Does Hollywood Hate Arabs?

Over at TAPPED, Matthew Duss says yes, and has the video (and the commentary on Back to the Future's egregious Libyan-bashing) to prove it:

To support its claim that Arabs are "the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood," this five-minute film is forced to resort to clips from such blockbuster films as Cannonball Run II, Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, and Hell Squad. So far as I could tell, the most recent clips are from Aladdin and True Lies, both of which are fifteen years old. In the seven years since 9/11, with the nation embroiled in a global struggle in which America's most deadly and dedicated enemies tend to be, well, Arabic, Hollywood has turned out exactly one big-budget film featuring Arab villains: This fall's The Kingdom. If you want to expand the list to include art-house fare, you can throw in United 93, and if you count people trapped in a cycle of violence as "villains" you can tack on Steven Spielberg's Munich, in which audiences were invited to side with Israeli assassins against Palestinian terrorists but feel awfully conflicted about it. Meanwhile, even 24, ostensibly the most right-wing hour on television, features what Martha Bayles, writing in this season's Claremont Review of Books, terms a "timid selection of villains," including "vengeful Serbs, a bitchy German, red-handed Mexican drug lords, a turncoat British spy, a greedy oil executive, power-mad government officials (including one president), and—once in a blue moon, when the Council on American-Islamic Relations is looking the other way—violent jihadists."

But yes, there's no question but that the deeply insensitive portrayal of Libyan terrorists in 1985's Back to the Future - which belongs to an era nearly as distant from our own as the "Enchantment Under the Sea" Fifties were from Marty McFly's Eighties adolescence - continues to be a stumbling block to Arab-American advancement in the United States.

Comments

FWIW (very little?), "The Siege," starring Denzel Washington, upset a bunch of people once upon a time.

Posted by PJ | January 14, 2008 11:59 PM

There's also a clip from 2000's "Rules of Engagement" which is pretty objectionable in its conclusion, where a crowd of civilians killed outside the U.S. embassy turns out to be 100% militants, down to a little girl firing a .45.

Posted by modio | January 15, 2008 12:44 AM

Read some Jack Sheehan, learn something, then get back to us.

Posted by Rickm | January 15, 2008 1:00 AM

Let's not forget that the real villain of The Siege turns out to be 1) the CIA and 2) a military governor.

Posted by Klug | January 15, 2008 1:24 AM

Probably worth remembering that United 93 is, you know, non-fiction.

Posted by right | January 15, 2008 1:26 AM

Contra Ross' point and being completely fair, it's worth throwing "The Unit", "JAG" and "NCIS" into the mix for "jihadist of the week" abuse.

However, who's the Big Bad of "The Unit"? WASPs, Texans and rogue CIA types.

Posted by Klug | January 15, 2008 1:32 AM

The Muslim population of the world is roughly 1 billion out of 7 billion (allowing for huge margin of error), therefore 1 out of every 7 villains in Hollywood films ought to be Muslim in order to keep everything on the straight and narrow.

Posted by purplestate | January 15, 2008 1:59 AM

To balance the ledger, don't forget when Hollywood goes the other way - by changing Middle Eastern and/or Muslim villains into something less, uh, topical (eg, Tom Clancy's "Sum of All Fears", where they became - hold your breath - Nazis!).

"True Lies" illustrated the half-way point between having MEs/ Ms as unambiguous villains, and omitting them entirely: having them as ambiguous villains, eg, Art Malik gets to make a speech about "You Americans, you bomb women and children but then you call US terrorists!", yadda yadda, before Ahnuld gets on with the job of blowing him away.

"Three Kings" likewise had a scene - one of the first I recalled, actually, when I heard the 9/11 news - where one of Saddam's torturers asks his American captive to imagine his own wife and kids in Main Street USA having their kitchen bombed. (Now that's a film that's become a period piece - George Clooney complaining about "President Bush" not intervening militarily to protect the Iraqis from the evil Saddam).

And then there's "Kingdom of Heaven", where we hear much talk about the fanatics on both Muslim and Christian sides but, for some reason, only ever see and hear the fanatics on the Christian side. The reasonable folks on the Christian side are all agnostics.

Posted by Rod Blaine | January 15, 2008 5:25 AM

And "Aladdin", yeah, that would be that Disney cartoon where the eponymous blonde-haired, blue-eyed hero says "Slay ye the towelheads wherever ye may find them!" while his girlfriend, the freckled, red-haired Princess Jasmine, cheers him on.

I do recall that, after Arab-Americans protested, Disney altered the theme song to remove a line about how, in the mystical city of Agravarrr or whatever it was called, "they'll cut off your hand". Because of course, in Arabia, unlike the redneck Baptist strongholds of the fly-over states, they never amputate body parts as a punishment.

I wonder if the well-meaning folks at TAPPED ever got round to looking at the - how's the phrase go? - "root causes" of Hollywood's "hatred".

