Rating: 
Summary: The Truth about Arab sterotypes in Hollywood
Review: I LOVE THIS BOOK. It really gives you a great understanding of how Hollywood depicts Arabs in such a negative light. I read some of the other reviews that spoke negatively about it. All i have to say is I challenge you to go for your self to an Arab country or be friends with an Arab and dont lie about it. I promise you will think twice about what you wrote. This book gives an honest look at how Hollywood consciously and subconsciously feeds us negative images of Arabs. Every student in high school and college student should read this BOOK. This book opens your eyes to see things clearly and not with blind eyes. We need to be critical about what we see. The Nazis did the same about Jews before they killed them. They dehumanized them and that is what Hollywood is doing with the Arabs stereotypes.
Rating:
Summary: Great intent, more action needed
Review: I myself am not Muslim or Arab but I understand, feel and hear the daily horrid stuff said about Muslims and Arabs. Reel Bad Arabs is a thick book with a good introduction into what land Arabs are from, their religion (being Arab and Muslim are two different and distinct things - Arabs can be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc.), and movies from the early 1900s to the present that show Arabs in an awful way. My only critique for this book and in general is that more needs to be done to promote tolerance towards Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians. Usually people who have stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims are not intelligent enough to read a book, something more needs to be done. Not only are Arabs shown in a bad way in movies, it is the same thing on TV, newspapers, magazines, etc. Mr. Shaheen should also detail how Muslim people are always dehumanized in the media - we literally can't hear Islam without terrorist, fundamentalist or something along with it. Covering all of that stuff from 1900s to present would have taken forever though.
Rating: 
Summary: He has a point
Review: I saw a movie once that totally villified Arabs. It was about a group of terrorists (naturally!) that hijacked some planes and flew them into some landmarks in America. Over three thousand innocent people killed in a single day. It was....
Oh, wait a minute... that WASN'T a movie.
To be honest I only skimmed this book before I had to put it down in disgust. The real fact of the matter is that unrelenting anti-Semitism, despotism and sponsorship of terrorism in the REAL Middle East does more to villify Arabs than any movies ever could.
Rating:
Summary: Required Reading for Film and Communication Students
Review: Jack Shaheen's blockbuster book "REEL BAD ARABS: How Hollywood Vilifies a People" blows the cover on the film industry's century-long free ride in smearing Arab Muslims. What Shaheen spent the past 20 years researching should have been and can now become grist for where it's vital to plant the seeds of understanding and tolerance, namely, in the groves of academia.Young Americans in film and communications courses need to face up to some pretty disturbing facts about how Hollywood has gotten away with defaming a people. The motion picture industry has made huge amounts of money by destroying the good name of nearly 300 million innocent men and women of the Arab world. As Shaheen's REEL BAD ARABS documents the shameful vilification of an entire people, tests for college students should include questions like these: 1. How do you think Americans form their ideas about what is taking place in the Middle East? 2. How effective do you think movies are in shaping the way Americans think about the Arabs, especially Palestinians, and about the "peace process" in the region? 3. Do such perceptions impact public opinion and policy? 4. What movies can you name that presented Arabs in anything but a bad light as terrorists, oil monopolists, lechers and other villains? 5. How effective do you think movies are in manipulating the way we Americans see 'The Other,' namely Arabs, as The Enemy? Besides the psychological and political side of his subject, Jack Shaheen has provided us with a wonderful guide to nearly 1,000 films. In spite of the bias this book lays out all too clearly, it nevertheless is guaranteed to provide much pleasure for the reader at the same time as it opens her eyes to the facts. REEL BAD ARABS should be in every library in America and abroad, as well as on film-studio reference shelves to prick the conscience of every film producer and director and script-writer from Hollywood to Haifa.
Rating:
Summary: Required Reading for Film and Communication Students
Review: Jack Shaheen's blockbuster book "REEL BAD ARABS: How Hollywood Vilifies a People" blows the cover on the film industry's century-long free ride in smearing Arab Muslims. What Shaheen spent the past 20 years researching should have been and can now become grist for where it's vital to plant the seeds of understanding and tolerance, namely, in the groves of academia. Young Americans in film and communications courses need to face up to some pretty disturbing facts about how Hollywood has gotten away with defaming a people. The motion picture industry has made huge amounts of money by destroying the good name of nearly 300 million innocent men and women of the Arab world. As Shaheen's REEL BAD ARABS documents the shameful vilification of an entire people, tests for college students should include questions like these: 1. How do you think Americans form their ideas about what is taking place in the Middle East? 2. How effective do you think movies are in shaping the way Americans think about the Arabs, especially Palestinians, and about the "peace process" in the region? 3. Do such perceptions impact public opinion and policy? 4. What movies can you name that presented Arabs in anything but a bad light as terrorists, oil monopolists, lechers and other villains? 5. How effective do you think movies are in manipulating the way we Americans see 'The Other,' namely Arabs, as The Enemy? Besides the psychological and political side of his subject, Jack Shaheen has provided us with a wonderful guide to nearly 1,000 films. In spite of the bias this book lays out all too clearly, it nevertheless is guaranteed to provide much pleasure for the reader at the same time as it opens her eyes to the facts. REEL BAD ARABS should be in every library in America and abroad, as well as on film-studio reference shelves to prick the conscience of every film producer and director and script-writer from Hollywood to Haifa.
