How Hollywood Portrays Arabs free essay sample

Case Study- How Hollywood portrays Arabs An Overview of the portrayal Introduction Hollywood has for several decades, set an agenda as well played a propagandist role in showcasing the Arab world and the Middle East in general. This depiction has been greatly impacted by several major political events from the last few decades to a century. Political events such as the creation of the State of Israel, the revolution of the Islamic State of Iran, and the tragic events of September 11, 2001 in the United States have gone a long way to influence Hollywood’s portrayal of Arabs, very often in stereotypical and negative facets. Issues concerning the Middle East have been omnipresent in American society for several decades. There is daily news coverage of Arabs and the Middle East in all forms of media in the United States, including on television and in movies. Hollywood, for many years has depicted Arabs in stereotypical images, villain roles opposite American heroes who tend to save the day. We will write a custom essay sample on How Hollywood Portrays Arabs or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Since the early days of Hollywood, Arabs and Muslims have been depicted overwhelmingly as villains, barbaric, inept, sinister, and incompetent and cowards. How and Why have Arabs been vilified in Hollywood? Ronald Adler and Russell Proctor II, assert that stereotyping can have a harmful effect on interracial communication, hindering professional and personal relationships (86). They also explain that â€Å"stereotyping does not always arise from bad intentions†¦in some cases, careless generalizations can grow from good intentions†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (87). However, Dr. Jack Shaheen, a world renowned author, media critic and university professor, describes Arabs, as â€Å"the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood, they are portrayed as sub human†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (21). In his much acclaimed book, Reel Bad Arabs (2001), and film by the same name, Shaheen breaks down the Arab stereotypes as depicted in close to 1,000 movies. In his extensive projects of both the book and the movie, Shaneen explores the American cinematic landscape from the early days of Hollywood to 2001, and shows a grim stereotyping of Arabs. Shaheen’s work provides a similarity to a few other seemingly racist depictions through past history. His work featured Hollywood’s portrayal of Arabs as a dangerous epidemic and writes that, â€Å"Muslims and Arabs continue to surface as the threatening culture†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (23). Shaheen asserts that Hollywood’s depiction of Arabs varies with the climate of current world politics. He documents that Arabs and Muslims are consistently depicted as, â€Å"bearded Mullahs, billionaire sheiks, terrorist bombers, black Bedouins, and noisy bargainers†¦women surface as gun tooters or bumbling subservient, or belly dancers bouncing voluptuously in palaces and erotically oscillating in slave markets. More recently, image-makers are offering other caricatures of Muslim women: covered in black from head to toe, they appear as uneducated, unattractive and enslaved beings, slowly attending to men, as they follow behind abusive sheiks† (23). Some of the movies explored in Reel Bad Arabs include: The Black Stallion (1979)- Movie begins with Arabs mistreating a horse aboard a ship, then attacking a boy with a knife and stealing his life jacket. Cannonball Run 2(1981)- Showcasing the buffoonery of rich and stupid Arabs not knowing the worth of money. Never say never again (1983) Showcasing dirty and sleazy Arabs salivating over a blond American girl. Jewel of the Nile (1985) Showcasing ominous Arabs songs, sleazy and inept men outsmarted by Americans. Black Sunday (1977) Showcasing concerns about Arab terrorists planning to bomb an American stadium. Back to the future (1985) Antagonists in the film are referred to as inept and incompetent Libyan nationalists Iron Eagle (1986) American teenager bombs an Arab country after learning to fly a fighter jet overnight. Wanted: Dead or Alive (1987) Arab terrorists plan to bomb Los Angeles, killing millions. Delta Force (1986) American special forces save Jews from Palestinian terrorists. Navy Seals (1990) Showcasing inept, dangerous, and incompetent Arab terrorists wiped out by a handful of US special forces. Rules of engagement (2000) A movie that justifies US Marines killing Arab women and children in Yemen. Executive Decision (1996) Showcasing Arab terrorists hijacking an American plane and US special forces saving the day. Gladiator (2000) Showcasing barbaric Arab slave traders in a movie with no Middle East connection. True Lies (1994) Showcasing inept, dangerous, and incompetent Arab terrorist and suicide bombers in Washington DC. The Kingdom (2005) Showcasing a small unit of FBI agents who track down