"Jihad Jones' and Arab stereotypes

African-American playwright and screenwriter Tyler Perry's current blockbuster Madea Goes to Jail has already grossed more than $75 million. But prominent black critics complain that his films are riddled with "regressive, down-market archetypes" of "Mamie-types" and demonization of successful blacks.

Similar concerns motivate Yussef El-Guindi's comedy, Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes, which opens at InterAct Theatre this weekend. El-Guindi's play concerns an actor's frustrations over stereotypes of Arab-Americans—most notably the bomb-throwing, terrorizing sort— in film and drama. (A similar backlash surfaced briefly in the 1990s after the portrayal of Arabs in Arnold Schwarzenegger's True Lies and the Kurt Russell film Executive Decision.)

El-Guindi's concerns are supported by "100 Years of Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim Stereotyping," a report by Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, director of media relations for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Qumsiyeh's report discusses the "three B syndrome," the notion that Hollywood only portrays Arabs as "bombers, belly dancers or billionaires." El-Guindi's play suggests that filmmakers have also added a "T"—for terrorist.

Follow the money

Jihad Jones deals more with his character's refusal to play Arab stereotype roles than the reasons why Hollywood indulges in them (though he discussed this with me in a video interview). To me, the real question he fails to address is: "Absent a strong Arab-American contingent of filmmakers, what should motivate Hollywood's decisions as to which stories to tell about the intersection of Arab and American cultures?"

Film studios are after all businesses, not social service agencies. Executive Decision and True Lies made a great deal of money for their studios, in some part by pandering to popular fears of Arab terrorists. Similarly, Cold War films like The Hunt for Red October and Red Dawn scored similar success by portraying Russians as the great enemy. Before the Civil Rights revolution, black actors like Hattie McDaniel and Stepin Fetchit prospered by catering to white stereotypes of happy maids and shiftless loafers. Even Tyler Perry's critics concede that he's one of the few filmmakers employing black actors or telling any African-American stories in movies these days.

El-Guindi's play purports to show how the repetitious nature of a stereotype infects the minds of viewers— "one poisonous image at a time; one casual joke, movie, news story, until you think, well, there must be something to it." But even if that were true, can't an artist indulge in deliberate misrepresentation or lies in the service of art? Must we trash The Merchant of Venice or Ivanhoe because they perpetuate money-grubbing Jewish stereotypes? Do we throw out Porgy and Bess because its black characters are junkies and pimps?

The quandary of a racist statue

In 1939, a well-intentioned joint resolution submitted in Congress recommended that Horatio Greenough's 19th Century statue, The Rescue, should be "ground into dust, and scattered to the four winds, that no more remembrance may be perpetuated of our barbaric past, and that it may not be a constant reminder to our American Indian citizens."

Greenough's statue portrayed a valiant white frontiersman rescuing a female settler from a savage Indian attack. You might validly construe it as a denigration of savage Indians— or, conversely, as a reminder of our unfathomable mistreatment of Native Americans.

At first I sympathized strongly with the plight of El-Guindi's character. Who wouldn't admire an actor who refuses to play a role that conflicted with his political or artistic sensibilities? Nobody wants to be painted with the broad brush of group incrimination.

The murdered ballet student

On the other hand, last fall the International Ballet Academy, based in Media, organized a drive to send ballet supplies and dancewear to the Iraqi Music and Ballet School, the last remaining school teaching classical dance in Baghdad. Individuals and businesses donated tens of thousands of dollars' worth of pointe shoes, leotards and costumes, and Congressman Joe Sestak's office arranged the logistics of transporting the donations from the U.S. Embassy to the school.

But the embassy encountered problems delivering the shipments, because they couldn't locate anyone at the school in charge of the ballet program, apparently because the ballet mistress there and her staff had gone into hiding. Apparently, after learning that little girls were dancing in inappropriate outfits, militants hunted down and killed one of the dancers and her family.

So I feel sorry that an Arab-American actor might one day have to play the role of this young ballerina's killer. But I feel sorrier for the young ballerina, and more concerned about the real killer whose murderous action makes it possible for such a story to be told.






To see a video interview in which Jim Rutter challenges Yussef El-Guindi, actor Fajer Al-Kaisi, and director Seth Rozin on these issues, click here.
To read Dan Rottenberg's review, click here.