Movie: Planet of the Arabs

Double standards?

Wow, JJ or someone else was really fast, because the item written and posted by Zeynab that I was intending to comment on has already been deleted, but I'll put my comment here because it is related:

We have seen two recent posts on Iranian dot com from Mehdi-Palang and now from Sadegh decrying Hollywood's portrayal of Arabs, and the alleged demonization of Middle-Easterners.

Where are their condemnations of the type of racism and demonization that we read, see and hear, such as this comment from Zeynab, presumably an Iranian or Persian: "Why are we leting bunch of arabs destroy our land?".

And while we are stimulating debate, let's add a touch of reality to it and remember that Hollywood isn't real, but that the female half of the Middle-Eastern population is real and that they, by the laws of many of their countries and religions, are not equal to the male half of the population.  Personally I find that of far greater importance than whether or not Hollyhood hurts my feelings.

Well done Mehdi for

Well done Mehdi for continuing the debate. Again thanks for the videos...take care...

Ba Arezu-ye Movafaghiat, Sadegh

What Next?

he reason for which I wrote this blog is to shed light on the correlation between the racism that exists (in literature/film) with the nonchallant attitude that over 1 million innocent Iraqis have died since the inception of the Iraq War, 5 years ago.

There is no such correlation except in your (rather delusional) mind. Who has been killing the Iraqis? The Americans? It is rival fractions, supported and armed by Iran Arabia and the likes who kill each other and innocent people. They are the ones who bomb bazars and streets, behead people, assassinate Iraqi police men and the likes. You think it is US fault that the muslim arabs are doing this to each other? What do you think they would have done once Saddam would have died and the system would have collapsed on itself. I would have been worse than Balkans.
Even if we agree the US made a mistake in going to Iraq, or if you think deposing Saddam was a mistake that causes this chaos, in any case, you can't blame the massacres committed by islamists and other fundamentalist of each other in this chaos to be caused by Hollywood depiction of Arabs! Get real, man!

PS. And to be honest, buddy. I don't see much here that is not based on some reality out there. I told you, the media works this way, sensationalism. But then you also have to ask yourselves: isn't it the buddhists who blow themselves up in buses? Is it the Hungarians who take an embassy hostage? Is it the Finns who burn flags? Did the Australian aborigines burn down embassies and kill nuns for a couple of harmless cartoons? Was the the dalai Lama who gave a fatwa to kill a writer of a different country because of a book he had written? Is it the Ethiopians who murder apostates among them? Did Jehova Witnesses fly a plane into Twin Towers? maybe some of the fault is not in the mirror, eh?

To Mehdi-Palang

Your rebuttal is very well written, but perhaps you could be a lawyer or a politician because you are very good at attacking the points of others without acknowledging the weaknesses of your own.

For example, in reference to my comments you wrote "The end of your comment somehow excuses this act and you seem to be alright with the status quo.  As for that, I guess I can't make you care about the issues facing a certain ethnic group other than your own."  Rather than allow myself to be erroneously labelled as a closet ethnicist, I should clarify that my intended meaning was "Should we expect that Arabs would be excluded from this universal treatment?".

You are equally quick to dismiss my contention that Hollywood is an equal opportunity slanderer by writing that almost all of the misrepresented groups "are not ethnic groups therefore they are not analogous to the argument that Hollywood has villified Arabs (middle-easterners)".  However, your initial posting stated that "Here is a video that shows how just how Middle-Easterners (Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, Baluchis, Azeris, et al) have been demonized in the US's most powerful cultural tool (hollywood)".  I seriously doubt that Hollywood even knows what a Kurd or an Baluchi is, and I'm looking forward to your examples of which Hollywood movies they have been portrayed in, either negatively or at all.  Middle-Easterners are not an ethnic group; they are residents of a geographical territory.

Also, any negative portrayals of Arabs or Persians is based not on them being an ethnic group, if they can even be classified as such, but is based on the politics espoused by their leaders, be they Iranian leaders looking forward to wiping Israel off the map or Arabs, primarily Saudis, being suppliers of oil and 9/11 suicide pilots.

You label Iva as "presumptuous/racist" because you don't like your interpretation of his/her last sentence.  Perhaps the same claims could be made about a person who thinks that he can identify a racist on the basis on one sentence, one possibly written in that person's second or third language.

You are being disingenuous in complaining that Americans aren't "disgusted at the level of Iraqi deaths due to Bush's war".  How do you know this?  Don't base your opinion on what Fox News tells you.  The mainstream American media is extremely politicized and the average consumer of media is therefore proportionally uninformed, but any civilized, rational, informed person is disgusted with Bush, as shown by his all-time low approval rating.

If I wanted to, I could make a similar disingenuous complaint about the biased slant of what you wrote: "WE DO have a problem with the manner in which the state of Israel is treating its Palestinian inhabitants in the West Bank/Gaza and its Syrian/Lebanese neighbors."

Why do you have a problem with how Israel treats its neighbours, but do not have a problem with how its neighbours treat Israel?  In your mind do Jewish deaths from suicide bombers not have an equal value to Arab deaths from Israeli soldiers?

