Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
I've been intending to read Jack Shaheen's book for some time, and just haven't gotten around to it. So I was somewhat pleased that it had been made into a documentary, which gives the gist of the argument--that Hollywood films have created a bloodthirsty stereotype we're now exporting to the rest of the world--but doesn't really replace what I
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That's interesting, but not at all unexpected to me. Think of how people of Jewish ancestry (ethnicity, not religion) have "moved" around; and there's also (perhaps counter-intuitively from a social standpoint rather than racial) a lot of movement by Jewish and Arab actors between the two. Many of the people I knew growing up who were proud of their Lebanese or Syrian or whatever roots--some of them quite recent--were indistinguishable from the largely white makeup of my rural New England schools. Think also about the historical attitude of Northern Europeans in America vs. Southern/Mediterranean Europeans. Like the Irish or Italians back in the day, there's a backlash against whatever group of people is currently immigrating. They get to be "non white" until a new group comes along.
I know what you mean about not complaining about Andrews. He's good-looking, and I like him, and I want him to work. I especially want him to work as something other than a) a terrorist or b) a goofy-accented Indian peon of some kind. I'm sure he (and Malik and Fadil and anyone else in that position) is happy to be cast as a PERSON rather than a type, even if it's a person from someplace he's not. (I've also read actors expressing gratitude that "at least this terrorist I play has dimensions.") As I said to seraphcelene below, I've looked at old Hollywood films where actors attempted to move along the race spectrum to find a better job; if a black man (or someone of mixed race) could pass as a Native American, it meant he got to play a "savage" rather than a servant.
So maybe the part Andrews plays is fine because it's nuanced and layered, and maybe casting him is fine because he does a good job and we like him, but it's part of a larger view that's a little bit scary.
And then, getting into divisions we're not even aware of complicates things. People over here have a hard enough time telling Iraqi from Indian--debating the ancestry of Andrews in Indian terms is yet another wrinkle. I'd be curious about casting in Bollywood as relates to race and ancestry, actually.
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