Regular link.
From a European perception it is hard to ignore that foreigners are often shown in a less than favourable light in Hollywood movies. The English are stiff, The Germans have no sense of humour, the French are sissies. According to Jack Shaheen, the Arabs are treated far worse by Tinseltown. Nova interviewed Shaheen. That caught my attention and really got me thinking. For example, i have never seen the Disney movie Aladdin, but the clips that were shown during the interview made me feel really uncomfortable. And i can’t help but ask myself if these sort of stereotypes would not have been portrayed in the way they were, if the story was about jews or blacks.
The Youtube clip is a trailer of the documentary Reel Bad Arabs. The trailer alone forces me to think about several questions. Are the Arabs and muslims the most maligned people in the history in Hollywood? If so, did that history played a part in the broad American support of the invasion of Iraq. And how have these movies affected the relationship between the Dutch and the Turkish and Moroccan immigrants?
Jack Sheehan gave me a lot of food for thought and i thank him for that. Reel Bad Arabs is on the top of the list of documentaries that i really need to see.
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Americans? Stereotyping?! Portraying other cultures badly?!! The hell you say! That would never happen here! Oh yeah, I guess it does.
That’s why I dig foreign films, that is except for the Italian films. I just never could get into them. I would have to say English and French would be my favorite, and I love the wierdness of some of the German films I have seen. While horror films aren’t my thing the Russians have an interesting take on them.
All of Hollywood must have been in a panic when the Russians became our allies and could no longer be villified in film. I’m sure they all breathed a collective sigh of relief when the arabs became our “enemies.”
Unfortunately there are far too many people in the world, especially Americans, that believe what comes out of hollywood is the absolute truth.
I’m a big fan of English TV series, i’m not really familiar with English movies. I still want to see The Queen and Notes On A Scandal.
But Russian horror movies? That sounds interesting!