Hollywood Stereotypes

I believe Hollywood purposely makes Arabs look bad because of a continual cooperation with the government to do so. If you look through history, the United States has constantly been involved in issues with the Middle East. The US Government would benefit from the American people being fed the idea that people from the Middle East are all bad, so that makes it easier for the federal government to go to war. What surprised me was the fact that Hollywood has been making Arabs look bad for decades before 9/11. 

This makes us look bad to the rest of the Arab world. Sitting back and thinking about it, in most of the movies I've watched, Arabs are all generally people with plans of terrorism. Whether it's in a serious film such as "American Sniper", or a comedy such as "Don't Mess With the Zohan", an Arabian person is likely to be portrayed as a terrorist. Looking at that from their perspective, I would be very angry when I think about the United States. It would be particularly frustrating knowing I'm not part of groups such as ISIS, yet Americans still want to paint me with negative stereotypes.

There are many movies made in cooperation with the DOD.

Some of my favorite movies in a list I found included Zero Dark Thirty, Captain Phillips, American Snipers, and the Hurt Locker. Being cooperative with the DoD involves a film producer trying to gain assets from the military, but the catch is they have to present the script to an entertainment office to be approved. If the DoD does not approve of anything within the film, the film producer must makes changes to accommodate, or the DoD won't help them make the film. I find it interesting that this is how it works through films. Watching all of these movies, the Middle Eastern people are all dehumanized, and it makes sense that this is in large part due to cooperation with the DoD that largely helps the film producers to make the movie possible to

sell.
I think it's very hard for me to form an image of Arabian people living in different countries. On one hand I know that these are all very religious people that are mostly Muslims or Christians. From my experience with Arabian people, they are very much the same as us Americans. On the other hand it's very difficult to form an image of these people. Being born around 9/11, our generation has seen the Arabian people through a very negative scope. I'm willing to admit I've fallen into the trap of thinking of these people as either terrorist, or people living in constant fear of terrorism. I think this is through my exposure to movies, and the constant exposure to war in the Middle East continually talked about American politics. So it's very difficult for me to grasp that these people are likely more similar to us in America, even though I had close friends that were Arabian through all of middle school and high school.