Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Villifies a People

by Jack G. Shaheen

Reel Bad How Hollywood Vilifies a People is a groundbreaking book that dissects a slanderous history dating from cinema's earliest days to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters that feature machine-gun wielding and bomb-blowing "evil" Arabs. Award-winning film authority Jack G. Shaheen, noting that only Native Americans have been more relentlessly smeared on the silver screen, painstakingly makes his case that "Arab" has remained Hollywood's shameless shorthand for "bad guy," long after the movie industry has shifted its portrayal of other minority groups. In this comprehensive study of nearly one thousand films, arranged alphabetically in such chapters as "Villains," "Sheikhs," "Cameos," and "Cliffhangers," Shaheen documents the tendency to portray Muslim Arabs as Public Enemy #1-brutal, heartless, uncivilized Others bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners. Shaheen examines how and why such a stereotype has grown and spread in the film industry and what may be done to change Hollywood's defamation of Arabs.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, Race, History, Politics, Islam, Anti Racist

574 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2001

About the author

Internationally acclaimed author and media critic, Dr. Jack G. Shaheen, is a committed internationalist and a devoted humanist. A Pittsburgh native and former CBS news consultant on Middle East Affairs, Shaheen’s lectures and writings illustrate that damaging racial and ethnic stereotypes of Asians, blacks, Native Americans and others injure innocent people. He defines crude caricatures, explains why they persist, and provides workable solutions to help shatter misperceptions.

Professor Shaheen has given over 1,000 lectures in nearly all the 50 states and three continents. Among those universities that have welcomed him are Oxford, Amherst, Brown, Emory, Harvard, the University of Southern California, West Point, as well as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the White House Truman Center. World capitols where he has spoken include London, Berlin, Paris, Prague, New Delhi, Cairo, and Istanbul. He has consulted with the United Nations, the Los Angeles Commission on Human Relations, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and New York City’s Commission on Civil Rights. In cooperation with the United States government, he has conducted communication seminars throughout the Middle East.

Dr. Shaheen is the author of four books: Nuclear War Films, Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture, The TV Arab and the award-winning book and film Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.

His writings include 300-plus essays in publications such as Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post to chapters on media stereotypes in dozens of college textbooks.

Dr. Shaheen, an Oxford Research Scholar, is the recipient of two Fulbright teaching awards. He holds degrees from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Missouri. He has appeared on national network programs such as CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio, Nightline, Good Morning America, 48 Hours, and The Today Show.

Among Dr. Shaheen’s awards recognizing his “outstanding contribution towards a better understanding of our global community” are: The University of Pennsylvania’s Janet Lee Stevens Award; the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of “his lifelong commitment to bring a better understanding towards peace for all mankind;” and the Pancho Be Award for “the advancement of humanity.” Pancho Be, a Mayan phrase, means to seek the root of truth.

Shaheen has served as a consultant with film and TV companies: DreamWorks, Warner Brothers, Hanna-Barbera, and Showtime.

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is really more of a research tool or at the very least a document of Arab and Muslim stereotypes promoted in over 900 Hollywood films dating from 1999 to the silent era. I read the 35 page introduction and scanned the alphabetized entries by Shaheen (looking for my favorite and least favorite movies). The material is arranged by film title and contains a brief bullet outline of the instances in each movie where Arabs or Muslims are seen either as a stereotype, are maligned, or are represented in a fair light. The author points out that the majority (I think it was about 95%) of all of the films he has so far reviewed portray Arabs and Muslims as evil-doers, money hungry sheiks, religious fanatics, faceless masses in black, harem maidens, and even sub-human individuals. Shaheen explains that while Hollywood as a whole no longer maligns other races to this degree, it still perpetuates myths and gross overstatements about race and religion when it comes to Arabs. In addition to the book, I highly recommend his more recent documentary film of the same title. It is a fluid, albeit traditional, presentation of his ideas, which he substantiates with a significant amount of movie clips. The film further expands on a variety of topics such as DOD support of movies about military campaigns, and production companies that create political propaganda films as entertainment.

[Salma]

هذا فيلم وثائقي عن الكتاب يتحدث فيه مؤلفه جاك شاهين عنه، ترجمته الجزيرة
كيف تحط هوليوود من قدر الشعوب: العرب الأشرار
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIj6a...