Posted by Rod Blaine | January 15, 2008 5:37 AM

(Now that's a film that's become a period piece - George Clooney complaining about "President Bush" not intervening militarily to protect the Iraqis from the evil Saddam).

I like the moment at the beginning of Black Hawk Down where General Garrison, comparing Somalia to Desert Storm, says, "This isn't Iraq--it's a lot more complicated than that." Ah, the good old days.

Posted by JB | January 15, 2008 6:47 AM

Rod Blaine writes: "And then there's "Kingdom of Heaven", where we hear much talk about the fanatics on both Muslim and Christian sides but, for some reason, only ever see and hear the fanatics on the Christian side. The reasonable folks on the Christian side are all agnostics."

Sounds about right to me. I've never heard of "agnostics" killing a kid during an exorcism attempt, for example. I'm not sure what "agnostics" would be doing on the "Christian" side, though.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 15, 2008 7:07 AM

The guy in the video says that Arabs are the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood. I haven't done an exhaustive study. But having seen the last few minutes of Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" I find it hard to believe that Hollywood has maligned Arabs more than blacks.

Posted by JB | January 15, 2008 8:01 AM

From the comments at Tapped:

"OK, future boy, where would someone have obtained plutonium on the black market in 1985? The mafia??"

Posted by WWB | January 15, 2008 8:11 AM

"OK, future boy, where would someone have obtained plutonium on the black market in 1985? The mafia??"

Taking his cues from George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis recently re-released Back to the Future with CGI adjustments. Look closely--the terrorists' VW van is now driven by A.Q. Khan.

Posted by JB | January 15, 2008 8:23 AM

My guess is that the most maligned groups in Hollywood are East Germans and South Africans. I mean, there have been some positive portrayals of Arabs, after all. . .

Oh, and Vatican priests are up there. Unless you need an exorcism, if somebody shows up in a Vatican cassock, you can bet they aren't going to be a hero.

Moviejuice had a very funny piece about how the only acceptable villians in Hollywood are groups that don't have anyone ready to protest, which limits writers to having gangs of terrorists be organized by Nazis or Redcoats.

Posted by J Mann | January 15, 2008 8:58 AM

I agree, the point you are refuting is stupid and incorrect. At the same time, though, I think you see here and in these comments the classic mechanism of a refutation of a weak point being taken for more than it is. This is one guy's dumb opinion. It doesn't say anything about "the left", or whatever. But, yeah, this isn't a point that can be defended, it seems to me. (What I've noticed personally is that one group that seems to still be okay to portray in a stereotypical fashion is East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc.) But that's just anecdote.

I do recall that, after Arab-Americans protested, Disney altered the theme song to remove a line about how, in the mystical city of Agravarrr or whatever it was called, "they'll cut off your hand". Because of course, in Arabia, unlike the redneck Baptist strongholds of the fly-over states, they never amputate body parts as a punishment.

Depends on the time period of Aladdin. There was certainly a span of many centuries in which the justice system punishments of the great Middle Eastern empires were eminently more fair, humane, and civilized than their European counterparts. If we assume Aladdin takes place in a time period contemporary with Medieval Europe, that is very likely the case.

Now that's a film that's become a period piece - George Clooney complaining about "President Bush" not intervening militarily to protect the Iraqis from the evil Saddam).

It's impossible to say what would have happened, but there's lots of reasons to believe that a US-backed ouster of Saddam would have been much more successful in 1991 than it was in 2003. There was an actual organic liberation movement at the time in Iraq. (At one point at the end of Desert Storm the liberation movement controlled the majority of the provinces of Iraq.) Sadly, after he reconsolidated power Saddam went about ruthlessly destroying the liberation movement. I don't think I would support the US ousting Saddam then-- things have just turned out too badly now, and there's always the law of unintended consequences-- but it's worth thinking about.

Posted by Freddie | January 15, 2008 8:59 AM

From James Lileks:
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/07/0607/062107.html

...Back to the Future ... the movie, which I still think is a perfect little thing, was made in 1985. Marty was sent back to 1955. If they made the movie today, he’d go back to 1977.

Think about that. 1977 would look like today, minus computers. Same clothes, same Pink Floyd tunes on the classic rock station, same smear of gimcrack commercial architecture interspersed with stalwarts from the 20s. Color TV, Star Wars, angry Iran. Marty could order a Pepsi Free in 1977, and they’d think it was a sugarless brand they hadn’t gotten yet.

Posted by wiredog | January 15, 2008 9:04 AM

How about "Not Without My daughter" or "Iron Eagle"...? Or do these not count because they're from the eighties/nineties?

Why am I not surprised that a blogger would dismiss as irrelevant something that happened 25+ years ago.

Posted by berger | January 15, 2008 9:23 AM

J Mann writes: "Oh, and Vatican priests are up there. Unless you need an exorcism, if somebody shows up in a Vatican cassock, you can bet they aren't going to be a hero."

Hmm, that's funny. In Godfather III there's a hero sort who becomes Pope. Robert DeNiro has played a couple of sympathetic priests in Sleepers and True Confessions. Then there's Ed Harris in The Third Miracle.

