“Evil Arabs” and Anxious Americans
Review by Jalal Parsa - 2013
Representing Arabs or Muslims as evil has a long history in the West. There is a deep sentiment of Western superiority over Arabs and Muslims in general running through European and North American culture. In the nineteenth century, European colonial powers revived and utilised different aspects of the Middle Ages’ mythology against Arabs to legitimise their colonial conquests. This was particularly true of France in its conquest of Algeria, and is demonstrated by the popularity of orientalist paintings during the colonial years. Across the Channel, the image of non- white people, who are described as “half-devil and half-child” in Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “The White man’s Burden” dominated western culture, even at the beginning of the 21st century. Kipling dedicated his poem to the United States as it began its colonial expansion in Philippines in 1899, but the image of non-white people as “half- devil and half-child” still runs deep in the western imagination.
“Evil Arabs”, as its author says, ‘is a film study written to encourage the American cinematic audience to look with a more critical eye at the depiction of the “evil” Arab.’ The book is inspired by Jack Shaheen’s famous book “Reel bad Arabs”. Shaheen catalogues Hollywood films portraying Arabs as evil. He then challenges this stereotypical image of Arab people and draws our attention to certain conventions dominating the portrayal of Arabs in Hollywood. Among them he identifies “Arab Kit” or “Instant Ali-Baba Kit”, which includes things like curved dagger, magic lamp, giant feather fans, water-pipes, fake black beards, exaggerated noses and of course the veil. Like Jack Shaheen,Tim Semmerling shows us, when a racial, ethnic or religious group is vilified within a popular culture, innocent people eventually suffer the catastrophic consequences. In this book, Semmerling identifies the constituents of America’s resentment or in his words “socially allowable phobia” towards Arabs. Among them, he identifies the destruction of the American public’s trust in their government and military after the Vietnam War, the oil crisis of 1970s and the rise of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) around the same time. These elements together with the Arab-Israeli wars shattered the American public imagination of the Middle East. Now it was not a child-like, containable colonised territory. It was proved to be unsafe and uncontrollable. This shattered imagination causes a great deal of anxiety, and this is where stereotypes are brought in to help. Stereotype provides a false but clear cut image of the evil other, and helps the public to cope with its anxiety – the anxiety of confronting the unknown. Semmerling asserts that the films analysed in his book ‘demonstrate that we are not stable in our ideological and mythic structure as we might profess’ and he adds that ‘consequently these films frighteningly and sadomasochistically entertain us’. He argues that although it is rather easy to dispute the realness and the accuracy of these stereotypical Arabs, the disturbing fact remains that we enjoy watching them. One of the interesting concepts that he uses in this book is the idea of the ‘American frontier myth’ that he borrows from Richard Slotkin. The American frontier myth according to Slotkin ‘centres on the conquest of the wilderness (western frontiers) and the subjugation or displacement of the native peoples who originally inhabited it so that “we” Americans might achieve “national identity, a democratic polity, an ever-expanding economy and a “dynamic civilization”. He argues that because of the United States’ specific history and the relatively long period of expanding westwards, the frontier myth is deeply inscribed in the American psyche. The central feature of this myth is of course the constant struggle against nature, native and non-white peoples, violence, and conflict. Therefore according to this myth the American collective consciousness usually tends to imagine itself in an everlasting battle with nature and native people, or in other words, a “savage war”. Semmerling argues that ‘the concept of “savage war” is based on the belief that the enemies are “savage” and, by the combination of their “blood” and culture, are inherently incapable of and opposed to progress and civilisation. This makes white European-American coexistence with the savage impossible on any basis other than subjugation.’ The book analyses five films and two TV series in depth and dedicates a chapter to each. It starts with The Exorcist (1973) and includes Rollover (1981), Black Sunday (1976), Three Kings (1999) and Rules of Engage – ment (2000). Tim Semmerling is successful in his core argument which is to demonstrate the fact that the “Evil Arab”, or rather the evil Muslim in the age of the “war on terror”- reveals more about American myths and ideologies than Arabs and Muslims. He shows this through the idea of “savage war” and the “frontier myth” and by showing us the extent to which the hero is always an American person whose style is modelled after the white male frontier hunter, cowboy, corporate manager or military man, an intrinsic part of civilisation who is in an endless battle with the uncivilised and savage villains. But again, as he puts it, this reveals more about the American psyche, its self image, its fears and its anxieties, rather than proving anything about Arabs.
Tim Jon Semmerling,
“Evil” Arabs in American
Popular Film: Orientalist
Fear, University of Texas
Press, Austin 2006
Tim Jon Semmerling is
an independent scholar
in the Dallas/Front World
area who holds a PhD. in
Near eastern Languages
and Cultures from Indiana
University.
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