Reel Bad Arabs - exposing racist hate - spsyed review

Reel Bad Arabs" (52mins) with Jack Shaheen, exposing racist hate. Hollywood, and even the Indian Bollywood, film and media industry is obsessed with "the three Bs" belly dancers, billionaire sheiks and bombers. In every movie they make, every time an Arab utters the word Allah, and something blows up. This groundbreaking documentary dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today's biggest Hollywood blockbusters. Reel Bad Arabs exposes a long line of degrading images of Arabs from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding "terrorists" along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in European and American history, and why they matter so much today as they continue to indoctrinate hate, racism and discrimination against Muslims and Arabs. The images serve to naturalize prejudicial attitudes toward Arabs and Arab culture, in the process reinforcing a narrow view of individual Arabs and the effects of specific US domestic and international policies on their lives. By inspiring critical thinking about the social, political, and basic human consequences of leaving these Hollywood/Bollywood media caricatures unexamined, this informational and educational documentary challenges reasonable viewers to recognise the urgent need for counter-narratives that do justice to the diversity and humanity of Arab people and the reality and richness of Arab history and culture. This groundbreaking documentary dissects a slanderous aspect of Hollywood cinematic history in which Middle Eastern, Arab and Muslim characters have been unfairly, criminally characterised for over one hundred years.

Dr Jack Shaheen, Professor Emeritus of Mass Communication at Southern Illinois University, and a noted media commentator, is a leading scholar of Arab representations in US popular culture. He continues to be a piercing laser of fairness and sanity in pointing out Hollywood's ongoing egregious smearing of Arabs. Shaheen analysed over 1,000 Hollywood films from 1896 to 2004 to expose the hatred against Arabs and Muslims. Only less than seven percent of the films could be considered positive or non-offensive towards Arabs. The only problem is that Shaheen views are outdated from the 1095 Crusades to the oil greed, pretexts for invasion and occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Make your vote count: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/content/vie... ;

Watch "Reel Bad Arabs" online linked here: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.... ;

"Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People" book by Jack Shaheen available here http://www.amazon.com/Reel-Bad-Arabs-... ;