Media and Minorities

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Evelyn Alsultany
embargo (1973), the Iran Hostage Crisis (1979–1980), and airplane hijackings
in the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1968 and 1976, Palestinians and their sympathizers
conducted twenty-nine hijackings, which became a central part of
the news cycle in the U. S.11 The news media played a crucial role in making
the Middle East, and the Islamic countries there in particular, meaningful to
Americans as a place that breeds terrorism.
The Iran Hostage Crisis was a key moment in the conflation of Arab,
Muslim, and Middle Eastern identities. Though Iran is not an Arab country,
during the Hostage Crisis it stood in for Arabs as well as symbolizing the
Middle East, Islam, and terrorism — all of which came to be referred to interchangeably.
Edward Said’s examination of how the news media reported the
Iran Hostage Crisis demonstrates case after case of biased portrayals of Islam:
“During the past few years, especially since events in Iran caught European
and American attention so strongly, the media have therefore covered Islam:
they have portrayed it, characterized it, analyzed it, given instant courses
on it, and consequently they have made it ‘known.’”12 In the U. S., “knowing
Islam” came to mean knowing about fundamentalism and terrorism. The
monolithic portrayal of Islam as threatening reduces a diverse and dynamic
religion, with its many followers and their varied experiences, to something
unknown and unknowable.
The U. S.-American mass media, and Hollywood films in particular, have
contributed to racializing Arabs and Muslims. Shaheen examines Hollywood’s
creation of an Arab phenotype, a distinct look or appearance, over the
last century. The on-screen Arab has dark features (skin, hair, and eyes), a distinctive
hooked nose, “exotic” clothing (a veil, a belly dancing outfit, keffiyeh,
etc.), and conforms to a limited number of cultural tropes (greedy, rich, corrupt
oil sheik; fanatic with violent religious beliefs; terrorist; etc.).13 Ella Shohat
demonstrates that Arabs have been racialized via the visual representations,
troping, and narrative positioning of Eurocentric narratives.14 Historically,
casting for TV dramas has contributed to this racialization. Through their
casting, TV dramas participate in the construction of the phenotype and
the fiction of an Arab or Muslim race and hence the notion that Arabs and
Muslims can be racially profiled. In Sleeper Cell, the lead terrorist is an Arab
Muslim but portrayed by an Israeli Jewish actor, Oded Fehr, who has played
Arab characters before, most notably in The Mummy films (1999 and 2001).
11 Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and US Interests in the Middle East,
1945–2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 182.
12 Edward Said, Covering Islam
13 Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs.
14 Ella Shohat, “Gender and the Culture of Empire: Toward a Feminist Ethnography of the
Cinema,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 13, no. 1–3 (1991), 45–84.
© 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
ISBN Print: 9783525300886 — ISBN E-Book: 9783666300882