That's just off the top of my head, but I guess they don't count because they don't fit into the current persecution complex so many Christians are suffering from.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 15, 2008 9:57 AM

Berger, I think Ross is commenting on the fact that Duss is waving BttF as a bloody shirt to claim that Hollywood actively vilifies Arabs TODAY, which just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Even the title of the blog post in question is ridiculous -- the go-to villains in cinema starting in the 1950s onwards have been Nazis, neo-Nazis, and racists in general, not Muslims (not even racist Muslims).

Posted by Matthew Stinson | January 15, 2008 10:20 AM

You've got to be kidding me, Moe. Godfather III is full of dirty priests laundering Mob money through the Vatican bank.

Posted by Klug | January 15, 2008 10:23 AM

Klug says: "You've got to be kidding me, Moe. Godfather III is full of dirty priests laundering Mob money through the Vatican bank."

No, it's not. There's one priest that fits that description, but Lombardi - the JPI type who hears Corleone's confession - more than counterbalances him.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 15, 2008 10:47 AM

Aladdin?

Dude, it's from the Arabian Nights. Everyone in the movie is Arab. The monkey is Arab, he's wearing a fez.

Well, okay, the parrot is Jewish.

Posted by Charlie (Colorado) | January 15, 2008 11:10 AM

That's why I said "Vatican priests," Moe. I agree that the neighborhood priest may be sympathetic. (I haven't seen Sleepers, but I assume DeNiro isn't from the Vatican). Generally, anyone from the Vatican is like any admiral who shows up in Star Trek:TNG - possibly merely misguided, but probably venal and corrupt.

I haven't seen Godfather III. According to Wikipedia, a conspiracy of Vatican priests murder the Pope to prevent his good deeds. Is that fair?

Posted by J Mann | January 15, 2008 11:30 AM

"Not Without My Daughter" was nominally non-fiction, although Sally Field, the anti-war
patriarch now, performance is so bad, one almost roots for the misogynist ,fundamentalist Iranian
father (Alfred Molina)who took the daughter to Tehran. Alladin as has been pointed out, everyone is Arab, only the evil Vizier and one of the pot
bellied bazzaris (merchants)can really be seen as evil. Well there's Gilbert Gottfried, as the annoying parrot, who really is more of a jewish stereotype. "True Confessions" was really more a Chandleresque period piece that focused on the
ArchBishop Sheehan type. "Godfather 3" was really based on the work of David Yallop, whose key conclusion, that the Pope was murdered; was discredited by future Pope defamer John Cornwell.
By the way, the John Paul stand-in is the priest who takes Michael Corleone's confession; so that throws that example out. The Sindona characteri-zation is true; the rest is not which is the
key.

Posted by narciso | January 15, 2008 11:53 AM

Albinos are have been pretty maligned. Foul Play, End of Days, The Matrix Reloaded, Cold Mountain, The Da Vinci Code...they are always villains.

Homosexuals have also played their share of villians, psychos, and serial killers.

Posted by owenz | January 15, 2008 12:00 PM

I took Duss's point to be that these were the movies a lot of us were watching as kids, and that the clips demonstrated "how this sort of casual slander, the use of cultural signifiers to indicate "bad guy," can prepare a population to believe the worst about another people or culture, and to support disastrous and destructive policies towards them."

Posted by Jason C. | January 15, 2008 12:00 PM

Hmm, there are exceptions. THE SCARLET AND THE BLACK (tv, Gregory Peck) featured a heroic priest at the Vatican. Popes tend to come off ok on the occasions they show up, and are arguably the ur-Vatican-priests, no?

But yes, Vatican functionaries are generally, in movies, somewhere between the obnoxious publicity-hungry idiot cop in DIE HARD and a skulking super-diplomat-evil-assassin.

But it's not like they show up a lot.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | January 15, 2008 12:03 PM

owenz-

Last time I checked, the US did not invade a country full of gay, pallid people.

Posted by Rickm | January 15, 2008 12:06 PM

There were Arab terrorists in an action movie, Schwarzenegger and Eliza Dushku in "True Lies," I think? The one where he flies a VTOL jet around the outside of a skyscraper at the end?

Posted by Noumenon | January 15, 2008 12:18 PM

The original Aladdin from the Arabian Nights is set in China. Look it up.

purplestate makes a compelling the point. The problem is, of course, those 1 in 7 depictions of Arabs as bad guys isn't balanced by more (or just any) depictions of them as good guys.

Posted by Quietus | January 15, 2008 12:41 PM

That's why I said "Vatican priests," Moe. I agree that the neighborhood priest may be sympathetic. (I haven't seen Sleepers, but I assume DeNiro isn't from the Vatican). Generally, anyone from the Vatican is like any admiral who shows up in Star Trek:TNG - possibly merely misguided, but probably venal and corrupt.

Or any FBI agent when the hero is a local cop: officious, bureaucratic, and more interested in proceeding by the book than solving the crime/rescuing the victims.

