Media(ting) Otherness: Visual Representations of “Islam†and “the West†in the Post-9/11 Era
Panel 177, 2011 Annual Meeting
On Saturday, December 3 at 5:00 pm
Panel Description
Hollywood has been instrumental in propagating images of Arabs/Muslims as backward, irrational, and violent. However, the post-9/11 sociopolitical climate catapulted the Arab/Muslim subject onto the center-stage as an unambiguous terrorist. As numerous scholars have argued, this visibility and the various cultural forms through which it is disseminated have become contested areas of inquiry. This panel adds a new dimension to ongoing scholarly debates about visual representation of Arabs/Muslims, by looking at American, Arab and South Asian movies and television soap-operas.
The first paper seeks to theorize emerging patterns in Arabic, American, and for the first time, Arab American films that forge transnational spaces in which Arab Americans are re-imagined as a reconciliatory model that bridges the US-Arab cultural divide. This pattern engages with the racialized, sexualized, and gendered stereotypical images of Arab Americans, and nuances Arab American identities as constructs beyond the “citizen-terrorist” trope. The second paper critiques the media(ting) of others by examining the Syrian soap opera Ma malakat aymanakum (2010) through liberal conceptions of “freedom,” (neo)Orientalist notions of “otherness,” and religion in the context of globalization. The third paper maps out how recent Arab films humanize American characters and often counter the Occidental mindset. It examines the various forms of pro-Arab and anti-American sentiment that inflect post-9/11 Arab films, and, more specifically, how their Occidental discourses and assumptions serve to re-inscribe an East-West dichotomy in service of Arab-nationalism. The fourth paper in this panel steps outside of the Arab/American binary by examining two recent South Asian movies, Khuda Kay Liye (In the name of God, 2007) and New York (2009). It argues that the films operate on a simple understanding of American sentiments, that the “good Muslims” are typically women and American born, “bad Muslims” are non-whites with Muslim names who do not cooperate in outing fanatics. It explores the construction of Islamic identities on the one hand, and how these constructions constitute a new version of the “empire talking back.”
While some of the papers in this panel discuss positive images of Americans and “the West,” others examine continuing processes of Occidentalism. Yet, they fit together in looking at motion pictures which look at “crossroads” and mediated movements across the seas. In all of these papers there is an investigation of how certain stereotypes about Muslims and “the West” shape public understandings of the appropriateness of an American foreign policy that relies on military intervention.
Egyptian cinema is increasingly attracting the attention of film critics, scholars of cinema, and Middle East studies specialists. September 11 attacks left the world with a culture that expanding from the U.S. to everywhere in the world. A new culture of fear is created by new post-9/11 terms such as “War on Terror,” “With Us or Against Us,” and “Axis of Evil.” This culture sneaks into people’s life affecting their way of thinking about “Self” and “Other.” It is worth noting that Arabs’ films do participate fundamentally in this cultural expansions of the world, in the production of what Frederic Jameson called “the political unconscious.”
This paper maps out how different Arab films humanize American characters and often counter the Occidental mindset. At the same time it examines the various forms of pro-Arab and anti-American sentiment that inflect post-9/11 Arab films, and, more specifically, how its Occidental discourse and assumptions serve to re-inscribe an East-West dichotomy in service of Arab-nationalism goals. The paper will do so through examining images of the U.S. in an Egyptian movie. The Baby Doll Night constitutes an example of how Arabs look at the U.S. through its policies rather than its values. This movie is a mix of many story lines expanding from New York to Cairo, Palestine and, of course, Iraq.
By doing close reading of film scenes, I will point out how Egyptian cinema is and has always been under the impact of Hollywood. Many Arab films imported Western visual and narrative conventions to put in the service of narrating Arab national histories. Arabs, who are enamored of American cinema-making, are at odds with American foreign policy. This paper analyzes both the content of the film as well as the responses it evoked in both the Middle East and the West. Moreover, it shows how various Occidental assumptions (e.g. the conflation of Jews and Israelis cultural/political identity)are both reflected and challenged by Egyptian film-makers.
