Limelight: When they cry wolf! By Lubna Abdel-Aziz Does Hollywood mould American public opinion? Throughout its history, Hollywood has dictated who to love, who to hate. Sitting wide-eyed in a darkened theatre, eager to be amused and entertained, we swallow the pill, ever so subtly slipped into our potion of pop and popcorn, as we mix and mingle reality with irreality. We all need a hero to worship, a villain to hate; Hollywood provides both. With the expansion and growth of the 7th Art, the line of distinction between fact and fiction is often blurred, and what is portrayed on the screen, may unconsciously be perceived as authentic, resurfacing as our own views, our own vernaculum. The innocent have fallen victim as they absorb the imperceptible bias, adopting and nurturing it, unaware it was indirectly advanced by Hollywood. One of the first landmark American film masterpieces D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) is an explicitly racist and vicious endorsement of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan. With the decline of the KKK, Hollywood shifted its demonic personification from "Negro" to "Native Indian" and on to many other ethnic groups, the brutish Germans, fickle Frenchmen, ruthless Russians, lazy Latins, cutthroat Italians, cunning Asians, not to mention the Arab, the Muslim and the Muslim Arab. In his book Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2001), author Jack G. Shaheen articulately describes the persistent and prolonged vilification of the Arab peoples in mainstream Western movies. Having reviewed 900 films researched over 20 years, he documents a century of offensive "dirty Arab" image that has developed over the last 30 years. He notes that only the native American has been so relentlessly smeared on the silver screen. Hundreds of movies dating back to 1914 have indicted Arabs as quintessentially evil. As seen through Hollywood's distorted lenses, they are all heartless terrorists, killers of women and children, determined to destroy all Christians and Jews,. The Arab is public Enemy No 1. The one constant in the myriad Hollywood productions is the hero. Once a white, Anglo- Saxon, Protestant, he now shares this privilege with a Jew or an Israeli patriot, tycoon, artist, or genius. How does the unaware viewer assimilate these voices, images, and emotions. Is it impossible to remain unimpressed, uninfluenced, or unmarred? The power of suggestion is unmistakable. The tragedy is, this bashing goes largely unnoticed or unchallenged. Time magazine renowned film critic Richard Schickel agrees: "Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Hollywood turned again to the Arab Muslim as villain," with no one "to step up and protect them when those stereotypes were put up!" Where are the voices of protest? Long time White House correspondent Helen Thomas, herself of Arab ancestry, calls author Shaheen "a one man anti- defamation league who has exposed Hollywood's denigration of Arabs in most, if not all of its films." American documentary filmmakers Wendy Campbell and Mark Green wrote: "Edison may have invented the motion picture, but Jewish immigrants from Europe invented Hollywood." Established by the Mayers, Warners, Goldwyns, "Hollywood not only maintains a Yiddish accent," but by relentlessly injecting sordid scenarios, and denigrating once respected groups and institutions, "America has now come to think Jewish." 275 million people have perished in wars during the past century, twenty million Russians were killed by their own government, yet Hollywood's only preoccupation is the holocaust. Campbell/Green believe that next to the Arab, Hollywood's favourite target is now the Catholic church, with villains emerging as priests, bishops, and cannibalistic cardinals, as seen in the action film Sin City (2005). Even if it is purely fictional entertainment, the negative impact is not lost. Although reportedly only 2% of the American population is Jewish, their presence in academic institutions, arts, sciences, medicine, and especially the media in all its forms, is indisputable, and whoever owns the media can leverage public opinion and eventually government policy. Hollywood's ruling class is the American Jew, and anyone attempting to mess with it, can learn a lesson or two from Mel Gibson. Bored with the portrayal of the Muslim Arab "subhuman" stereotype, here comes Hollywood with a brand new shift of fresh ideas, fresh blood -- an Eastern European, Asian-Muslim, looking more like an anthropoid ape, "Borat," who hails from Kazakhstan. So hilarious is his comedy, he has been a favourite on all the talk shows, promoting his hit film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstanis are not amused. Bordering on Russia and China, on the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan is an Eastern European country of 15 million Muslims. Sacha Baron Cohen, a British comedian created the fictitious character of the boor, Borat Sagdiyev, an outrageously crude, undisciplined, uncivilized phenomenon who hates 'Jews, Uzbeks, and Gypsies.' In the film's plot, he is sent by his government to film a documentary on American culture. "If not success, I will be execute!" Now, the No.1 US box-office hit of the fall season, the laughs are endless, as the brutish Borat mutters in mostly Polish or Hebrew, which viewers mistake for Kazakhstani. Borat attended Astana University, where he studied "English, journalism and plague research." His first wife Oxana, was shot and killed by neighbour, Nursultan Tulkaybay, who mistook her for a bear. 'Borat' evolved from a variety of previous characters that comedian Cohen developed on several TV programs such as Da Ali G Show. His offensive portrayal of a third world backward, buffoon, has sparked much controversy, not the least of which comes from the country of Kazakhstan, a far cry from his preposterous portrayal. None can stop the squeals of laughter, ridicule and contempt of the savage, ignorant, Islamic country and its citizen. The lie seeps quietly into the subconscious, leaving a "nasty aftertaste." Like it or not, the average viewer, not only in America, but throughout Europe and the rest of the world is oblivious to the subliminal impact of racial denigration of the Arab, the Muslim, the Catholic, and others, perpetuated by Hollywood bosses. It speaks volumes of who controls Tinseltown, American thought, and ultimately, world opinion. It is not the lie that passeth through the minds, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
