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Summary: The hidden effect of the media
Review: The book brings up an issue that is becomming natural in our life.It its like watching commertials.If you watch them enough you will buy the product without thinking if it is good or if you really need it.If you keep showing people negative images about a race ,a religion,or a nationality ,people unconcionsly assotiate negative thoughts every time this race ,or nationality is mentioned.All the people that were stegmatized during history such as blacks ,jews,american indians....deserve better.There people of hiratage,accomplichments,and tradition.Arabs and muslims are the same.There are extremist and terrorist in any nation,religion,or race.We should condemn them all ,But leave the door open for the good majority .This will help create more moderate mineds and stop the terrorist from affecting the mind of the weak. Let us respect the origin of all american,and other nations, so we will be admired and respected as always.
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Summary: Arab Muslims Can't Blame Hollywood for their Savage Image
Review: The next time three thousand innocent Americans are slaughtered by Arab Muslims, or the next time another American is beheaded in the name of Allah, I'll assuredly remember this profound book. Arab Muslims don't need Hollywood to vilify them, they do a remarkable job themselves by perpetuating a xenophobic theocratic culture whose origins and perpetuation are drenched in blood, terror, and contempt for anyone or any culture different from their own. The Muslim world is a savage, treacherous, antiquated mess. Liberal academics should try taking their heads out of their asses and replace political correctness with historical correctness---it isn't Jews, Irishmen, or Italians blowing up planes, trains, and cars; nor is it Lithuanians or Koreans beheading innocent international workers all in the name of their loving and merciful Allah. Arab Islamic culture and psychology is deranged. You can't blame Hollywood for merely reflecting that blatant and harsh reality. In the name of the all loving and all merciful Allah... we will behead all infidels! Yep, this sure sounds like a very civilized, sophisticated group that's been unjustly vilified.
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Summary: A sharp and acerbic look at negative movie stereotypes
Review: The overwhelming majority of Arabic people around the world are peaceful, law-abiding citizens, but you'd never deduce that from their consistently, overwhelmingly villainous portrayal in the nearly one thousand Hollywood movies analyzed by Jack Shahenn (Professor Emeritus of Mass Communications at Southern Illinois University) in Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies A People, a sharp and acerbic look at negative movie stereotypes of an entire ethnicity. Meticulously taking apart the origins of these stereotypes in cinema's earliest days, Reel Bad Arabs pursues the recurring theme of vilifying the unfamiliar up to the present day. Starkly relevant, soberly honest, and highly recommended for students of popular culture, the film industry, and sociology, as well as the non-specialist general reader with an interest in today's political and cultural problems of distinguishing Arab terrorists from non-terrorists.
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Summary: Shaheen's 9/11
Review: This book is an inept emotional outburst of an undeducated liberal who is more interested in being politically correct than telling the truth. Shaheen makes all kinds of baseless assertions without attempting to document any of them. He is blissfully unaware of Middle Eastern scholarship and has no knowledge of the pre-Islamic Arab world in which allah was the moon-god and the Kabah was his main temple. Much of what is called Islam today existed as moon-god religion before Muhammad was born. The only valid purpose of the book is to line the bottom of bird cages.
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Summary: Profound & shocking - thank God it's finally documented!
Review: This book is meticulously researched and a brilliant reference to anyone interested in the topic of depiction of ethnicity in film. Arabs are one group of people that have never been documented in this way before either. It is also a very entertaining read. Every movie in the history of movies that has ever depicted Arabs (regardless of how big or small a role) has been mentioned in this book. Along with each title is a description of the role of the Arab character(s) as well as commentary from the author at times or interesting info about the film. There is also an analysis at the beginning of the book of the portrayals in general as well as categories such as "Best List", "Recommended Films" and Worst List". There have been over 900 films made that depict Arab characters in them and it's about time that someone documents their portrayal. You will be shocked by what you read.
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Summary: Reel Good Book
Review: This book makes clear that there is an intention of portraying Arabs as evil people, not only as a group, but as individuals. Why? I wish I knew why. But the compelling research Shaheen did is an evidence not to be overlooked. When I was growing up, I used to think that Arabs, Native Americans, Japanese, Germans, were evil people, all due to the movies I watched on tv. Also when I was a teenager I used to sadly and wrongly think that all Colombians were evil drug dealers, all due to the movies and the media. Also we saw how the movie industry tried to win Vietnam's War in the screen, after they lost in the fields. Fortunately Books like this, and our own experience let us see the truth, that there is so much hate and intolerance, and the movie industry can be so irresponsible for the way they handle the mind of millions of people who trust them. This book show how the intention of manipulating people's minds with this movies has paid and achieved its goal by making people take side in the story they are watching..
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Summary: What's in this book
Review: This is an excellent summary of all the films that in some way have wrongly portrayed Arabs. But if you are looking for a general discussion on what the harms and outcomes of this are, you will not find much discussion of it here. Most of the space is taken up by descriptions and summaries of various films, and only the introduction has anything in the way of an argument about why this sort of portrayal is harmful.
So use this book as a general reference for examples, not like a primary text.
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Summary: The New Orientalism
Review: This is an outstanding effort by Jack Shaheen to document in spades the horrors of Anti Arab, Anti Egyptian, Anti Palestinians racism. Jack has tried to be even handed and in doing so has also pointed out the few positive representations of Ancient Egyptian glories, in doing so he has neglected to notice and to note the additional racism that severs any ties between past glories and present day "Arabs" or indeed present day Egyptians.The introduction section of the book makes for excellent reading; one can easily see the making of a neo-Orientalism or the continuation of a horrible racist tradition. Few producers deliberately set out to harm, the majority merely follow the herd, a self-fulfilling prophecy indeed! I wish there was more to the discussion at the introduction, but I suppose without the exhaustive list of movies that Jack suffered through there would have not been the level of legitimacy that this great work has
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Summary: When you go looking for offense...
Review: When you have to dig down to the film "Americathon" for an example of anti-arabic slurs in film, you are stretching so far a contortionist would applaud. The "villains" (among many) in the film are the "Hebrab Nation", a unification of Israel and its Arab neighbors. But their portrayal as buffoons is part of 90 minutes of general buffoonery. The President of the U.S. is played by John Ritter as a stumblebum moonchild. He's mortgaged the nation to a Native American who got rich on a big *clown shoe* fad (and shuffles through the movie, mumbling "I'm not such a bad guy. I've got to eat too, ya know"), and to help pay the debt, he sells San Diego to the Mexicans who rename it "Tijuana Heights". Let's not forget the live remote from the 51st state... England. Just about every group in the world gets zinged in this film. If you have to go looking in little-known comedies of the late 70s to prove name-calling, your argument is on shaky ground, Shaheen.
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Summary: Self Fulfilling Prophecy
Review: Whether we like it or not, portraying Arabs in Hollywood and in the American Media as terrorists and bad people helped create a generation who fulfilled this prophecy. A young Arab man growing up in the Middle East under the influence of this media will have to develop an inferiority complex and a feeling of automatic persecution. This feeling must be debilitating and will probably induce festering hatred to the west, let alone America. The more we have of this, the more fertile ground we create for suicide bombers and desperate fanatics who see their lives as worthless because the world was made to believe it is so by powerful media.
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