This is a couple of weeks old, but…
Jack Shaheen, a prominent writer, scholar and activist who persistently — though diplomatically — challenged negative stereotypes of Arabs in film and television, has died at age 81.
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“There is no escaping the Arab stereotype,” Shaheen wrote in the preface to his 2001 book “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People,” before digging into what he said was the unrelenting portrayal of Arabs and Muslims as barbaric, uncultured, wealthy and unspeakably violent.
“These notions are as false as the assertions that blacks are lazy, Hispanics are dirty, Jews are greedy and Italians are criminals,” he wrote in “The TV Arab,” a painstaking study of hundred of television shows, from sitcoms to cartoons.
See books and videos by Shaheen in the UCI Libraries. There’s an intriguing sounding DVD (in the MRC), Reel bad Arabs : how Hollywood vilifies a people / a Media Education Foundation production ; directed by Sut Jhally ; produced by Jeremy Earp. The summary note is:
Throughout its history Hollywood has portrayed Arabs as buffoons or bandits. The video seeks to rectify this sterotyping by comparing it to other forms of racist imagery and by suggesting alternative narratives that treat the Arabs as human, not demons
If you don’t click through to the article, the title of this post is from his daughter.
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