arab or middle-eastern features. Oh but loh and behold! With the cold war over and the big bad russians are defeated, what do find out about the russians? There are probably more russians with blonde hair and blue eyes than there are scandinavians with blonde hair and blue eyes!

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[–] bootblack987 10 years ago

Shaheen could've just cut to the chase and state that the crap movies that he uses as example are just pure garbage that is put out by rightwingers to appeal to the stupidity of the baser elements.

The quality of the movies he uses as examples has nothing to do with his point in that those movies were seen by many, many people and has an affect on them to the detriment to us all as a society.

[–] yusef-ghanima 10 years ago

shaheen as a stupid american professor should he himself know the difference between arabs and iranians, since it's the difference between semites and aryans.