Posted by Mike | January 15, 2008 1:07 PM

There was certainly a span of many centuries in which the justice system punishments of the great Middle Eastern empires were eminently more fair, humane, and civilized than their European counterparts. If we assume Aladdin takes place in a time period contemporary with Medieval Europe, that is very likely the case.

As long as we're nitpicking on that level of detail, punishment by mutilation was in fact routine in Arabia at that time. That their system was humane relative to Europe at the same time is true but irrelevant. As long as we're nitpicking.

Posted by CC | January 15, 2008 1:21 PM

J Mann asks: "I haven't seen Godfather III. According to Wikipedia, a conspiracy of Vatican priests murder the Pope to prevent his good deeds. Is that fair?"

No, it's not. Like I said, there is one Evil Vatican Priest in the movie - the head of the Vatican Bank. The conspiracy is between him and outside businessmen.

There's also a character who is the son of Tom Hagen from the earlier movies - he's a priest stationed at the Vatican who is portrayed favorably.

The Vatican has given harbor to noted child-molestation abettor Bernard Law, so it probably deserves a crappy portrayal or ten, though.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 15, 2008 1:41 PM

Everyone has forgotten Team America: World Police. Not to say that it is "islamophobia" or anything. Just noting that it is a major motion picture after 9/11 that depicts Muslim terrorists as bad guys.

Posted by arminius | January 15, 2008 1:45 PM

The Manchurian Candidate deliberately didn't use Iraqis as a villain in a movie about Iraq/Kuwait becaues the director didn't want to "negatively stereotype" Muslims.

The book Sum of All Fears originally had Muslim extremists exploding a nuclear bomb in Baltimore. But the movie makers changed the villains to Nazis to avoid offending Islamic groups.

Hollywood goes out of its way to avoid using Muslims as villains because of their extreme sensitivity to this issue.

So who're the bad guys in movies these days? Corporate execs get more than their turn at being the bad guys (The Constant Gardener, The Fugitive, Mission Impossible II) but I think these days the number-one villain is some branch of the US military or government (Bourne movies, Syriana, The Good Shepherd, Breach, Shooter).

Posted by Average Jane | January 15, 2008 2:03 PM

Just noting that it is a major motion picture after 9/11 that depicts Muslim terrorists as bad guys.

Ummm, "Muslim terrorists" ARE bad guys. What part of "terrorist" do we not get?

Posted by JFH | January 15, 2008 2:07 PM

I suppose that as an Irishman I lack the imaginative sympathy to comment on what it feels like to be negatively stereotyped or caricatured in cinematography that often. But I still feel this talk is a lot of hot air.

First off, as Ross pointed out, a lot of these films are fairly old, and recent efforts have been almost pedantic in their desire to be non-discriminatory. Kingdom of Heaven went to such great lengths that it imported modern secular-humanist ethics - in a very grating and pedagogical way, I might add- into a movie about an historical event. Not that bastardizing history will get you punished at the box office, but it was still an appalling film for that same reason nonetheless. Also, I cannot be the only one who finds the crude Orientalism of the past to be better - if only for its refreshing honesty about our own perceptions - than the "enlightened" menu of villains: neo-nazi terrorists, rogue government agents, Eastern European ultra-nationalists, and other shady characters whose relevance to contemporary world events is pretty much nil.

Second, there has been a counterpoint stereotype: that of the noble savage: the pious, wise, and quietly dignified Arab. Morgan Freeman's character in Robin Hood - a Moorish Muslim, to be sure, not an Arab - fits this archetype nicely. It might still be a stereotype, I guess. But it is positive.

Furthermore, the most maligned group in Hollywood is CEOs, perhaps followed by clergymen. And thats a stereotype that Hollywood will never even try to balance out.

P. S The main criticism one might have about Aladdin is that while the villains have distinctly Arab accents, the two protagonists are voiced by Americans. This is something even my cold heart would recognize as unfair. Even so, I once read that Aladdin was widely enjoyed in the Arab World.

CC: Lets keep nitpicking. This is a good thread.

Posted by Neal Murray | January 15, 2008 2:08 PM

Last point:

Perhaps the best solution is just to have Arab-Americans get more parts in more conventional roles, where the film has nothing to do with the Middle East or Terrorism or what have you. (Monk would be an example) This would satisfy everyone I think: it would cast Arabs in more regular parts, while allowing us naturalists to enjoy having Arab villains, without having to endure the role of the token Arab cop who is transparently put in for balance.

Posted by Neal Murray | January 15, 2008 2:17 PM

Ummm, "Muslim terrorists" ARE bad guys. What part of "terrorist" do we not get?

I meant as opposed to neo-Nazi terrorists (Sum of All Fears) or money-grubbing terrorists (Die Hard) or whatever other non-Islamic version Hollywood can go out of its way to make up out of thin air.