As cultural texts, films have been a critical venue for scholars to examine the U.S.-Arab cultural encounters, and have played a major role in shaping the popular imagination of the ‘American’ and the ‘Arab’ across the U.S.-Arab landscape. Central to this imagination has been the tendency to emphasize polarized depictions of ‘self’ against ‘otherness,’ i.e. ‘Arabness’ against ‘Americanness’ and vice versa. This polarized rhetoric has relied on a mediation of Arab Americans that culminated in interlocking their American and their conflated Arabic and Islamic identities in a state of contestation. Ever since the intensification of Arabs’ migration to the United States as the nationality-based quota was repealed in 1965, Arab Americans have been doubly cast as aliens to the U.S. landscape both in (1) American films that imagine them as invaders seeking to undermine the U.S. national security, and (2) Arabic films that characterize them as temporary migrants that ought to return and serve their Arabic homelands. Moving beyond this narrow understanding of the Arab American identity, my paper seeks to theorize a new emerging pattern in Arabic, American, and for the first time, Arab American films that forges a transnational space in which Arab Americans are re-imagined as a reconciliatory model that bridges the U.S.-Arabic cultural divide. This pattern engages with the racialized, sexualized, and gendered stereotypical images of Arab Americans, and nuances the Arab American identity as a construct beyond the ‘citizen-terrorist’ trope. It contributes to the emerging scholarship on Arab American studies through providing an account of the conflicting patterns that exist in imagining an autonomous and dynamic Arab American identity.
Egyptians may have the lead in producing Arabic movies, but Syrians are their fierce rivals when it comes to soap operas. Popular Syrian soap operas include comedies, family dramas, and historical docu-dramas. In this paper, I examine a family drama which aired during Ramadan 2010 entitled "Ma malakat aymanakum" (literally, "that which your right hands possess," referring to Q 4:3, the last line in the so-called "polygamy verse"). The series was highly controversial, and the Sunni religious right called for banning it in Syria. The focus of the narrative is a stereotypical conservative Sunni family. The father is a shaykh, the women wear face-veils, and the son sports a beard and wears religious clothing (i.e. white dishdashas that end above the ankle). The storyline follows the daughter in her journey of sexual and civic "liberation" which takes her westward to France where she first takes off her veil and then the scarf. On the one hand, the narrative replays Orientalist stereotypes. On the other hand, the ending symbolically subverts the Orientalist meanings. By discussing the soap opera "Ma malakat aymanakum" I critique liberal conceptions of 'freedom,' (neo)Orientalist notions of 'otherness,' and religion in the context of globalization.
In most popular Indian or Pakistani cinema, South Asians exposed to America are depicted as disconnected from their ethnic identities, and are either returning home to reclaim it (‘Swades,’ 2004), or serve as simple comic trope of the Indian/Pakistani becoming ‘more American than the Americans’. Two recent films ‘Khuda Kay Liye’ (‘In the name of God,’ 2007) and ‘New York’ (2009) represent, what I argue is the vanguard of a new trend. Primarily, it involves casting Americans as hostile to Muslims, and not because of their country of origin, dress or individual beliefs, but because of their broader religious affiliation as Muslims. American xenophobia becomes the transformative impulse, which metamorphoses liberally minded Muslims, through imprisonment, into the very monsters they were trying to stop. The films operate on a simple understanding of American sentiment, that the ‘good Muslims’ are typically women and American born, ‘bad Muslims’ (Mamdani 2004) are non-whites with Muslim names who do not cooperate in outing fanatics. In my paper, I will explore the construction of Islamic identities in these films, as well as discuss general trends in South Asian cinema about Islam. I will consider the following related questions: Are these films a new version of the ‘empire talking back’? Or, are they affirming the widely held belief that the American hunt for terror simply creates more of it? Perhaps they are operating in both modes, as a cautionary tale to Americans about Frankenstein’s monster, and a warning to Muslims about the dangers of contact with Americans.