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

the book is actually titled Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Villifies a People.
you should read this book if you've ever watched movies where there are "terrorists" because theres a good chance they were "arabs"

in the first part of the book the author discusses the main arab stereotypes in movies, the majority of the book is a huge list of movies with a short discription of the racism towards arabs involved in the movie. it has a list of the worst offenders - back to the future and true lies being two. the list is surprising and makes you rethink a lot of movies you've seen in the past.

its a good book to check out of the library and read the intro about the kinds of racism and then just flip through to certain movies you know or have seen.

[missy jean]

We watched Shaheen's documentary (same title) in my film class last night, and I felt like my eyes were completely opened. I've always considered myself very sensitive to racial stereotypes and prejudices, but I couldn't believe how many movies contain anti-Arab messages that I had never even noticed. The images are so pervasive, it's scary (thank you, Disney), and extremely socially relevant. I highly recommend the documentary, but I'll warn you that there is a lot of violence (since it contains clips of Hollywood movies). Anyway, now I want to read the book...

[Ingy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good book.. It's more of an encyclopedia of American movies that show Arabs and how Hollywood stereotype them, starting the silent cinema era! So you can search it for a certain movie but you can't just read it all..
But what is really interesting and very important is the introduction of the book.. It can be a book itself, and it contains very interesting notes on the stereotyping matter overall, and for Arabs in particular.

[Foxglove · Rating 2 out of 5]

While he tries to make good points, his rant against Operation Thunderbolt made me discount his theory. You can no more say the movie was anti-Arab anymore than a Holocaust movie was anti-German. The movie was about a hijacked plane and was taken from the testimony of survivors. Badly done.

[Moataz Mohamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

The documentary was more well-constructed than the book in my opinion.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Shaheen's Reel Bad Arabs is a classic analysis of the ways that Hollywood has depicted the Middle East in decades of demeaning films. Shaheen begins the book breaking down the various stereotypes, all refugees from Orientalist art and literature, which cemented Hollywood's view of the region: the greedy, lecherous oil sheikh; the ravishing romantic sheikh of Rudolf Valentino; the dirty, backstabbing Bedouin and fanatical terrorists; undead Egyptian mummies and wicked Arabian sorcerers; women reduced to belly dancers, harem lovers or meek background figures; a general blurring of the "Arab World" to conflate disparate cultures (including non-Arab Berbers, Iranians and Turks) into an undifferentiated mass of Islamic fanatics. Shaheen's analysis of movies makes for grim reading, showing how pervasive such stereotypes are and how few mainstream films push against them. Classic movies like Lawrence of Arabia and The Wind and the Lion receive mixed reviews, while Shaheen praises David O. Russell's Three Kings, along with obscure works like Paul Robeson's Jericho and Moustapha Akkad's Libyan war epic Lion of the Desert (he barely mentions that Muammar Gaddafi bankrolled the latter, but you take what you can get). His "worst list" consists of openly racist films, from Leon Uris's Israel-promoting Exodus to the exploitative slave drama Ashanti and the Burt Reynolds vehicle Cannonball Run, with its goofus sheikh who barely appears without trying to bribe someone. Not to mention the endless glut of action films from the '80s and '90s (many of them Cannon Group programmers starring the likes of Michael Dudikoff and Chuck Norris) which presented viewers an endless ream of devious, mass-murdering killers mocked as "towel-heads" and "walking bedsheets." These stereotypes expanded into the '90s, from action movies like True Lies to Disney's Aladdin, which was forced to trim offensive song lyrics after a widespread outcry. So many other films feature casual slurs, racist jokes and tossed-off stereotypes that it becomes mindboggling to contemplate their cumulative effect, both on viewers who absorb such stereotypes uncritically and American Muslims confronted with such ugly treatment of their heritage. Shaheen published his book in the summer of 2001, soon before 9/11 escalated Islamophobia to the stratosphere, though a follow-up work covers some of the movies released afterwards. It's a troubling volume about Hollywood's exotic demonization of an entire region and diverse group of people, deserving a spot alongside works like Reel Injun and The Celluloid Closet in its examination of shameless tereotypes.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're interested in film history this book does a really good job of focusing on a specific theme and looking at it over the long arc of time, from silent films to modern blockbusters. It exposes the fact that the poor treatment of Arabs in cinema isn't a new thing, but rather a long-term scapegoating that is sometimes intentional (as in the Golan/Globus movies) or just a product of casual racism. It's very engaging for being a scholarly work. I would love to see an update to this book that covers more recent movies, but it's pretty obvious that Hollywood is still treating reel Arabs horribly.

