Hey Hol­ly­wood, it’s time to stop stereo­typ­ing Arabs

Last week, the world looked on in hor­ror as reports came in of Don­ald Trump call­ing Haiti, El Sal­vador and a num­ber of African coun­tries ​“shit­holes”. It was a stun­ning break from deco­rum, and felt more like the kind of obtuse sen­ti­ment whis­pered among like-mind­ed friends than dur­ing an Oval Office pol­i­cy ses­sion. The word shit­hole itself con­tin­ues to look odd plas­tered across the pages of respectable media out­lets. Many of these lib­er­al out­lets, like the mil­lions of peo­ple who read them around the world, are up in arms at such a cal­lous writ­ing off of entire nations and their cit­i­zens, whose only crime is belong­ing to some­where oth­er than America.

Also last week, there was anoth­er kind of hor­ri­fied reac­tion hap­pen­ing in a coun­try Trump might well have a colour­ful adjec­tive for: Lebanon. The trail­er for Beirut, the upcom­ing polit­i­cal thriller set in 1982 and star­ring Jon Hamm and Rosamund Pike, was released online, and plen­ty of Lebanese view­ers had some exple­tives of their own to direct at it.

To any­one famil­iar with the tit­u­lar city, it quick­ly became appar­ent when watch­ing the trail­er that the film wasn’t shot any­where near Beirut. In fact, it was filmed 2500 miles away in Tang­iers, Moroc­co. Imag­ine mak­ing a movie called ​‘Lon­don’ about the Blitz, and film­ing the whole thing in Rome. They are both sim­i­lar cities, in as much as they have build­ings pop­ping out of them and roads run­ning through them.

Nat­u­ral­ly, all the usu­al anachro­nisms and inac­cu­ra­cies are present. In the spir­it of shows like 24 or Home­land, the accents of any­one non-white sound vague­ly Arab and shouty. It is trite and almost com­i­cal­ly stereo­typ­i­cal, bring­ing to mind Team America’s ​“Dur­ka Dur­ka Mohammed Jihad” catch­phrase. In the trail­er, The Mili­tia of Islam­ic Lib­er­a­tion, who appear to be the bad guys, were not one of the many fac­tions that actu­al­ly exist­ed in 1982. The made-up name itself is non­sen­si­cal, ​‘lib­er­a­tion’ hav­ing been asso­ci­at­ed with left­ist and nation­al­ist movements.

So the jum­ble of words, seem­ing­ly put through a Scary Arab Orga­ni­za­tion Name Gen­er­a­tor, appears more tar­get­ed towards cur­rent Amer­i­can fears about ISIS than any kind of ear­ly 1980s nar­ra­tive world-build­ing. The good guys here are the CIA and the Israelis, but the his­tor­i­cal real­i­ty is that in 1982 Israel invad­ed the coun­try and the over­saw one of the worst mas­sacres of Pales­tini­ans and Shi­ites by a Chris­t­ian mili­tia in the country’s entire Civ­il War. So you can see why the Lebanese are on edge about what this trail­er seems to be presenting.

In his ground­break­ing books and doc­u­men­tary ​‘Reel Bad Arabs: How Hol­ly­wood Vil­i­fies a Peo­ple’, Dr Jack Sha­heen cat­a­logues some of the injus­tices faced by Arabs in their Hol­ly­wood iter­a­tions. He states that Arabs are the most maligned group in the his­to­ry of Hol­ly­wood. Por­trayed as sub­hu­man since the very ear­ly of days of the medi­um of cin­e­ma itself.

The Arab is used as stock vil­lain, both ter­ri­fy­ing and com­i­cal­ly inef­fec­tu­al. Think of Sal­im Abu Aziz in True Lies, or the Libyans in Back to the Future. Four basic myths endure about Arabs in pop cul­ture: ​“They are all fab­u­lous­ly wealthy; they are bar­bar­ic and uncul­tured; they are sex mani­acs with a pen­chant for white slav­ery; and they rev­el in acts of ter­ror­ism. These notions are as false as the asser­tions that blacks are lazy, His­pan­ics are dirty, Jews are greedy and Ital­ians are criminals.”