Posted by arminius | January 15, 2008 2:21 PM

Neal Murray - if the answer is more Monk, we're asking the right question

Posted by hugo | January 15, 2008 2:28 PM

As long as we're nitpicking on that level of detail, punishment by mutilation was in fact routine in Arabia at that time. That their system was humane relative to Europe at the same time is true but irrelevant. As long as we're nitpicking

That is, of course, not irrelevant, and it is not nitpicking. The commenter I quoted suggested that it was wrong for Arab-American interest groups to complain about the portrayal of Arabs in Aladdin as "cutting off ears if they don't like your face." That complaint makes perfect sense, in that a)the people writing the song were of European descent, b)the implication is that Arabia was unusually barbaric in the meting out of justice, and c) point b is nonsense, as the medieval Europeans were by any measure whatsoever more barbaric and cruel in their punishments than the Arabs. The song makes an implicit comparison between Arabiand European mores, and in doing so misrepresents the comparative cruelty of each.

Anything else, partner?

Posted by Freddie | January 15, 2008 2:33 PM

"the medieval Europeans were by any measure whatsoever more barbaric and cruel in their punishments than the Arabs"

What do you base that on, Freddie?

Posted by Norway | January 15, 2008 2:58 PM

Maybe if "Muslim Terrorists" stop blowing up innocent women and children Hollywood will stop portraying them as "bad guys".

Posted by allswell | January 15, 2008 3:19 PM

> "while the villains have distinctly Arab accents"

Actually, pretty much all Disney villains have "sneering British" accents. Which is why the Council on Anglican American Relationships (CAAR) and the Conference of Anglican Nations (CAN) was forever lodging complaints with Michael Eisner. "Sure, maybe Britain did overrun other people's countries, kill a lot of people, and forcibly convert the others to Anglicanism... but that was centuries ago! Today, Anglicanism is a religionof peace!", they protest (no pun intended).

Posted by Rod Blaine | January 15, 2008 3:47 PM

That complaint makes perfect sense, in that a)the people writing the song were of European descent, b)the implication is that Arabia was unusually barbaric in the meting out of justice, and c) point b is nonsense, as the medieval Europeans were by any measure whatsoever more barbaric and cruel in their punishments than the Arabs.

Had Aladdin been made in the 13th century, you'd have a reasonable point.

Posted by CC | January 15, 2008 3:58 PM

You'll notice as more arab countries signed peace treaties with Israel, the intensity of the stereotypes has lessened.

Posted by tg | January 15, 2008 3:59 PM

Rod Blaine:

I was talking about the villains in Aladdin, not in all Disney Movies. Try reading.

Posted by Neal Murray | January 15, 2008 5:53 PM

[1] CC - So... because "Kingdom of Heaven" was made in 2005 and not 1196, it shouldn't have depicted Frankish rulers as warlike Christian theocrats, because that would be unfair to Jacques Chirac and Segolene Royal today?

What an odd view.

[2] Neal Murray - my recollection of "Aladdin", reinforced by videos such as this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okvnUzTRwU0&feature=related (or http://tinyurl.com/ytx2gj) is that Jafar, the main villain, had a sneering English accent so plummy as to make Tim Curry's Dr Frank'n'furter sound like Roseanne's husband by comparison. Having said that, after my kids have watched "Aladdin", the "Lion King", and "Pocahontas" a few hundred times each, the sneering English-accented villains all blur together in my head.

[3] By the way, are we counting "Fahrenheit 9/11" as an anti-Arab film, or is it impliedly understood in this context that, although Lefty gentiles can and do offered reasoned, measured criticisms of Arab cultures and Saudi policy on liberal grounds, if right-wingers or Hollywood "JOOZ" do the same thing, their motives must be racist?

Posted by Rod Blaine | January 15, 2008 7:31 PM

[1] MoeLarryAndJesus wrote: "I’ve never heard of "agnostics" killing a kid during an exorcism attempt, for example."

Me neither, but I've heard of "agnostics" killing a lot of kids during partial-birth abortions; does that count? Of course, they're not _cute_ kids at that stage, so they don't have any rights yet from a strictly rationalist point of view. The "look at all that blood on Christianity’s hands" argument won't wash - excuse pun - post 1917.

[2] Berger wrote: "How about "Not Without My Daughter" or "Iron Eagle"…? Or do these not count because they’re from the eighties/nineties?"

"Not Without My Daughter" is meant to be non-fiction. Doubtless Sally Field has no regrets about furnishing Dubya with propaganda about the evils of the Iranian regime.

About "Iron Eagle," I remember nothing except that Queen did the song "One Vision" for its soundtrack. Why Freddie Murphy - a gay Zoroastrian - would want any part of a film that depicts an Arab society negatively, I can't for the life of me imagine.

[3] Berger also wrote: "Why am I not surprised that a blogger would dismiss as irrelevant something that happened 25+ years ago."

How about the fact that the Libyans downed an unarmed passenger jet over Lockerbie 20 years ago? What about Leon Klinghoffer? He was murdered by the PLO in 1985, about the time "Back to the Future" came out. Is it any wonder filmmakers were using keffiyahs as shorthand for "murderous terrorist"? If you complain about being typecast, Step #1 is to stop playing to type.

