Observation Journal #5

I am currently enrolled in legacy of world civ and in that class we recently watched a film entitled "Reel Bad Arabs". The movie was about how Arabs and Muslims are constantly portrayed in Hollywood films as villains. The film went through countless examples of films that make Arabs either terrorists whose only purpose is to kill and maim, or as comic relief where they play the ignorant Arab, whose only purpose is to make mistakes. In either case the films put Arabs and Muslims in a bad light. Even the Disney movie Aladin was used as an example, where in the opening scene they refer to their land as "barbaric, but hey it's home". We are even discussing this film with other colleges around the world, on a blog network similar to this one.

This film is really significant because it proves that many people today really only associate Muslims and Arabs with terrorism, and our media is only making that issue worse. It is deffinatlely a good sign that a film like this was made to make it known to everyone that there is an issue with racism against Arabs, and it is not ok. This phenomenon is not recent however. there were films from the 40's and 50s as well that were blatanty racist toward Muslims and Arabs. I just really hope that a film like this will have some impact on others, the same way it impacted me, and that eventually people will not associate arabs with terrorism. Unfortunately i think we may be a long way off, especially becuase of 9/11, I think more poeple than ever hold hostilities toward people who are middle eastern.