The documentary film Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People depicts how Hollywood films and media in general can be used to demonize a minority group. Many sociological concepts can be employed to show this process of demonization; at the same time, many of these concepts of are demonstrated in the film itself, such as stereotypes, dehumanization, Othering and eurocentrism. What these concepts have in common is that they take a minority group, some group existing at the margins and outside of the mainstream, and then continue this practice of exclusion through such techniques.
Reel Bad Arabs focuses on how the Arab community encounters these techniques of marginalization in Hollywood cinema. This film is very timely, since for the last ten years, much has been made of the image of the Arab terrorist. In other words, the Arab or Islamic terrorist has been a figure which has experienced stereotyping, dehumanization, Othering and eurocentism.
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"Reel Bad Arabs".
The stereotyping of Arabs is shown in films through their portrayal, for example, as terrorists. This fits many of the clichés that mainstream America has about Arabs: that they are all Muslim fundamentalist, that they are all violent, that the Islamic religion is primarily a religion of violence. The concept of stereotyping therefore is the dominant image that the mainstream has about a particular ethnic or minority group: the film thus shows how Arabs are stereotyped in the contemporary era as Islamic militant terrorists.
It is also important to note that such stereotyping involves dehumanization. This is because it defines a certain group in terms of some negative characteristics: by doing so, it separates this group from what is considered to be “normal” society. The human being or someone who deserves to be treated as a human being is someone who fits this image of normality, whereas those who do not lose this right: a good example of this is the detention of so-called terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, stripped of basic human rights, and therefore dehumanized.
This is also about a process of what is called in sociology “Othering”: it is a definition of identities in terms of “us” vs. “them.” The Other of the Arab is therefore someone, as the film shows, who differs from the values of the mainstream: at the same time, the mainstream defines itself in terms of what it is not. Therefore, if the Other is violent, a fundamentalist in terms of religion, this means that the mainstream is peaceful and open minded. This is an example of projecting various stereotypes onto the Other and then defining society along these created and imagined lines of us vs. them.
However, why is the Arab dehumanized or Other? The film answers this question by showing how American media is dominated by an ethnocentrism. The mainstream White Christian in American population is the norm by which other groups are judged. Any group that differs from this mainstream system is therefore Other; the majority of the society’s media is designed to coincide with this viewpoint and perspective on reality. Hence, Hollywood films, seeking to appeal to a mainstream audience and therefore be as financially successful as possible, will rely on an ethnocentric depiction of others, of minorities: these minorities, as in the case of the Arab community, will often be portrayed as villains from the ethnocentric perspective because they fall outside of this same value system.
The film Reel Bad Arabs is thus valuable in showing us how discrimination works in the media. It also gives us a chance to use sociological concepts, such as the ones mentioned, to understand how this discrimination works in many different ways. All, however, are ultimately instances of racism and discrimination.