[4] Rickm wrote: "Last time I checked, the US did not invade a country full of gay, pallid people."

Obviously you have never heard of the US-led invasion and occupation of Albinossynia. Not surprisingly, since the Bushitler Hallibiliton complex has suppressed Howard Zinn’s "Secret History of Wall Street’s War on Albinossynia" and silenced all discussion of the topic.

The Albinossynians were a peaceful, happy people, hiding from the noon sun, collecting Judy Garland kitsch, enjoying free healthcare, flying kites, etc, etc, until the Bush/Cheney regime invaded and occupied their country and tried to run democratic multi-party elections. The Albinossynians reacted to this by blowing each other up with improvised IEDs. Their religion, Anglicanism, was a peaceful and egalitarian faith, but as soon as the American boots were on the ground, the Albinossynians responded to this violation of their sovereignty by dividing into competing sectarian militias. The lesson of this debacle - obvious in advance, so obvious that only an idiot like Dubya could have missed it - is that you can't simply transplant US-style democracy to a country like Albinossynia. These people don't want democracy. They are much happier being governed by strong men with an iron fist, or by their clan chiefs enforcing traditional religious laws. And it's racist to say otherwise.

Now, where’s my ACLU donation envelope and that MoveOn fundraising newsletter…? The Christian Right wants to teach abstinence in public schools! Sound the alarm!

Posted by Rod Blaine | January 16, 2008 2:00 AM

True Lies had Moslem Arab villains. It also had a character who was part of the anti-terrorist team led by Harry Tasker (Ahhnuld): an electronics expert and crack shot played by swarthy, dark-eyed, dark-haired Grant Heslov. While Tasker is attacking in a Harrier jet, this guy infiltrates the terrorist position, shoots two with a concealed gun, and secures the stolen A-bomb. His name? "Feisil". Hmm.

Then there was The Wind and the Lion, where U.S. Marines end up coming to the aid of the Moslem bandit chief played by Sean Connery.

And The Living Daylights, where James Bond allies with Afghan mujahideen?

Posted by Rich Rostrom | January 16, 2008 3:39 AM

Rod Blaine replies: "[1] MoeLarryAndJesus wrote: "I’ve never heard of "agnostics" killing a kid during an exorcism attempt, for example."

Me neither, but I've heard of "agnostics" killing a lot of kids during partial-birth abortions; does that count? Of course, they're not _cute_ kids at that stage, so they don't have any rights yet from a strictly rationalist point of view. The "look at all that blood on Christianity’s hands" argument won't wash - excuse pun - post 1917."

No, it doesn't count at all. Even if some "agnostics" are performing abortions, I don't see how their "agnosticism" has anything to do with it. Exorcisms, on the other hand, are performed exclusively by believers.

I have known a few abortion providers - they were all theists. Go figure.

Now excuse me, I'm going to make a donation to Planned Parenthood in your name.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 16, 2008 11:18 AM

Absolutely the most vilified demographic in in Hollywood is British men with upper middle class accents. Even when they're playing Germans/South Africans/Russian mob bosses.

Posted by David Gillies | January 16, 2008 11:43 AM

Re: So... because "Kingdom of Heaven" was made in 2005 and not 1196, it shouldn't have depicted Frankish rulers as warlike Christian theocrats, because that would be unfair to Jacques Chirac and Segolene Royal today?

1) Christian states during the Middle Ages were not 'theocracies' in the strict sense of the term.
2) The Crusades were a justified response to Muslim-Turkish aggression. Syria and Palestine were part of historic Christendom that had been violently seized by the wars of Muslim agression.
3) While the Crusaders did, probably, on the whole, commit more abuses than the Muslims (there were lots of abuses on both sides) they were ultimately fighting dirty for a good cause, while the Muslims were fighting (relatively) cleanly for a bad one.

Posted by Hector | January 16, 2008 2:32 PM

To repeat my question. If we are looking for _recent_ and _culturally influential_ "anti-Arab" films... why omit "Fahrenheit 9/11"?

Re the "dodgy sheikh" stereotype from "Cannonball Run II"... (1) that sounds like a view of the Saudi royalty that most of Osama's followers would share, and I do believe a non-insignificant proportion of those are Arab themselves, and (2) don't forget the video for Bette Midler's "Beast of Burden" (1984). Hmmm, I wonder what ethno-religion Bette might be...

Posted by Rod Blaine | January 16, 2008 3:26 PM

> " Exorcisms, on the other hand, are performed exclusively by believers."

Well, that's true. On the other hand, I would hazard a guess there are not that many theists among, say, Stalin's psychiatric-ward doctors or Kim Jong-Il's scientists who conduct interesting experiments on triplets.

And when the Supreme Court elevates "exorcistic rights" into a constitutional super-principle that overrides even the First Amendment rights of speech, assembly and petition, then maybe I'll start to worry about the 800,000 exorcisms a year being performed in America.

