Reel Bad Arabs Essay

The film Reel Bad Arabs opens a discussion on the Western media representations of the Arab world. However, the film analyzes not only the social and cultural factors at work, but the history that helped established these stigmas and depictions of Arab culture. Edward Said delves into the historical forces that have allowed for such perceptions to develop, focusing heavily on the colonization of the East. There is also the notion of cultural purity and danger, as proposed by Mary Douglas that is also particularly relevant to the primary concept of the film.

Dr. Mike Callaghan had explained Mary Douglas’s work on cultural purity and pollution in a unique way. He used to example of a cup. The cup was on the table and had been considered in a

Said’s notion of orientalism refers to the ways in which the Western world has represented and perpetuated the cultures of the Eastern world, otherwise regarded as Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Said essentially traces the concept of orientalism back to the colonization process taking place in the Arab world. The Eastern countries had been perceived as inferior to the Western countries, and thus western intervention in the East had been rationalized.

It would be the early perceptions imagined by Western images of an “oriental” or in some cases, “inferior” Eastern world that would have long lasting effects on how the West has continued to regard regions particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. Reel Bad Arabs portrays the way that Western media has continued to perpetuate this primary trait of orientalism. The film itself is rather striking, in that these images of the Arab world and culture haven’t been openly contested. Rather the depictions of Arab culture have been openly accepted and utilized for entertainment purposes, even within family films such as Aladdin. The stigmas surrounding Arab culture have become