Thanks to Dona DeSantis, Deputy Director, OSIA
On Tues. May 20, at 9PM ET?......Discovery
Times Channel will present:
Hollywood Inc.: Casting
Calls: "ARABS AS BAD GUYS"
The hour long Documentary will include: besides The Sopranos creator DAVID CHASE, James Earl Jones, the Producers of "24", Tony Shalhoub, several other Arab American actors, and two editors from THE NEW YORK TIMES.
It
gets confusing: Discovery has several Channels. Discovery, Discovery Times,
etc.
And
"Arabs As Bad Guys" is listed under both Hollywood Inc., and Casting Calls,
while
their Casting Calls is scheduled at 9PM, Hollywood Inc., scheduled at 10PM.
The
Documentary is up against the first hour of the last half of:
"
Hitler: The Versailles Treaty made me do it !! " on CBS.
In
this Documentary, David Chase has been invited to comment on Stereotyping???
Really???
And what dare say, is he going to say???:
1)
Shame on those people who do it. I would never do it!!!!
2)
People are too sensitive. They should be Insensitive like me!!!
3)
What are you a bunch of Communists, against Free Speech???
The 2nd item that irritates me is, how they "minimize" Italian American Stereotyping:
1)
By limiting it to One Decade, rather than an ENTIRE CENTURY plus,
2)
State that "Mafia" Stereotyping "didn't offend Italian-Americans... (or
cause) hurt and ire. It was a sympathetic, sanitized..."
3)
State that the "Mafioso media image of the I-As as has been created and
nurtured, by Italian-Americans themselves". (Completely ignoring the fact
that is all Hollywood would permit!!)
Additionally in this Message are:
1)
AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. JACK SHAHEEN
2)
THE TIMELINE OF ETHNIC BAD GUYS (Italians: Part 7)
3)
RECORDED AUDIO INTERVIEWS WITH DR. JACK SHAHEEN
Discovery
Times :: Hollywood, Inc.
http://times.discovery.com/convergence/hollywood/hollywood.html
------------------------------------------------------
Hollywood
Inc.: Arabs As Bad Guys:
AN
INTERVIEW WITH DR. JACK SHAHEEN
The 265 million Arabs on the planet range from herdsmen to college professors, and all are inheritors of a history and culture rich in achievements ranging from scientific and architectural virtuosity to literary eloquence.
But as Arab-American academic Jack G. Shaheen points out, the only ones who appear in contemporary American movies are bloodthirsty terrorists and religious fanatics. "Missing from the vast majority of scenarios are ordinary Arab men, women and children, living ordinary lives," he notes in his recent book, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.
As a child growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1940s and 1950s, he recalls feeling sympathy for African-Americans, Jews and other victims of societal prejudice, and winced at stereotyped portrayals on the screen. It was not until his own children pointed out to him a caricature of Arabs in a Popeye cartoon that he first realized his own ethnic heritage might be getting the same treatment.
For his book, Shaheen studied nearly a thousand Hollywood films, dating back to the 1920s, that portrayed Arab characters — almost always, he discovered, in a negative light.
A former
Fulbright scholar and retired professor of communications at Southern Illinois
University, Shaheen has served as a consultant for CBS News and for numerous
entertainment companies, including DreamWorks. He recently talked to journalist
Patrick Kiger about how Arabs and Arab-Americans are portrayed in American
TV and movies and the damage it does.
---------------------------------------------------
THE
TIMELINE OF ETHNIC BAD GUYS
Part
1... 1900-1920... Blacks... Southern Demons
Part
2... 1920s ...Asians...Peril from the East
Part
3... 1930....Indians....Villians of the Frontier
Part
4... 1940...Germans and Japanese...Wartime Enemies
( No Mention of Italy)
Part
5... 1950...Mexicans...Viva Stereotypes
Part
6... 1960...Russians and Chinese....Foreign and Menacing
Part
7... 1970s: ITALIAN AMERICANS....DONS AND CAPOS
Part
8.... 1980-2000....Arabs....Kafiyeh-clad Madmen
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part
7... 1970s: ITALIAN AMERICANS....DONS AND CAPOS
While it is true that a handful of criminals of Italian ancestry, from Al Capone to John Gotti, have run vast underworld empires in this country, as one Italian-American Web site recently calculated, only 0.78 percent of the nation's 14.7 million Italian-Americans have ever been convicted of a crime.
Nevertheless, in the movies and TV, when the subject is organized crime, the mobsters most often seemed to be portrayed as Italian-Americans.
But there's a peculiar twist. The media image of the Italian-American as Mafioso has been created and nurtured, in large part, by writers, directors and actors who themselves were Italian-Americans.
The seminal works are director Francis Coppola's The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974). The films were based upon the work of pulp novelist Mario Puzo, who, despite growing up the child of immigrants in a tough New York neighborhood, never actually met any real Mafioso and based his work largely on news articles about the mob. (The model for the mob chieftain Don Corleone, Puzo eventually admitted, was his own shrewd, streetwise mother.)
Puzo's and Coppola's fictional Corleone clan didn't offend Italian-Americans in the way that ethnic stereotypes had aroused hurt and ire. It was a sympathetic, sanitized version of the mob, in which criminals were dignified, brave, wise, and violent only when they had no other viable option. (By design, the word "Mafia" never appears in the Godfather movies.) The "Godfather" became so accepted, in fact, that the movie's theme music sometimes was played at Italian-American weddings.
----------------------------------------------------
On
the Discovery Channel Web Site, HEAR
RECORDED
AUDIO INTERVIEWS WITH DR. JACK SHAHEEN
A
Change Since Sept. 11
Hear
what Shaheen says about the more frequent portrayals of evil Arab-Americans,
particularly on TV.
What's
Missing
Shaheen
talks about how Arab women are presented in films and programs.
A
Worst List
Which
movies are most guilty of portraying negative Arab stereotypes?
An
Exception
Shaheen
describes one American movie that presents a more balanced view of Arabs.
Lunatic
Fringe
Shaheen
talks about how Muslims are represented in American movies.
Spreading
Stereotypes
Are
negative portrayals of Arabs being exported around the world?
A
Different View
What
could Americans see in Arab or Iranian films?