What is Digg?485 Comments
- joshuaer, on 01/01/2008, -15/+99Well it is a nice break from evil russian and german people here is how you can figure out what the bad guy should look like.
Computer or tech evil guys = German
Evil cold blooded killers who want money = Russian
Sneaky = Arabs
Almost every action movie and First person shooter before 1990 was evil german or russian people, now that we are at war with any one that is not a christian they use Arab people. - cliffzdude, on 01/01/2008, -9/+89Really, its not that hard to pick a negative stereotype,a and mix together clips from, Hollywood showing said negative stereotype. Can we imagine:
Planet of the RedNecks: How Hollywood Sees the South
Planet of the Mobsters: How Hollywood Sees the Italian Americans
Planet of the Geeks: How Hollywood Sees the Smart People
Planet of the RedMan: How Hollywood Sees the Native Americans - keyme, on 01/01/2008, -26/+92The sad thing, is that this is not just a Holywood stereotype.
- TheHustler101, on 01/01/2008, -5/+56Most of these scenes are from before 9/11, so some of the comments made here make no sense.
- wylfing, on 01/01/2008, -21/+66It's too bad, you know, that Hollywood producers go out and drag young Muslim actors kicking and screaming off the streets and tell them that if they don't act in their anti-Muslim movie their family will be tortured.
- kara1234, on 01/01/2008, -10/+48Arabs/Muslims and Jews are in a major long-running conflict in the Middle East and Jews are well represented in Hollywood:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews#Popular ...
Thus we tend to get positive portrayals of Jews in Hollywood and negative portrayals of Arabs and Muslims. (Although Spielberg's and Tony Kusher's "Munich" is a notable exception.) It is actually surprising how little of the Palestinian side has been shown in Hollywood, I can't remember a film that has even portrayed the Israeli settler movement.
If there were more Arabs and Muslims involved in directing, production and scriptwriting in Hollywood we would have different results.
I'm not saying it is a big conspiracy, but rather the stories in Hollywood are representative of the attitudes and views of those who are making them. - jmoo, on 01/01/2008, -12/+48How many Germans were put in a positive light during WWII by Hollywood? How many Russians were shown as nice guys during the Cold War? I'm not trying to defend it, I'm just saying its going to happen. Of that survey how many of the movies about the Arab world were done in the last 25 years or so? Wouldn't that coincide with the increase of Arab terrorism?
I know it isn't going to happen, but people shouldn't figure their international policy on what's playing at the local movie theater. - THETEH, on 01/01/2008, -12/+46Interesting how a small minority of Islamic people are extremist terrorists, yet they all get grouped together. The Ku Klux Klan call themselves Christian--does that make Christianity an "evil" religion?
- Firethorne, on 01/01/2008, -12/+39Last month in Sudan...
"A British teacher jailed for insulting Islam after she allowed her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad flew home Monday after Sudan's president pardoned her, a British embassy spokesman said. Gillian Gibbons' conviction under Sudan's Islamic Sharia law shocked Britons and many Muslims worldwide. Hard-line Muslim clerics in Sudan accused her of intentionally seeking to insult Islam's Prophet Muhammad, and the case angered some Sudanese, sparking a protest where demonstrators called for her execution." [ABC News]
Does Hollywood spice things up a bit? Sure, its fiction. Is radical Islam bringing it upon itself at all when clerics and demonstrators call for an execution over the name of a teddy bear? You tell me. - hphickman, on 01/01/2008, -44/+70Killing 3000 is nothing compared to George Bush and the United States killing 600,000 Iraq for no reason - now who are the real terrorists?
- oonix, on 01/01/2008, -4/+30how many of you ever met a muslim? did he/she fit the stereotypes?
- thadiusdean, on 01/01/2008, -18/+43Do you think every Muslim is a fanatic?
- RogerStrong, on 01/01/2008, -9/+30An Arnold Schwarzenegger movie ("Collateral Damage") had it's release delayed because of 9/11. Arnie was fighting the Columbian drug mob. The movie originally had him fighting arab terrorists, but Hollywood changed it to avoid offending the arabs.
Not long before 9/11, the movie "The Sum of All Fears" was released. This was based on the Tom Clancy book about arab terrorists popping a nuke in an American city. But Hollywood didn't want to offend the arabs, so they changed the villians to nazis.
If you want to make a grand sweeping statement on an industry or culture, fine. Let's just compare Hollywood's record on racism and intolerance with that of the arabs, first. - macbwizard, on 01/01/2008, -8/+28or the news...