Rating: 
Summary: Important book but faulty research
Review: Jack Shaheen's book 'Reel bad Arabs', which chronicles Arab stereotypes in mostly 900 American films is a much needed resource that popular culture students can use to think about the role of stereotyping in popular culture. Arabs have replaced Nazis as easy villains in films and television and there are truely too few positive images of Arabs in the media. A similar problem has existed in popular entertainment, whether it be film, TV, music, radio, or summer beach books, for almost every ethnic and racial group in America. And as another reviewer as observed, vilifying those who are different is not particularly an American phenomenon. Anti-American and anti-Jewish stereotypes are rampant in the Arab world and anti-Americanism is no stranger to a large part of Europe either. Perhaps the only group that has yet to complain, and surely can find as many complaints as Professor Shaheen does, are WASPS.
However as much as this book is a needed resource to instruct in the persistance of racism and the use of stereotypes in all of popular culture everywhere, it has some major faults. In the attempt to make his very valid points, Professsor Shaheen has distorted history, has included example that strain credulity, and has revealed his own biases. I believe that it is true that Hollywood distorts the popular perception of groups of peoples whether they be Arab, Italian, Jew, or Aliens from Mars. It is the nature of popular entertainment to use artistic shorthand to define character and plot. Unfortunate, but a fact of popular cultural life. The propensity of pop culture to take the lazy way out in using stereotypes to portray people is something we all have to fight against. Arab stereotypes can join a very large historical list .
I can only give a few examples of Prof. Shaheen's errors here.
1. Although Arab culture is historically realitively recent, Prof. Shaheen includes as Arab villification films about ancient Egypt and pre-Arabic lands. Cleopatra was not an Arab.
2. Anti-Semitism is a polite term for Anti-Jew. It is wrong to include Arabs in the terms definition because Arabs are considered 'Semites'. Prof Shaheen does not hid his anti-Israeli biases very well.
3. The term 'Palestinian' is also very recent. About 45 years in fact. There were no Palestinians in the ancient world. 'Palastinia' was a Roman construct to name the administrative region they controlled. It wasn't until 638 AD that Palistina became Arab controlled. Inhabitants were forced converted to Islam and the area was renamed 'Falistin'. Arabs did not identify themselves nationalistically as Palastinians until after 1967.
4. Just as in literature, the use of stereotypes must be examined in the context of the time period it was made. It is unfair to use examples of stereotypes produced long before (at least we hope) more enlightened times. Although we recognize the racism of 'Birth of a Nation', we also need recognize it's historic achievement in filmmaking and hope that no one serious watches it for the plot.
5. Only an academic could have dragged up so many obscure films. ...
Rating:
Summary: Good Book, But.....
Review: Nothing wrong with the book, which is on target. (How on earth did Arabs end up being villains in Gladiator for example.) The victimisation aspect may be overplayed, for this books is not the whole story. The Arab world has its own cinema and television, and that cinema/television is not necessarily any nicer to westerners than Hollywood is to Arabs. And when it comes to portrayals of Jews, many widely celebrated cultural producers (film/TV/music) in the Arab world make *all* Hollywood accounts of the west appear fair minded and loving!