and kill Arab terrorists in Saudi Arabia. These movies represent just a handful from the past 3 decades alone which depict and stereotype Arabs. Hollywood images are closely related to matters in politics and do operate side by side. It is an image, which has been shaped in large part by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict raging for the past several decades, in which the United States has overwhelmingly supported Israel. Other events which influenced the portrayal include, the Islamic Revolution of Iran, which incensed Arab-American relations when radical Iranian students took American diplomats hostage for over a year. Washington’s connection to Hollywood if further intensified by the fact that several movies featuring US Armed Forces, were made in cooperation with the Defense Department; with movies such as Iron Eagle, The Delta Force, and Rules of Engagement, which was written and produced by former Secretary of the Navy and current Virginia Senator, Jim Webb. I certainly believe that the solutions for this problem are right at the finger tips of Hollywood directors, producers and movie writers, many of whom are Jewish and sometimes may hold personal biases towards the input of these movies. It is quite a challenge, in my view to find a TV show or movie; at least here in the United States that shows Arabs and Muslims in a positive light. In the same way that many movie stereotypes have progressed from others, such as â€Å"the job stealing and illegal Mexicans† and the â€Å"liquor store robbing Black† movies to more current positive images of some minorities, so do I advocate for more positive and humanizing images on the small and big screens alike for Arabs in this respect. It also greatly falls on us, as viewers and consumers to demand it because it is clear that not all Muslims and Arabs are terrorists and need not be portrayed as that. In conclusion, It is poignant now, that the United States is currently involved in two wars, and countless other conflicts against Arab and Muslim opposition in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan and persistent threats of more from places such as Iran. Our various wars, may have come after the tragic terrorist attacks on 9/11, when 19 Arabs, mostly from Saudi Arabia attacked the United States. However, mentally and visually Hollywood had already introduced us, the United States to wars in the Middle East by persistently vilifying everything about the Arab and Muslim world in their movies. Hollywood’s portrayal of Arabs, albeit often based on historical and political events has not been useful to building and improving the relationship between the Western world and the Arab world, but it does now provide.

The Ancient Mesopotamian Urban Community of Ur

The Ancient Mesopotamian Urban Community of Ur The Mesopotamian city of Ur, known as Tell al-Muqayyar and the biblical Ur of the Chaldees), was an important Sumerian city-state between about 2025-1738 BC. Located near the modern town of Nasiriyah in far southern Iraq, on a now-abandoned channel of the Euphrates river, Ur covered about 25 hectares (60 acres), surrounded by a city wall. When British archaeologist Charles Leonard Woolley excavated in the 1920s and 1930s, the city was a tell- a great artificial hill over seven meters (23 feet) high composed of centuries of building and rebuilding mud-brick structures, one stacked on top of another. Chronology of Southern Mesopotamia The following chronology of Southern Mesopotamia is simplified somewhat from that suggested by the School of American Research Advanced Seminar in 2001, based primarily on pottery and other artifact styles and reported in Ur 2010. Old Babylonian (Late Bronze Age, 1800-1600 BC)Isin-Larsa Dynasties (Middle Bronze Age, 2000-1800 BC)Ur III (2100-2000 BC)Akkadian (Early Bronze Age, 2300-2100 BC)Early Dynastic I-III (Sumerian, 3000-2300 BC)Late Uruk (Late Chalcolithic, 3300-3000 BC)Middle Uruk (3800-3300 BC)Early Uruk  (4100-3800 BC)Late Ubaid (4400-4100 BC)Ubaid Period (5900-4400 BC) The earliest known occupations at Ur city date to the Ubaid period of the late 6th millennium BC. By about 3000 BC, Ur covered a total area of 15 ha (37 ac) including early temple sites. Ur reached its maximum size of 22 ha (54 ac) during the Early Dynastic Period of the early 3rd millennium BC  when Ur was one of the most important capitals of the Sumerian civilization. Ur continued as a minor capital for Sumer and succeeding civilizations, but during the 4th century BC, the Euphrates changed course, and the city was abandoned. Living in Sumerian Ur During Urs heyday in the Early Dynastic period, four main residential areas of the city included homes made of baked mud brick foundations arranged along long, narrow, winding streets and alleyways. Typical houses included an open central courtyard with two or more main living rooms in which the families resided. Each house had a domestic chapel where cult structures and the