[Nisrine · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a student of film and a muslim this book has really opened my eyes to the unfair depiction of my people in Hollywood films. I was aware of it all along to some extent yet I never took the time to delve deep into the matter. This is also a great resource for the research paper I will be writing on the matter. Brilliant really! Thank you for this amazing read I cannot start to imagine the amount of hard work and research and endless hours of movie viewing that went into this book.

[Bob Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has two main sections: the first is a lengthy introductory essay where Sheehan explores the sordid history of Hollywood’s portrayal of Arabs and its effect in society, and the second is a alphabetical listing of each feature film with Arab characters in a 100-year period, each with a description of how that film portrays Arabs well or badly. As you might guess, the first is much more interesting than most of the second, though in that second part the movies you would already want to look up have a good amount of interesting details to them. Good to read a bit of, good as a resource, though it won’t find room on my shelf because of the cruft.

[Alfie Yehya · Rating 4 out of 5]

A real incentive to further learn my own ancestors’ history, as well as a book that illustrates beautifully how individuals should be mindful of one another, and how corruption drives the sales of ignorance and bigotry.

[Mustafa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative. I find myself references the movies mentioned in everyday conversation. Like "you know how so & so is portrayed in this movie"
In essence, it's expanded my understanding of media studies as it related to stereotype enforcement.

[Ahmed Lary · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eye opener on how the arabs are portrayed in the movies. A good reference when you watch movies

[Heidi Polk Issa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very interesting book, but it is more effective as source material than as a book that one can sit down and read…

The actual general analysis that Shaheen makes is very small, limited only to the introductory chapter…the remainder of the book is a film encyclopaedia, arranged alphabetically according to title…

I did like the individual entries on movies I had actually seen, but didn’t read every single entry throughout the remainder of the book – since it covers movies from the silent film era up to present day, it seemed like a bit of an arduous task to read about films I had never even heard of, let alone seen…

However, I do recommend this book as Arabs in general remain one of the last major groups in Hollywood who are consistently stereotyped as murderous and dangerous ‘others’ to be avoided or killed off at every opportunity…this is obviously something that needs to change and I salute Shaheen for writing about it…

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contains a lot of interesting information. While I respect the amount of research that must have gone into this project, I was hoping for more of a detailed analysis on some of the specific themes/categories that were mentioned in the introduction.
Instead the book consists of an alphabetical list of movie titles with a few notes for each entry stating the basic plot and how Arabs were portrayed. I think the book might have worked better if it was laid out thematically, or even chronologically, instead of alphabetically.
That being said, I would still recommend this book to anyone who wanted an overview of how persistently Arabs have been negatively portrayed in cinema for over a century.

[Mahmood Al-yousif · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Reel Bad Arabs: how Hollywood vilifies a people" is a fascinating book which took decades to complete.

The author identifies and analyzes over 1,000 Hollywood films which vilify Arabs, some in the lost heinous way possible. Disgusting when you become aware of the trend that has lasted over 100 years in film.

In the book, the author maintains that Arabs are universally portrayed as thugs, villainous, untrustworthy, lustful and dimwitted cretins. And Hollywood continue to portrays them as such.

This reference book is critical to change that prejudice and correct a wrong.

My thanks go to my son Arif for gifting me this book for Christmas. Very enlightening indeed and highly recommended.

[Z. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book! I'm glad it's been made because a lot of people never notice the unfair portrayal of Arabs because we're so used to it. I never thought Aladdin was racist until I'm old enough to understand it. Aladdin was one of my favourite movie as a child. Now I feel weird about loving the movie so much.

[Afif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction is a must-read. More of a prolegomenon for future research on the 'Arab' in Hollywood. Though the analysis isn't quite there, the research is tremendous and offers the groundwork for future projects.

[Yahya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Encyclopedic tracing of every depiction of Arabs in Hollywood films. Amazing book, by an amazing scholar who has dedicated his life to archiving such negative racist portrayals of Arabs. Read "Guilty" the book he published post-9/11, equally amazing.

[Richard Prins]

http://www.filmsforaction.org/Watch/R...

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and thought-provoking analysis of how the film industry frames Arabs and Muslims. Well thought out inquiry. Well laid out manuscript. Would recommend.

[Ahmed Essam · Rating 4 out of 5]

الفيلم الوثائقى افضل من الكتاب بكتييييييير ..صناعة الافلام اهم من صناعة الحروب ..الفيلم مترجم
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5Egd...

[Bob]

shows the misrepresentation of arabs throughout the history of film

[Firawesome]

I didn't finish reading the book, I was just done with reading it.