Rating:
Summary: Evidence of Discrimination
Review: Reel Bad Arabs is an essential read for anyone concerned about fairness, objectivity and stereotyping. A brilliantly gathered documentation of a little known or appreciated history of how "Hollywood vilifies people," in this case, Arabs and Arab Americans. Jack Shaheen is a great scholar. How anyone would have the patience to review so many films, over such a long period of time, simply escapes me. And he is not terribly ideological or biased himself! What he does is simply point out a consistent pattern, film by film, on how Arabs are depicted in film. The book is long overdue, extremely well documented, and an easy read. The alphabetized entries give a plot summary and then focus on the presentation or role of "the Arab" in the story. Sometimes history is rewritten, facts ignored, and truths disregarded just for the sake of vilification or plot continuity. To counter this in general, the book opens with needed information on who Arabs and Arab-Americans really are and how these facticities differ from their depiction as sheikhs, harem owners, villains, bandits, mummies, and, for the women, maidens in distress. While not a goal of the author, the book is a history of Hollywood and the development of American political positions on the Middle East. Shaheen identifies Exodus as the most effective movie in shaping American perceptions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Hardly a balanced film, this Palestinian bashing movie and others that were filmed in Israel and/or produced by Israelis in cooperation with the Israeli government, illustrate how negative Arab mages impact our attitudes about Arab Muslims, Palestinians in particular, regardless of fact. If only Hollywood stopped there, but it didn't. like a runaway train, the defamation continues. Shaheen's telling observations are supported by evidence: for more than a century, ever since camras started cranking, about one thousand Hollywood movies have dehumanized the Arab people. As the reviews indicate, Arab diversity is ignored, countries are misnamed or simply made up, and the language ill spoken. Shaheen actually includes a list of epithets used to describe or denounce Arab peoples. Anyone interested in the cinema, injustice, in sociology and political science will find this book enormously useful. I loved it and recommend it without reservation. Let the evidence speak for itself and damn Hollywood! -Philip Kayal Seton Hall University
Rating:
Summary: Evidence of Discrimination
Review: Reel Bad Arabs is an essential read for anyone concerned about fairness, objectivity and stereotyping. A brilliantly gathered documentation of a little known or appreciated history of how "Hollywood vilifies people," in this case, Arabs and Arab Americans. Jack Shaheen is a great scholar. How anyone would have the patience to review so many films, over such a long period of time, simply escapes me. And he is not terribly ideological or biased himself! What he does is simply point out a consistent pattern, film by film, on how Arabs are depicted in film. The book is long overdue, extremely well documented, and an easy read. The alphabetized entries give a plot summary and then focus on the presentation or role of "the Arab" in the story. Sometimes history is rewritten, facts ignored, and truths disregarded just for the sake of vilification or plot continuity. To counter this in general, the book opens with needed information on who Arabs and Arab-Americans really are and how these facticities differ from their depiction as sheikhs, harem owners, villains, bandits, mummies, and, for the women, maidens in distress. While not a goal of the author, the book is a history of Hollywood and the development of American political positions on the Middle East. Shaheen identifies Exodus as the most effective movie in shaping American perceptions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Hardly a balanced film, this Palestinian bashing movie and others that were filmed in Israel and/or produced by Israelis in cooperation with the Israeli government, illustrate how negative Arab mages impact our attitudes about Arab Muslims, Palestinians in particular, regardless of fact. If only Hollywood stopped there, but it didn't. like a runaway train, the defamation continues. Shaheen's telling observations are supported by evidence: for more than a century, ever since camras started cranking, about one thousand Hollywood movies have dehumanized the Arab people. As the reviews indicate, Arab diversity is ignored, countries are misnamed or simply made up, and the language ill spoken. Shaheen actually includes a list of epithets used to describe or denounce Arab peoples. Anyone interested in the cinema, injustice, in sociology and political science will find this book enormously useful. I loved it and recommend it without reservation. Let the evidence speak for itself and damn Hollywood! -Philip Kayal Seton Hall University
Rating:
Summary: A Common Cause
Review: Shaheen's book is a fact-based, detailed example of how the media can negatively distort the personality of an ethnic group. For all those looking to fight bigotry and racism, read this book as a rallying point. Let's face it: there is good and bad in every eithnicity, gender and race. There is good and bad in all people regardless of religious choice. There is good and bad in families, communities, cities, states, etc. The more we segregate through negative, subliminal messages about the color of our skin or the language we speak or the religion we practice, then the more we build walls between people that have more in common than they have different. Shaheen's book should be a call to action for media moguls to change their mode of operations. Fine, depict arabs as villians, but also depict them as heroes....heroes fighting fires, hereos saving lives in an ER, heroes coaching a bunch of high school kids to a championship football game, heroes as police officers...or as senators, congressmen and cabinet members. All these types of heroes exist as Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Irish-Catholic Americans, Jewish Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, etc.. Not all Italian-Americans are mafia killers -- right? Not all Catholic priests are bad...the overwhelming majority are hard-working practicing Christians. Seems ludicrous that these point shave to be made, but the reel bad ememies are those that generalize and throw a hate blanket over the masses. Read this book not only if you're an Arab, but also if you're looking to fight bigotry in general. You will gain confidence that there are a lot of examples to support your cause...a common cause.
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