Synopses & Reviews
Reel Bad Arabs: 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.
Review
"...meticulous, passionate, and very articulate." Library Journal
Review
"Rippling with smart insights, [this] book should be read by everyone who agrees that knowledge is society's greatest tool in battling all kinds of stereotypes." Howard Rosenberg, Los Angeles Times TV critic
Review
"A must-read!...This taut, well-argued analysis of ethnicity betrayed shows us the power of Hollywood's movies to miseducate the senses." Camelia Anwar Sadat
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Jack G. Shaheen, a former CBS News consultant on Middle East affairs, is the world's foremost authority on media images of Arabs and Muslims. He is the author of Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture, Nuclear War Films, and the award-winning TV Arab.