Hooray for Hollywood! 2

At Asia Times, Christof Lehmann wonders why cultural artifacts with little or no influence, such as the Mohammed cartoons of several years ago and the slanderous YouTube trailer of last week evoke such strong reactions from some corners of the Muslim community.

I think it likely that persons who wish to foment discontent wait for a pretext, then seize it when it come along. It happens in our own Wingnut World; why not in theirs?

But why are others so willing to join them?

Lehmann thinks that the best-known public face of the United States, its “entertainment” industry, has helped prepare the field. A snippet from the article:

Westerners and non-Muslims are seemingly so used to the scapegoating, stereotyping and denigration of Muslims and in particular Arab Muslims in art and entertainment that they don’t realize the degree to which the Western news and entertainment industry, and in particular Hollywood, is depriving an entire people and Muslims from their humanity.

(snip)

(Arab American scholar, D Jack Shaheen–ed.) Shaheen concluded that over 300 movies, more than 25% of all those he studied, vilified Arabs and Muslims in one way or the other, comparing it to World War II Nazi propaganda against the Jewish people. Shaheen argues that both have caused unspeakable human suffering due to the fact that it would be difficult to have a population accept the brutal treatment of an entire people without those people first being deprived of their humanity.

The article goes on to cite specific examples, including Disney’s Alladin (Disney’s Alladin!).

I think there’s something in his theory and will give my own example.

I’m a mystery buff–not suspense, not “action thrillers,” but mysteries: books, movies, television, OTR. I have long believed that what keeps long-running shows on the air is not the strength of the stories; it is difficult to produce quality scripts on a weekly schedule. (Contrast exceptionally well-written British mysteries, such as Morse and Inspector Lewis–they commonly produce four to eight shows a season, rather than 20 or more.) Rather, the success is in creating characters that the audience enjoys following.

I like the NCIS television show, primarily for the humorous interplay amongst the lead characters (anyone who actually behaved like the character, Tony DiNozzo, would have been disciplined for sexual harassment by the second episode and fired by the fourth). I came to the show in reruns on cable networks sometime during its third or fourth season. and found it enjoyable mental chewing gum.

I quickly learned how to recognize the earlier episodes: They tended to be ones in which the plot involved terrorism of some kind. As time passed and the folly of the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq became more apparent, the percentage of storylines involving “terrorists plots” declined drastically, as the show morphed more and more towards conventional murder mysteries (often straining the pretexts for having a military agency involved in the investigation).

And the “terrorists” were almost always portrayed as brown-skinned men with two-day-old beards and Middle Eastern accents. Common garden variety home-grown terrorists, the Timothy McVeighs of our world, the ones who “look like us” (at least, some of us), the ones who strike our society regularly, need not apply.

And NCIS is mild compared to many movies.

Hollywood, our largest export, has spent the better part of two decades telling us and the rest of the world that Muslims is teh scariest. Just as it can affect our attitudes, it can affect the attitudes of others.