HOW THE ARAB GOT HIS SINISTER
Presentation by Prof. Nessim Watson
May 22, 2005
Summary by Phoebe Hoss
On May 22, 2005, Nessim Watson presented a program of talk and video on "How the Arab Got His Sinister-American Orientalism in U.S. Popular Culture and Foreign Policy." An Assistant Professor of Communication at Westfield State College in Massachusetts, Watson teaches about the economics and politics of the American mass media, especially as it interacts with our democracy, culture, and the representation of race. This program was sponsored by the Adult Education Program, the Journey Toward Wholeness, and the Peace Task Force.
Professor Watson began by saying that his work is an extension of Edward Said's idea that language constructs the reality within which people think and act. In America, our most common language is the pop culture provided by our media. Thus, images from American movies and television become the main language through which most Americans learn their "knowledge" of Arabs. Yet, these stereotypes, which have almost nothing to do with who Arabs really are, have come to have everything to do with how our foreign policy and our government wants us to see them and, hence, with how it justifies its policies toward them.
During and after World War I, Britain, the United States, and other Western countries switched their navy ships from coal to oil, making control over the Middle East and its Arabs of vast importance: first to the ability to make war, and eventually to the growth of our industrial economy. At the time, Arabs were seen as weak, barbarous, and unable to care for themselves - thus justifying the incursions of the Western nations, which conversely saw themselves as strong, civilized, and well able to care for themselves and any nation they might choose to meddle in. This attitude returned years later in 1978, at the Tutenkhamen show at the Metropolitan Museum, where these treasures (like oil) were seen as the "common heritage of mankind," treasures we should hold onto, as more worthy stewards than Egypt.
When Israel was created after the Second World War, Palestine was portrayed in film as an empty desert, the idea being that its Palestinian dwellers would somehow blow away. After the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1974, the stereotype of Arabs-as-weak began to change. With media Arabs becoming criminalized, foreign policy and pop culture became even more openly linked. The energy crisis of 1973-74, with its high prices for gas, only exacerbated the trend. Arabs were portrayed - primarily in movies and on TV - as greedy oil sheiks, as lascivious sexual predators; and labeled as dirty, savage, awful animals, or primitive. In projecting a negative identity on another people in this way, we promote ourselves as the opposite: as rational and not barbarous. These images also encourage the idea that people with olive skin are suspect: thus, at the time of the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995, the FBI - and many ordinary people -- initially assumed incorrectly that the terrorists were Arab or Muslim.
Moreover, all the Arabs - whether Egyptian, Palestinian, or others - are lumped together. No distinction is made between Iranians (who are Persian not Arab) and Arabs. No distinction is made between Muslims and Arabs when, in fact, Arabs represent only 12 percent of world Muslims.
Professor Watson brought us up to the 1980s and 1990s, when movies like Rambo were made - often with government cooperation - depicting extreme violence, with high Muslim body counts and the thematic message that black and white can work together to achieve racial peace through violence against Arabs.
All these images, combined with the lack of realistic analysis of events in both the media and government, muddy our perception of what's going on in a crisis and so inhibit us from acting positively. Critical thinking is key. We can't easily stop media images and government influence. But we can become aware of the images and the political-economic motivations behind their selective production in our culture. We need to elect politicians who will regulate the media and enable more diverse images of Arabs. We also need to get media literacy into the high schools. To educate ourselves more successfully, there are many alternative media websites and "blogs" with ongoing and informative news of the day. You can start at websites like www.alternet.org and www.democracynow.org.
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