Your original complaint about Hollywood reminds me very much of the furor over the movie 300 that raged on this web site a year or so ago.  I finally saw this piece of dreck the other day and fast-forwarded through 75% of it, because it is a bad movie, not because the alleged Persians were defamed by it.  And while I was watching it I noticed that the alleged Greeks were equally defamed.  So I guess that the identification of Hollywood bias depends greatly on who is viewing it, and who feels the most aggrieved by what, in the end, doesn't necessarily have any relation to reality.  It's meant to be escapist entertainment; why else would you pay $10 to watch it?

to John, Jonathon, Iva, and Zion

to John...

You're right on some of your points.  Hollywood has villified Asians, African-Americans, and Native Americans; and raising awareness to this fact would be helpful.  As for your other claims (women, father, etc) they are not ethnic groups therefore they are not analogous to the argument that Hollywood has villified Arabs (middle-easterners).  The end of your comment somehow excuses this act and you seem to be alright with the status quo.  As for that, I guess I can't make you care about the issues facing a certain ethnic group other than your own. 

to Jonathon...

Thank you for your link! I should have posted it within this blog, but I was running short on time.

to Iva...

Thank you for sharing those videos.  They really are helpful when one is trying to understand the underlying psychology behind this exchange of ethnic portrayls.   However, I beg to differ with you on your claim that Iranians portray Jews as animals because it is not true.  In fact Iranians don't have anything against Jewish people (historically we are their saviors); WE DO have a problem with the manner in which the state of Israel is treating its Palestinian inhabitants in the West Bank/Gaza and its Syrian/Lebanese neighbors.  

Look, I am not defending the manner in which these videos were made.  I don't think that these (Iranian) videos are any better; I instead am arguing against the act of branding a group of people with a set of mischaracterizations.

And as for your reductionist statement that (according to you) Iran has " amputations, stoning to death, public hanging by hundreds, super corrupt judicial system, etc. etc" Does that mean that it is good to mischaracterize an entire people?   How do you know what goes on in Iran?  The US also has the death penalty and super corrupt officals/politicians.  (So what are you trying to say?)  I am not an apologist for Islamic laws and their practices, I also want to see an end to these supposed stonings. 

As for your last statement... I don't know what to tell you,  other than you are overly presumptuous/racist!

for Zion...

I'm not sure what you're trying to say.  I'm guessing that you typed that statement with sarcasm in mind.  It's obvious that you don't understand what I'm getting at.  I never said that I believed in some kind of conspiracy theory that connects policy-makers with Hollywood with Orientalists.  I am simply saying that there is a common thread of thought that they all share when they think of Middle-Easterners as backward, evil, etc. etc.

The reason for which I wrote this blog is to shed light on the correlation between the racism that exists (in literature/film) with the nonchallant attitude that over 1 million innocent Iraqis have died since the inception of the Iraq War, 5 years ago.  Since when, in the history of "civility", does 3,000 innocent bodies (WTC) equal over 1,000,000 innocent bodies?  Why aren't Americans disgusted at the level of Iraqi deaths due to Bush's war?

thanks "buddy", I'm havin all the fun that I can handle.

Yes Hollywood

That is where all the "Orientalist" Scholars work and get paid. That is where the mass of the West's scholarly achievements are produced, where policies of the colonial powers are being decided on, or is it the other way around? ... I'm confused again.
have fun buddy.

I am not sure if I understand the complaints

Middleaster folks create similar shows to portray other folks particularly jews as animals. A proverb comes to mind: Cheezi keh avaz dareh geleh nadareh!

Anyhow, here are few samples:

//www.memritv.org/clip/en/1715.htm
//www.memritv.org/clip/en/1729.htm
//www.memritv.org/clip/en/1597.htm --- Funny … She doesn’t explain sorye Nesa
//www.memritv.org/clip/en/1579.htm
//www.memritv.org/clip/en/1710.htm
//www.memritv.org/clip/en/975.htm

By the way, just in Iran .. they have amputations, stoning to death, public hanging by hundreds, super corrupt judicial system, etc. etc. Some of those hollywood movies do portray and accurate picture of them middleastern folks who hate everyone but themselves (i.e. their sect of islamic cult).

here is an...

here is another video explaining this phenomenon :
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko_N4BcaIPY

Deceptive and misleading

You could say the same thing about how Hollywood has treated just about everyone, for example the following groups of people:

- blacks (almost all pimps, drug dealers and hookers, or lazy and unemployed)

- fathers (almost universally inadequate and / or stupid)

- jews (yes, even jews - stupid, avaricious, back-stabbing)

- native American Indians (violent, blood-thirsty, evil and savage)

- women (stupid blonde bimbos, gold-diggers, man-haters, hookers)

- asians (laundry workers and geishas)

- politicians (crooked, dishonest)

- lawyers (money-grubbing, conniving, useless parisites)

- communists (evil, murderous, liars)

Need I continue?  Hollywood produces fantasies that exaggerate and lampoon the habits, behaviour and physical characteristics of just about everyone.  Should Arabs be excluded from this universal treatment?