- kara1234, on 01/01/2008, -6/+25Here is a piece about Arab actors in Hollywood and their difficulty with accepting these stereotypical roles:
http://arabist.net/archives/2007/10/04/arab-actors ... - UrinalPooper, on 01/01/2008, -24/+41Saudis treat women like property. I'll stop thinking of them as savages when they stop behaving like savages.
Go ahead and bury me for giving a crap about gender equality. - tofuoni, on 01/01/2008, -20/+35Sadly no, it isn't just a stereotype, it's statistically sound. Here's a list of all terrorist attacks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist_attacks#200 ...
90% of them are perpetrated by muslims. People respond to this by saying, "OMFG BUT BUT TIMOTHY MACVEEH!! OMG!!!" as if that one guy evens out all the violent muslim extremists: hint, it doesn't. 90% of terrorist attacks are done by muslims. That's a fact. Deal with it. I know you don't like it. I know you have to digg me down because this fact makes you angry, but it's a fact nonetheless. - charityjustice, on 01/01/2008, -12/+27Choose your own adventure posting:
1) That youtube video reminded me of alot of kick-ass action movies I'd forgot about, heading over to mininova now to download some a-rabs being shot up!
or
2) Hmm, I wonder if a youtube submitter named "hnassif" whose favorite video is "Powerful Israel Lobby Started this War" might have a not-so-subtle agenda... - V3NOM, on 01/01/2008, -2/+16What's wrong with Watermelons and Texans and Truckers?
- fugimugim, on 01/01/2008, -1/+15He is not an Arab, he is Indian and not casino-owning Indian
- techmonkey4u, on 01/01/2008, -2/+14And I'm sure our foreign policy and secret bombings and what some have come to call American Imperialism over the last, say, 30 years has caused people in some Arab country to start thinking to themselves "that's right, the people that I'm empathizing with (Americans) are the same type of people that killed ____ people and did ____ of dollars in damage to this country in a single _____."
My point is most Americans are probably just sales representatives and software engineers doing normal things and having a simple, consumption-oriented life. However, it's obvious that we are not a benign and harmless group.. - navster15, on 01/01/2008, -1/+13"Out of 1000 films that have Arab & Muslim characters (from the year 1896 to 2000) 12 were positive depictions, 52 were even handed and the rest of the 900 and so were negative."
I'm curious of the statistics post-911. Prior to that, most Americans never really thought about terrorism as a direct threat. Did Hollywood become more militant as a result or did they present a gentler picture of Muslims? - dime, on 01/01/2008, -4/+15"Out of 1000 films that have Arab & Muslim characters (from the year 1896 to 2000) 12 were positive depictions, 52 were even handed and the rest of the 900 and so were negative."
On a related note, out of 1000 Arab & Muslim films that have Western characters, 12 were negative, 52 were really, really negative, and the rest of the 900 were portrayed as devils that drink the blood of Palestinian children. - felchdonkey, on 01/01/2008, -2/+13The old argument about Arabs who preserved libraries several hundred years ago, or who invented algebra over a thousand years ago, wears pretty thin.
The Arabs of that time were very different from the Arab society of today. You could actually make the argument that their society was more advanced a thousand years ago than it is now in the 21st century.
There was an old Islamic tradition known as ijtihad, or questioning, that led to the brilliant society Islam had in the early centuries. That tradition has been all but forgotten, as today's version demands blind obedience, conservatism, and isolationism.
I always find it amazing that supposedly liberal people defend the most conservative culture on earth, even if it is against another (albeit slightly less) conservative one. - MadAce, on 01/01/2008, -12/+22Of course he does. This view requires no actually thinking at all.
- ElectroBot, on 01/01/2008, -5/+15Everybody has to pay their bills, and there'll always be someone who will be willing to sacrifice their ideals/morals (if they have any) for a few bucks.
- jmoo, on 01/01/2008, -0/+10No, I'm saying people (average US citizen) should not use a movie as basis as to how other cultures are and how we should deal with them. YOU are one making the huge leap.
- pintomp3, on 01/01/2008, -3/+12a lot of "arabs" were played by white people back then. call it brownface.
- flipcritic, on 01/01/2008, -3/+12Real classy guys. Comparing deaths as to justify which side is more backward.
All deaths are horrible. - zplot, on 01/01/2008, -0/+9Not to say that all Arabs are terrorists, but there is a huge difference between the KKK and the level of fanaticism found in many of these countries. Unfortunately, far more than 1% of the population in many of these countries are radicalized. In some cases it far exceeded a majority. This is commonly government sponsored as seen in Iran and Syria. The KKK is not government sponsored in this country (at least not anymore). I think even Turkey, one of the most, if not the most non-radical Muslim countries, is unable to achieve a level of radicalism below 1%.