Posted by Rod Blaine | January 16, 2008 3:48 PM

Rod Blaine writes: "Well, that's true. On the other hand, I would hazard a guess there are not that many theists among, say, Stalin's psychiatric-ward doctors or Kim Jong-Il's scientists who conduct interesting experiments on triplets."

Communism of that sort is just another religion, chuckles. They have the leader hanging on the wall, the masses are promised a future utopia, and the leader is said to have superpowers. (Lil Kim is said to be an athlete of better-than-Olympic ability in multiple sports who routinely shoots several holes-in-one in each round of golf. Next he'll be walking on water.) It's funny how you fools conflate those regimes with rational unbelief, though. Next you'll be claiming Hitler was an atheist, too, when he was the apotheosis of German Christian anti-Semitism, the fulfillment of Martin Luther's dream for the Jews.

"And when the Supreme Court elevates "exorcistic rights" into a constitutional super-principle that overrides even the First Amendment rights of speech, assembly and petition, then maybe I'll start to worry about the 800,000 exorcisms a year being performed in America."

Another bit of silliness. Saint Reagan signed the most liberal abortion law in America when he was governor. Your pal Dumbya is personally responsible for the deaths of well over half a million actual walking, talking, thinking human beings, and you're glad they're dead. So stop pretending you really give a damn about "life." You're just a fetus fetishist.

So how many miscarriage funerals have you been to this year?

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 16, 2008 10:45 PM

Moe,

We've been over this. Stalin was an atheist (although ironically some of his close associates seem to have had deathbed conversions). Hitler was certainly not a Christian, although he appears not to have been an atheist either. Certainly many of the thinkers that Hitler drew on were explicitly atheists who drew on perverted 'science' as the source of their racism.

I certainly would not claim that atheists _as a whole_ are responsible for Hitler and Stalin, although I tend to agree with Peguy who predicted that the coming socialist revolution, unless it was explicitly Christian, would eventually destroy itself. Nobody is claiming that a "rational unbeliever" like _you_ for example is in any way comparable to Kim Jong Il. So I'm not sure why you feel it necessary to deny that _some_ atheists did nasty things.

Posted by Hector | January 16, 2008 11:24 PM

I call shenanigans on the whole thing.

Above all, to make a story entertaining and readable/watchable it has to fall into some form of consistency with the real world.

If I am making a film about drug dealers in Harlem, guess what? My drug dealers are going to be black. Because it would make no sense to make them Eskimos. How would my film look if the drug dealer rolls up on a dog sled, wearing a big coat?

In BttF, Doc Brown had to illegally obtain Plutonium. You have to be able to swallow that back story. If he came out and said he got it from a bunch of ranchers from Alberta who wanted to make a bomb you would never get past it.

I'm a 33 year old white dude. Do I get my stuff in a bunch because serial killers are always portrayed as 30 something white dudes in movies? No. 1) Most serial killers are 30ish white dudes. 2) I really don't dwell on anyone else's opinion of me, ethnically or otherwise.

Posted by DarthT | January 17, 2008 5:31 AM

> "and you're glad they're dead"

Your evidence for that being?

> "Next you'll be claiming Hitler was an atheist"

Your evidence for that being?

Hitler was a neo-pagan hyper-Nietzschean Odinist. He didn't give a theological shit what religion the Jews were, just their race. Those who were atheists, or converts to Christianity, went to the gas chambers along with those who practised Judaism. If Hitler was "Catholic", just by virtue of his childhood, then Barack Obama is a "Muslim" and Jews for Jesus are "Jews". I am assuming, admittedly without direct evidence, that you would reject the latter two propositions. So let's use the same yardstick for all.

As an intelligent person, you will immediately spot the fallacy in jumping from "Blaine believes that not every religion is worse than atheism" straight to "Blaine believes that every religion is better than atheism". I'd take Sam Harris over an Aztec sun-worshipper or a Thug any day. My brief is for Judaeo-Christianity, and for other religions to the extent that they agree with, or are compatible with, Judaeo-Christianity.

Of course I don't go to miscarriage funerals. I also don't want the police to prosecute people whose relatives die in air crashes. Murders are a concern of the criminal justice system. Unavoidable accidents are not.

Soviet and Chinese communism, as offshoots of Marcism, are atheistic, and pride themselves on being "scientific". Dialectical materialism ring a bell? "The last king with the bowels of the last priest" and all that? Lysenko? No supernatural superstitions there. The repressiveness of communism is not, as you seem to think, a strike against "religion" in the sense of supernatural belief. It is, though, a strike against any intolerant belief system, even one that likes to think it is being rational, scientific and free from superstitious dogmas. The problem is not that some people believe god resides in a piece of bread. The problem is when people want to kill or imprison others for holding "wrong" beliefs. In the past 100-150 years, Jews and Christians have been the victims rather than the culprits of this, by a long shot.