family burial vault was kept. Kitchens, stairways, workrooms, lavatories were all part of the household structures. The houses were packed in very tightly together, with exterior walls of one household immediately abutting the next one. Although the cities appear very closed off, the interior courtyards and wide streets provided light, and the close-set houses protected the exposure of the exterior walls to heating especially during the hot summers. Royal Cemetery Between 1926 and 1931, Woolleys investigations at Ur focused on the Royal Cemetery, where he eventually excavated approximately 2,100 graves, within an area of 70x55 m (230x180 ft): Woolley estimated there were up to three times as many burials originally. Of those, 660 were determined to be dated to the Early Dynastic IIIA (2600-2450 BC)period, and Woolley designated 16 of those as royal tombs. These tombs had a stone-built chamber with multiple rooms, where the principal royal burial was placed. Retainerspeople who presumably served the royal personage and were buried with him or herwere found in a pit outside of the chamber or adjacent to it. The largest of these pits, called death pits by Woolley, held the remains of 74 people. Woolley came to the conclusion that the attendants had willingly drunk some drug and then lay down in rows to go with their master or mistress. The most spectacular royal graves in Urs Royal Cemetery were those of Private Grave 800, belonging to a richly adorned queen identified as Puabi or Pu-abum, approximately 40 years old; and PG 1054 with an unidentified female. The largest death pits were PG 789, called the Kings Grave, and PG 1237, the Great Death Pit. the tomb chamber of 789 had been robbed in antiquity, but its death pit contained the bodies of 63 retainers. PG 1237 held 74 retainers, most of which were four rows of elaborately dressed women arranged around a set of musical instruments. Recent analysis (Baadsgaard and colleagues) of a sample of skulls from several pits at Ur suggests that, rather than being poisoned, the retainers were killed by blunt force trauma, as ritual sacrifices. After they were killed, an attempt was made to preserve the bodies, using a combination of heat treatment and the application of mercury; and then the bodies were dressed in their finery and laid in rows in the pits. Archaeology at the City of Ur Archaeologists associated with Ur included J.E. Taylor, H.C. Rawlinson, Reginald Campbell Thompson, and, most importantly, C. Leonard Woolley. Woolleys investigations of Ur lasted 12 years from 1922 and 1934, including five years focusing on the Royal Cemetery of Ur, including the graves of Queen Puabi and King Meskalamdug. One of his primary assistants was Max Mallowan, then married to mystery writer Agatha Christie, who visited Ur and based her Hercule Poirot novel   Murder in Mesopotamia on the excavations there. Important discoveries at Ur included the Royal Cemetery, where rich Early Dynastic burials were found by Woolley in the 1920s; and thousands of clay tablets impressed with cuneiform writing which describe in detail the lives and thoughts of Urs inhabitants. Sources Baadsgaard A, Monge J, Cox S, and Zettler RL. 2011.  Human sacrifice and intentional corpse preservation in the Royal Cemetery of Ur.  Antiquity 85(327):27-42.Dickson DB. 2006. Public Transcripts Expressed in Theatres of Cruelty: the Royal Graves at Ur in Mesopotamia.  Cambridge Archaeological Journal  16(2):123–144. Jansen M, Aulbach S, Hauptmann A, Hà ¶fer HE, Klein S, Krà ¼ger M, and Zettler RL. 2016. Platinum group placer minerals in ancient gold artifacts – Geochemistry and osmium isotopes of inclusions in Early Bronze Age gold from Ur/Mesopotamia. Journal of Archaeological Science 68:12-23.Kenoyer JM, Price TD, and Burton JH. 2013. A new approach to tracking connections between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia: initial results of strontium isotope analyses from Harappa and Ur. Journal of Archaeological Science 40(5):2286-2297.Miller NF. 2013. Symbols of Fertility and Abundance in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, Iraq. American Journal of Archaeology 117(1):127- 133. Oates J, McMahon A, Karsgaard P, Al Quntar S, and Ur J. 2007. Early Mesopotamian urbanism: a new view from the north.  Antiquity  81:585-600. Rawcliffe C, Aston M, Lowings A, Sharp MC, and Watkins KG. 2005. Laser Engraving Gulf Pearl ShellAiding the Reconstruction of the Lyre of Ur.  Lacona VI.Shepperson M. 2009.  Planning for the sun: urban forms as a Mesopotamian response to the sun.  World Archaeology  41(3):363–378.Tengberg M, Potts DT, and Francfort H-P. 2008.  The golden leaves of Ur.  Antiquity  82:925-936.Ur J. 2014. Households and the emergence of cities in ancient Mesopotamia. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 24(2):249-268.Ur J, Karsgaard P, and Oates J. 2011. The Spatial Dimensions of Early Mesopotamian Urbanism: The Tell Brak Suburban Survey, 2003-2006. Iraq 73:1-19.