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Review of Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
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 Review of Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
A stereotype can be broadly defined as a popular belief regarding a particular group of people. The beliefs lead to the generalization of all the individuals belonging to the group. Various studies have revealed that stereotypes have the power to influence not just the way the society views certain groups of people but also how the stereotyped group views itself. Stereotypes can also have a real impact on the performance of people as well as their intellectual ability (Zawisza, 2018). For many years, Hollywood has been accused of being the avenue for the spread of various stereotypes. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, brilliantly captures the stereotyping of the Arab world by Hollywood.
Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People is a 50-minute documentary film produced by Jeremy Earp in 2006. It was directed by Sut Jhally. The documentary stars Jack Shaheen. It was screened for the first time on 8th June 2007 in Washington. It has both English and Arabic subtitles and was created at an estimated budget of $100,000. It is an extension of a book going by the same name written by Jack Shaheen. Both the book and the film explore the corruption and manipulation of Arab images by Hollywood. According to the film, demeaning images have been used to portray Arabs from as far as the era of the silent cinema. Unfortunately, the stereotyping is also present in the modern-day blockbuster movies. Through an analysis of various scenes from different movies in the book, Jack Shaleen, clearly depicts how the Arab world is slanderously depicted. The chances are that any movie-lover has watched a movie in which Arab men are depicted as savage bandits and the women as naïve servants of the greedy masters. However, the depiction of Arabs as terrorists is the most popular stereotype spread on the big screen. The documentary attempts to explain the motivations that fuel these stereotypes, their gradual development over time, as well as their importance in the modern world (Shaheen, 2003). 
As the documentary starts, Shaheen talks about the level of manipulation and slander that the Arabs face. He claimed that his view was informed by a thousand films that he had seen, both in the past and presently. He claims that the incorporation of the perceptions depicted in the films into the Western civilization has amounted to a direct attack on the humanity of the Arabs. The continuous use of the Arab images, either in the same or different patterns has led to the cementing of the perceptions in the Western culture. His claims are supported by clips from various films throughout the documentary. He also reviews some of the images on Arabs that he believes are distorted. Their use, he claims, feeds the minds of the younger generation with wrong and harmful ideas of the Arab world. Some of the wrong depictions according to him can be seen in Aladdin, Sahara, The Mummy, Navy Seals, Homeland, among many others (Ramji, 2016). Shaheen also points out the fact that the Arab woman is wrongly depicted in Hollywood. While these women are ...