Petaluma Film Series - Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies A People

Dr. Jack Sheehan is the world’s foremost expert on representation of Arabs and Muslims in American popular culture. In this film,thru film clips, he describes myriad and persistent ways that Hollywood has maligned Arabs since the beginning of the movie age as a sinister, untrustworthy and violent people motivated by greed, global domination and the destruction of America. Today as Arabs demand freedom and justice across the Arab world it would do us well to look at our beliefs and where they come form.

This groundbreaking documentary dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today’s biggest Hollywood blockbusters. Featuring acclaimed author Dr. Jack Shaheen, the film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs–from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding “terrorists”–along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in US history, and why they matter so much today.

Shaheen shows how the persistence of these images over time has served to naturalize prejudicial attitudes toward Arabs and Arab culture, in the process reinforcing a narrow view of individual Arabs and the effects of specific US domestic and internationl policies on their lives. By inspiring critical thinking about the social, political, and basic human consequences of leaving these Hollywood caricatures unexamined, the film challenges viewers to recognize the urgent need for counter-narratives that do justice to the diversity and humanity of Arab people and the reality and richness of Arab history and culture.