Watching Dr. Jack Shaheen documentary 'Reel bad Arabs', where he discusses almost a 1000 Hollywood films having an Arab and concludes that the vast majority of which portray Arabs in a distorting manner, I found myself really fond of the idea of the power of marketing in setting people's minds and only a secret plan and so forth, I found that I deeply agree with Dr. Shaheen's claim that the Hollywood movie industry, more often than not portrays Arabs as bad since it is influenced by the united states foreign policy plan. '
How Media Affects Public Opinion
In the last 50 years the mass media influence is continuing to grow exponentially with the progress of technology. We now stay in a world that depends upon information and communication to keep moving in the right route. The media has an enormous impact on society and also in public opinion. It could shape the general public opinion in several ways depending of what's the objective.
Repetition Effect
Al tikrar biallem il hemar -By repetition even the donkey learns-, this Arab proverb encapsulates how effective repetition can be when it comes to education: how we learn by duplicating an exercise over and over again until we can act in response almost reflexively. For greater than a century now, Hollywood, too, has used repetition as a teaching tool, tutoring movie viewers by repeating over and over, in film after film, insidious images of the Arab people. From earlier times to the present day consider how these images have influenced genuine discourse and general public policy.
Building Stereotypes
Stereotyping has existed with us since the beginning of time in our day to day life. With these repetitive patterns going over and over in front of our eyes, as audience, we start building our own images about others based on these patterns, mating them into our imagination and revitalizing them whenever caught in times. Bottom-line, instead of learning the truth, we have a tendency to resort to your preconceived notions alternatively than judging things as they are, which involuntarily, builds stereotypes inside our minds.
Manipulating Open public Opinion
Normally, stereotypes are fast and reasonably effective because not everyone can be able to happen to be every country and verify the real state of affairs, thus techniques of misinformation and name calling are used by media stores in try to convince the public to belief generalities made about a particular group, in this case Arabs, to be true in areas such as religious beliefs or politics. For instance, after the problems of 9/11 the marketing gave an enormous coverage of the function and exposed Osama guilty for the assault as they were advised by the regulators. This shaped the general public opinion to aid the war on terrorism, the same happened with the conflict on Iraq. The web that if marketing received inaccurate information then the public opinion reinforced a wrong cause, and this is the energy of public judgment influence.
Hollywood AS THE WAY TO OBTAIN Knowledge And Effect - A Setting Weapon
Hollywood videos have been with us now for more than century and also have and will continue to impact us and future years. Nowadays, Hollywood's movies reach almost everyone.
How Arabs Are Portrayed In Hollywood
"Seen through Hollywood's distorted lenses, Arabs look different and intimidating. Projected along racial and religious lines, the stereotypes are deeply ingrained in North american cinema. "
According to Dr. Shaheen words, "What is an Arab? In many videos, Hollywood alleges the solution: Arabs are brute murderers, sleazy rapists, religious fanatics, oil-rich dimwits, and abusers of women. "They [the Arabs] all look alike if you ask me, " quips the American heroine in the movie The Sheik Steps Out (1937). "All Arabs look alike to me, " admits the protagonist in Commando (1968). Decades later, nothing acquired evolved. Quips the U. S. Ambassador in Hostage (1986), "I can't tell one [Arab] from another. Wrapped in those bed sheets they all look the same if you ask me. " In Hollywood's movies, they certainly do - black beard, headdress, dark sun glasses, in the background-a limousine, harem maidens, engine oil wells, camels.
Beginning with Imar the Servitor (1914), up to and including The Mummy Results (2001), a synergy of images equates Arabs from Syria to the Sudan with quintessential evil. In hundreds of movies "evil" Arabs stalk the display screen. We see them assaulting almost every imaginable foe--Americans, Europeans, Israelis, legionnaires, Africans, fellow Arabs, even--for heaven's sake--Hercules and Samson. Dr Shaheen believes that such Arab images provides not only for dehumanation, but mainly for increasing abhorrence towards that group of folks so that they can online backup the U. S overseas policies and agendas.
The findings of a recently available study claim that Hollywood films influence audiences' perceptions and attitudes towards Arabs extensively. Similar methods to Dr. Shaheen's were considered and generally rendered the same conclusions such as Jamie C. Fries's, which remarked that Hollywood's representation of the Middle East 'ebbed and flowed with the international policy realities of america across time underlying the perception in the occurrence of a link between U. S. diplomacy and popular film's portrayal of Arabs.
Possible REASONS FOR Hollywood Portrayal
Complement American Foreign Policy
The interpretations of Hollywood's representation of Arabs involve different, often contradictory, types of image. In addition they suggest that the intensification of the Arabs' stereotypical image over the last century from 'comic villains' to 'foreign devils' didn't occur in vacuum pressure but, certainly, with the intertwinement of both politics and cultural pursuits in the region. It is thought that this was encouraged indirectly by U. S imperial objectives.
Justify War In Palestine, Iraq And Afghanistan
Arabs are politically characterized as 'soldiers of Allah' with no mercy and who do horrendous things; they may be not simply villains but also dangerous and they need to be politically and militarily comprised. The idea shows the way the situation in your community is badly in need of help European, and specifically North american. Just the needed situation that can quite justify wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq and work as a great cover of the true intentions behind such wars, which is clearly economic-oil-. In addition; keeping the international world silent about the ongoing Palestinians killings.
We -Arabs- Fail To Fix Our Image
To cause important changes in how motion pictures job Arabs, a systematic lobbying effort is needed. Though the Arab-American and Muslim-American presence is progressively growing in quantity and visibility in america, Regrettably, just a few Arab-Americans meet with and discuss the stereotype with filmmakers. Though when dialogue occurs, some discriminatory portraits are improved.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to re-insist on the fact that Hollywood films- as a media wall socket- can affect public opinion thoroughly along the way Arabs are perceived and they can actually provide, in a single way or another, as an instrument of manipulation or oven be manipulated themselves in order to enforce different governmental policies. Both the American authorities and corporate and business press helped to format the center East within an ideological bias that shapes the public knowledge of the spot. Such a cultural discourse has pressured an epic have difficulty between your civilized, democratic, modern Western and the brutalized, barbaric, primitive East. This manipulation should be processed to maintain the notion that these countries need, and will continue steadily to need, American safety not just off their opponent but from themselves as well.
