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February 2008, Week 5

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Subject:
From:
"Peter C. Rollins" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:56:27 EST
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Film Scholars, Set your TIVOs
 
Jack Shaheen will be on C-SPAN2 this weekend, discussing his most
recent book on stereotypes of Arabs in film and TV.  Jack is a  mature
scholar with an important message for those who care about the ways
in which films shape our perceptions.
 
Broadcasts are on C-SPAN 2, both EST
    Saturday, 1 March at 1:00pm
    Sunday,   2 March at 8:00am
Set your TIVO
 
Peter Rollins
Former Editor-in-Chief, Film & History: An Interdisciplinary  Journal
    of Film and Television Studies _http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory/_ 
(http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory/) 
 
_____________________
 
 
Guilty:
Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs After  9/11
Jack G.  Shaheen 
6" x 9" • 198  pages
ISBN 978-1-56656-684-1 • paperback • $18.00 
 
"Nothing will be  the same again." Americans scarred by the experience of 
9/11 often express this  sentiment. But what remains the same, argues Jack G. 
Shaheen, is Hollywood's  stereotyping of Arabs. Before 9/11, Shaheen dissected 
Hollywood's equation of  Islam and Arabs with violence in Reel Bad Arabs, his 
comprehensive  study of over a thousand movies. Arabs and Muslims, he showed, 
were used as  shorthand for the "Enemy" and the "Other." In his new book about 
films made  after 9/11, Shaheen finds the same malevolent stereotypes at play. 
Nearly all of  Hollywood's post-9/11 films legitimize a view of Arabs as 
stereotyped  villains-sheikhs, Palestinians, or terrorists. And this happens in 
every type of  film imaginable: one out of four of the movies profiled here have 
absolutely  nothing to do with the Middle East, yet producers toss in weird, 
shady,  unscrupulous Arabs.  
Along with an  examination of a hundred recent movies, Shaheen addresses the 
cultural issues at  play since 9/11: the government's public relations 
campaigns to win "hearts and  minds" and the impact of 9/11 on citizens and on the 
imagination. He suggests  that winning the "war on terror" would take shattering 
the century-old  stereotypes of Arabs. He calls for speaking out, for more 
Arab Americans in the  film industry, for fresh films, and for a serious effort 
on the part of our  government to tackle this problem.  
Jack G.  Shaheen is author of the  bestselling encyclopedia of Arabs in 
Hollywood: Reel Bad Arabs: How  Hollywood Vilifies a People. He is professor 
emeritus of mass communication  at Southern Illinois University, a former CBS News 
consultant on the Middle  East, and the world's foremost authority on media 
images of Arabs. The Media  Education Foundation has released a film based on his 
Reel Bad Arabs.  




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