FilmMany older films cast white actors as Arabs due to rampant discrimination in all aspects of American society, including Hollywood. The Italian actor Rudolf Valentino portrayed a sheikh who falls in love with an English woman in the 1921 silent film “The Sheik.” “The Thief of Baghdad” (1940) used a nearly all-white main cast. Furthermore, these films helped establish stereotypes of Muslims and Arabs, as well as the perception of the Orient as an exotic and backwards place.
While modern film and television do include Muslim and Arab characters and actors, they suffer the same problems that other minorities have in the industry. A study by UCLA |
|
|
acting professor of law Russell Robinson concluded that acting opportunities were severely restricted for minorities, with 69% of roles reserved for white actors and only 0.5% to 8% of roles being available to non-white actors depending on racial back ground.
Many of the depictions of Arabs and Muslims in film fall prey to stereotyping. In films set far in the past, this phenomenon is driven by early European perceptions of the “Orientals” as gullible, lazy, pandering, and dishonest[1]. The region was (and is) portrayed as being exotic and eccentric, filled with people who represented the polar opposite of Western ideals. Women in the Orient lived in harems, worked as belly dancers, or were otherwise subjugated by the men. Turbans and veils |
abounded, as did minarets and unsophisticated tribes. An egregious example is “The Sheik,” in which an Arab sheikh kidnaps an English woman to take as his lover. Meanwhile, films like “The Thief of Baghdad” and “Aladdin” (1992) portray the Orient as a region filled with magic carpets, genies, and corrupt officials who engage in barbaric practices. An especially egregious example arises in the opening scene of “Aladdin,” where a street merchant casually describes how “they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face” in a song lyric.
|
|