These rep­re­sen­ta­tions are nei­ther inno­cent nor devoid of agen­da. Jack Valen­ti, long­time pres­i­dent of the Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca, once stat­ed that ​“Wash­ing­ton and Hol­ly­wood spring from the same DNA”. The extent of that real­i­ty is revealed in David Robbs’ ​‘Oper­a­tion Hol­ly­wood: How the Pen­ta­gon Shapes and Cen­sors the Movies’. The Pen­ta­gon will sup­port films that show a pos­i­tive por­tray­al of the US mil­i­tary and advance its strate­gic goals. Essen­tial­ly, in exchange for access to sophis­ti­cat­ed mil­i­tary hard­ware and exper­tise, film­mak­ers must agree to cen­sor­ship from the Pen­ta­gon. In a time of ​“shit­holes”, attempt­ed trav­el bans, and mass hys­te­ria about refugees, it is trou­bling to see Hol­ly­wood – tra­di­tion­al­ly one of America’s most lib­er­al qua­si-insti­tu­tions – per­pet­u­at­ing a myth that gives cre­dence to real-world policies.

And it isn’t lim­it­ed to overt­ly mil­i­taris­tic films, some of the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion is far more insid­i­ous. I remem­ber my first encounter with the real­i­sa­tion that some­thing was off about Arab rep­re­sen­ta­tion in cin­e­ma. I was 10, and had just been to see Disney’s Aladdin. It was already com­pli­cat­ed enough hav­ing to nav­i­gate being a British-Arab school kid, but as I walked out of my local Odeon my world began to col­lapse. I had naive­ly imag­ined that there was a mutu­al respect, how­ev­er begrudg­ing, between these dis­parate cul­tures. But here was this rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a fan­ta­sy Arab­land that I did not recog­nise. Vio­lent, vin­dic­tive (“It’s bar­bar­ic, but hey, it’s home”) and unlike any­thing I’d encoun­tered pre­vi­ous­ly. It was also the first time I wrote a strong­ly word­ed let­ter, that most British of respons­es. I need­ed Dis­ney to know the Arab in me felt betrayed.

West­ern lib­er­al anger towards racism, hate-speech and big­ot­ed polices is laud­able, but it can ring hol­low to many of the peo­ple they claim to be speak­ing out for. Men like Trump will con­tin­ue to call oth­er places shit­holes, and many will con­tin­ue to agree with him, if the rep­re­sen­ta­tions of those places con­tin­ue to be root­ed in nar­ra­tives drip­ping with exoti­ci­sa­tion and treach­ery. Nuanced depic­tions of the region and its var­i­ous con­flicts aren’t impos­si­ble, you only have to look at films like Syr­i­ana or Three Kings to see that it is pos­si­ble to main­tain a com­pelling and com­plex nar­ra­tive arc while depict­ing char­ac­ters on either side as at once vir­tu­ous and flawed.

Beirut has worked for 25 years to cre­ate an image of itself as a Mediter­ranean des­ti­na­tion, grad­u­al­ly chip­ping away at its rep­u­ta­tion as a metonym for may­hem and destruc­tion. But it can’t com­pete with his­tor­i­cal­ly inac­cu­rate depic­tions that can undo that good­will in 120 min­utes. Lib­er­al West­ern­ers may be well-mean­ing in their hash­tag-endors­ing sup­port for the Mid­dle East, tip-toe­ing around their culture’s appro­pri­a­tion of hum­mus, but financ­ing and reward­ing – and ulti­mate­ly watch­ing – films like Beirut is a clear act of hypocrisy.

The trail­er may not be entire­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the final prod­uct, but the emo­tions it has gen­er­at­ed in Lebanon and the Mid­dle East at large stem from a deep-seat­ed frus­tra­tion with a glob­al pop cul­ture land­scape that is only now becom­ing attuned to the legit­i­mate griev­ances of so many com­mu­ni­ties that have been under­rep­re­sent­ed and exploit­ed for so long.