- inactive, on 01/01/2008, -0/+9Actually, if you want to play the game of who was first to provoke hatred, the Crusades were in response to the unprovoked Muslim invasion of the Holy Land.
- inactive, on 01/01/2008, -1/+10. . . which is typical of the left . . . attempt to silence anyone who doesn't line up for the Kool-Aid so they can be bobble-heads parroting the mandras of the brain dead like so many idiot children in a mandrassa.
- borisyelker, on 01/01/2008, -4/+13"If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations. If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities. If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors. If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home. If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart."
- Lao-Tsu - Tanktunker, on 01/01/2008, -1/+10Islam was mostly spread through conquest, read some history books, while I can't say every and any muslim living would strap a bomb to their chest and run into a crowd, it's a violent religion.
If you ask me it's because there's no real top boss, the village/city sheik is usually the top of the religious hierarchy, so any literate megalomaniac can twist the "teachings" any way he wants and suddenly he has a militia loyal only to him. - RogerStrong, on 01/01/2008, -2/+10"The Sum of All Fears" was filmed months before 9/11; it finished filming in June 2001.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) mounted a 2-year lobbying campaign that ended on January 26, 2001, against using "Muslim villains", as the original book version did.
"Collateral Damage" was also filmed before 9/11. - nksoccer13, on 01/01/2008, -1/+9There is no way the Iraq war has killed more people than EVERY terrorist attack ever. Do you realize how many terrorist attacks have been executed over the course of human history? Since terrorism is defined as "he use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes" there have been more terrorist attacks than anyone can count.
- jmoo, on 01/01/2008, -6/+14Right, because we've been using the movie True Lies as a basis of foreign policy in the middle east.
- Barbosa, on 01/01/2008, -1/+9you can ignore it, but take a look at our leader even our military... it's in there already
- swaddict, on 01/01/2008, -2/+10who compiled that list, and how was terrorism defined? I would imagine that the same definition could be applied to many many many american acts, which is why these people hate us. Look at how much we hate them for one attack on our soil. How many times have we attacked them on ours? how much money and aid has gone to leaders that persecute their own people, Pakistan just the latest example?
- sixdust, on 01/01/2008, -2/+10Nope, alot of them are kind, rich people. Certain stereotypes did fit in, like ownership of gas stations, 7-11's, big houses, etc., but thats about it. In fact, those who wear a turban, do it out of respect to their parents and their roots. They choose to wear it.
- RogerStrong, on 01/01/2008, -7/+15An Arnold Schwarzenegger movie ("Collateral Damage") had it's release delayed because of 9/11. Arnie was fighting the Columbian drug mob. The movie originally had him fighting arab terrorists, but Hollywood changed it to avoid offending the arabs.
Not long before 9/11, the movie "The Sum of All Fears" was released. This was based on the Tom Clancy book about arab terrorists popping a nuke in an American city. But Hollywood didn't want to offend the arabs, so they changed the villians to nazis.
If you want to make a grand sweeping statement on an industry or culture, fine. Let's just compare Hollywood's record on racism and intolerance with that of the arabs, first. - jjb123, on 01/01/2008, -6/+14Timothy Mcveigh?
- ShugNinx21, on 01/01/2008, -2/+10I don't know where you have been but Jews are heavily sterotyped in Hollywood. Unless I'm am to believe that all jews are necrotic successful business men or jewelers or bankers or accountants...
- inactive, on 01/01/2008, -4/+11Tiny minority?
- macbwizard, on 01/01/2008, -5/+12Terrorist acts can NEVER be justified
- inactive, on 01/01/2008, -4/+11If Islam didn't promote violence, then wouldn't the moslems who took it way to strictly be the most peaceful people on the planet? Your own statements contradict themselves.
- babakshirazi, on 01/01/2008, -0/+7Don't forget the last group in the US you can pick on with zero consequences - rednecks.
- felchdonkey, on 01/01/2008, -1/+8You know why we have technology on our side? To prosecute the war in the swiftest way possible, achieving victory with the least casualties possible. We don't fight wars to kill people, we fight to achieve an outcome.
If you don't think there are any soldiers fighting on the ground, then I don't know what to say to you - and I certainly don't know what our troops on the ground would have to say.
A terrorist deliberately kills civilians as a way to terrorize the public into their demands. That's a very different approach. - ZenMojo, on 01/01/2008, -2/+9Don't forget:
Thief = black
Rapist = black
Drug Dealer = black
Gangmember = black
By the way, most of those movies in that trailer were from the 80's and 70's. So even with evil Russians and Germans, Hollywood has been using Arab terrorists. -
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