Author: Jack G. Shaheen
Publisher: Interlink Publishing Group (July 1 2001)
Pages: 574 Binding: Paperback

Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People is a groundbreaking book that dissects a slanderous history dating from cinemas earliest days to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters that feature machine-gun wielding and bomb-blowing "evil" Arabs.

Award-winning film authority Jack G. Shaheen, noting that only Native Americans have been more relentlessly smeared on the silver screen, painstakingly makes his case that "Arab" has remained Hollywoods shameless shorthand for "bad guy," long after the movie industry has shifted its portrayal of other minority groups. In this comprehensive study of nearly one thousand films, arranged alphabetically in such chapters as "Villains," "Sheikhs," "Cameos," and "Cliffhangers," Shaheen documents the tendency to portray Muslim Arabs as Public Enemy #1-brutal, heartless, uncivilized Others bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners.

Shaheen examines how and why such a stereotype has grown and spread in the film industry and what may be done to change Hollywoods defamation of Arabs.

About the Author

Jack G. Shaheen, a former CBS News consultant on Middle East affairs, is the worlds foremost authority on media images of Arabs and Muslims. He is the author of Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture, Nuclear War Films, and the award-winning The TV Arab.