Posted by Rod Blaine | January 17, 2008 5:35 AM

Rod Blaine writes: "The problem is when people want to kill or imprison others for holding "wrong" beliefs. In the past 100-150 years, Jews and Christians have been the victims rather than the culprits of this, by a long shot."

The Jews killed in the Holocaust weren't killed personally by Hitler, who was as Christian as Dick Cheney is - they were killed by tens or hundreds of thousands of Germans acting in concert, and most of those Germans were Christians. You can absolve them under the "just following orders" defense, Rod, but I think doing that obscures the fact that if it hadn't been for the centuries-long tradition of German Christian anti-Semitism, the Holocaust would not have happened. It also aligns you morally with the Nuremberg defendants, and we wouldn't want that.

Well, at least I wouldn't.

As for my "evidence" for my comment that "next you'll be claiming Hitler was an atheist," don't be silly. Who needs "evidence" for a rhetorical dare?

BTW, you don't go to miscarriage funerals because our society doesn't haver them, and we don't have them because fetuses, at least in the early stages of development, are not considered to be worth the bother. You used "partial birth abortions" as an inflammatory example and then spoke of "800,000 exorcisms." Since we both know that the vast majority of abortions occur in the 1st trimester, don't pretend these are equivalent events.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 17, 2008 10:13 AM

Moe,

I don't consider Dick Cheney much of a Christian either by the way. Dumbya Bush doesn't even go to church. Karl Rove and Christopher Hitchens, among the other particularly nasty ideologists of the Bush regime, are self-professed agnostics.

Nazism was a neo-pagan movement born specifically in reaction against Christian tradition in a world in which Christianity was perecived as no longer relevant. The mass sadism of the Nazi regime and its exaltation of brute force were meant as a deliberate challenge to Christian ideas of charity, peace, 'blessed are the meek', etc. In the same way that the pornography of Dali and others of the 1920s were intended as delibrate affronts to Christian sexual morality. This is not that controversial- even old-line atheists Marxists typically ackowledge that Nazism, in particular, was anti-Christian. I'm not sure why you deny it.

Posted by Hector | January 17, 2008 11:21 AM

Hector writes: "The mass sadism of the Nazi regime and its exaltation of brute force were meant as a deliberate challenge to Christian ideas of charity, peace, 'blessed are the meek', etc. In the same way that the pornography of Dali and others of the 1920s were intended as delibrate affronts to Christian sexual morality. This is not that controversial- even old-line atheists Marxists typically ackowledge that Nazism, in particular, was anti-Christian. I'm not sure why you deny it."

I deny it because the vast majority of German Christians denied it, Hector. You can pretend Hitler didn't have the support of most of them behind him, but the German resistance was negligible, and until the war went sour he was a popular figure throughout Germany - and even in Austria. And please stop pretending that there hasn't been a long history of non-charitable, non-meek, non-peaceful Christians. I'm not stupid enough to swallow it.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 17, 2008 12:01 PM

I take MoeLarryAndJesus's argument to be that, even if Hitler himself was a neo-pagan who despised Christianity, nonetheless many (or most) of his followers considered themselves devout Christians and got behind the Holocaust project on theological grounds, drawing on centuries of Christian anti-Semitism.

This is a stronger argument than the claim (which some illiterates do advance: I am relieved that Moe isn't one, it seems) that Hitler himself was a Christian.

Nonetheless I have some doubts. The Fuehrerprinzip was especially strong under the Nazi regime - the German statute book said, basically, in as many words that "every command of the Fuehrer has the force of law" - so that, if you have millions of Catholics and Lutherans blindly following the commands of a neo-pagan to do evil to Jews, that says something about Catholicism and Lutheranism but even more about neo-paganism.

Reinforcing this is the fact that pre-Nazi Germany was viewed as very tolerant of Jews, by pre-1933 standards. Polish and Russian Jews sought sanctuary in Germany because of its enlightened attitudes. Many German Jews were enthusiastic nationalists in WW1: eg, Ernest Habel, who devised poison gas weapons for the Kaiser, and then found his patriotism rewarded with the Nuremberg Laws and exile 15-20 years later. One reason the Holocaust caught so many German Jews by surprise was that they thought "it can't happen here". Yes, Luther had written some angry, hateful diatribes against "the Jews and their lies" and yes, the Catholic Mass did pray for the conversion of the "perfidious Jews", but that was seen before 1933 as as dated as, say, anti-Irish-Catholic, "Gangs of New York"-style Nativism is in America of the 2000s.

Finally, anti-Semitism has taken hold in non-Christian societies (it long predates 1948 in the Muslim Middle East), and even in non-religious ones. For example, the post-1940s USSR (where, as with Hitler, the anti-Semites' grievance was not theological but political: "Why do Ida Nudel and the refuseniks despise the socialist motherland so much that they wish to emigrate to bourgeois Israel?") and, believe it or not, Japan, where anti-Semitic conspiracy theories gain traction despite the fact that there are only a few hundred Jews in the entire country, or indeed for several thousand miles around it.

Posted by Rod Blaine | January 21, 2008 9:48 PM

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