The Media: a Mirror with a False Reflection
The American public perceives the media as a reliable means of entertaining themselves and obtaining information. Furthermore, this confidence and trust that people have in the mass media allows it to play a crucial role in the daily life of the American individual. Despite his persuasive examples of the negative images that the American media have of Arabs in “The Media’s Image of Arabs,” Jack Shaheen’s lack of analysis that stereotypes are corruptive, fraudulent, and destructive to society devitalizes his argument. In other words, he should have not only explained how the media develops harmful consequences to the whole society, but also clarified the degree of damage that it causes.
Firstly, Hollywood movies, TV sitcoms, and novels, according to Shaheen, provide Americans with essential ways of entertainment using various techniques such as violence, seduction, and ridicule. Those techniques incorporate negative images of groups of people who are usually marginalized because of their race, region, and religion. For more than fifty years, Arabs have been that target. Beginning with the past instances that Shaheen presents, which include a variety of stereotypes from belly dancers, villains and terrorists as in True Lies (1991), the American media still imposes an image that conveys Arabs as ignorant “sand niggers.” Secondly, as it is the one who presents to the public the facts, local and international news, the media is similar to a panoptic device. Both of them attempt to use the idea of surveillance to create a uniform community. The media attempts to increase the awareness of the people by supplying them with the daily news, which enhances the confidence of the public in the media. Correspondingly, the Panopticon is designed to assure that its inmates are behaving accordingly. Thus, Shaheen asserts that the daily emergence of misleading pictures, videos, and reports on the nightly TV news, as well as headlines on the newspapers of Arabs as anti-American terrorists, whose main target is the American public, are greatly accepted; especially by children, "To a child, the world is simple: good versus evil" (591).
Shaheen’s mother articulates how the media imposes false images of people when she warns that “stereotypes blur our vision and corrupt our imagination. Have a compassion for all people, this way you will learn to experience the joy of accepting people as they are and not as they appear in films. Stereotypes hurt” (591). Although Shaheen mentions his mother’s warning, he does not identify harmful consequences that result from believing what the media represents. Still, this issue kindles a debate on several problems such as the media’s distortion of reality, and construction to social definitions and myths. Often times the media focuses on entertaining the public and catching its interests rather than on providing them with major events or news. Thus, this presumably trustworthy source of information fails to address pivotal issues or may sensationalize them with devious analysis or pictures to make them seem more appealing to the public. For example, in many criminal incidents the media tends to connect a crime to ethnic minorities although it may be without evidence. Specifically, this enhances the fallacy that people of color have a higher propensity for committing crime. For example, in the1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Arabs were the first suspects. The attribution of every terrorist attack to Arabs highlights how Americans stereotype Arabs as terrorists because of hasty generalizations. Similarly, the media frequently pins the guilt of a crime on either Blacks or Latinos. This may result in the escape of the actual committers of the crime or the terrorist attack, which, in turn, disrupts society. Also, the former examples illustrate how the media can, inadvertently, prolong racism due to a lack of in-depth analysis. This unintentional use of minor discrimination may lead to stereotyping a whole country, race, or religion.
Provided its position as a watchdog that is concerned with uniformity, the media imposes its censorship over society by fabricating definitions to the boundaries of normalcy and idiosyncrasy. In addition to the perspective of the general American public regarding people from other countries and cultures, there are parameters in mainstream America which exclude a range of social groups who are disqualified depending on either gender, sex, or region. For example, the main stream American media labels a successful person as a WASP, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Likewise, according to Kevin Jennings in “American Dreams” (51), the media often represents people from the Southern part of the United States as stupid because of their accent and slow life. Both stereotypes can minimize the production potential of the excluded individuals. As a result, the mainstream society could lose their competency and skillful performance of for the sake of derision and stereotypes.
The absence in his essay of the damaging outcomes that stereotypes commonly provoke weakens Shaheen’s assumption that stereotypes are harmful. Furthermore, his example of a dictionary’s definition of an Arab as well as his remark on it indicates the existence of detrimental effects of out-casting a group of people from civilized society. Although he confirms that he “found that ugly caricatures have had an enduring impact on my family”(Shaheen 591), he does not elaborate on those negative impacts. In this regard, beginning with a lack of freedom, the outsiders experience a loss of control over their image that turns to a loss of confidence, leading them to question their identity and eventually to pass their character. The mainstream media’s establishment of a restricted impression of “the other” community or culture, limits the members’ self-determination and causes them to feel an external manipulation. This dispossession of control leads people on the fringe to perform or conform to the so-called normal society. Moreover, it triggers the outsiders to act as if their original individuality disgraces them.
Furthermore, these individuals begin to believe that there is a stigma associated with authentic character. The notion of the superiority of Americans and the inferiority of others that the American media pervades to the world stimulates this stigma. The gradual loss of composure builds up self-hatred. Next, they attempt to conceal their belonging to the other culture by dwelling out of that fringe. Once there, they reach a stage where that society coerces them to deny themselves. More to the point, when the outcasts sell-out themselves through adopting another image, identity crisis is reached. In this regard, individuals value an external image on the expense of their real images and inner pleasure. They attempt to assimilate and qualify themselves to be accepted in the supreme world by passing their actual personality. These people view “passing,” a process of adopting a new identity, as a necessary step to acceptance and approval.
After giving many examples of stereotypical images of Arabs in the American media, Shaheen concludes his article with the possible political and religious techniques that could be used in confronting stereotypes. From a political view, he mentions that politicians should confirm the long-term friendship between the US and the majority of Arab countries. Religiously, he points out the typical exclusion of Islam from the circle of Christianity and Judaism. More important, there is a prevalent misperception of God in Islam. Many people believe, misguidedly, that Islam’s God is utterly different from the God in Christianity and Judaism.
Alternatively, the educational authority, which Shaheen did not state, of the media over the people cannot be neglected. Two commonly used words by the media that are affiliated with the word Arab are Muslim and Middle Eastern. Firstly, Americans must realize that not all Muslims are Arabs and vice versa. On one hand, the Arabic world is a region that is rich with cultural and religious diversity. On the other hand, Muslims are all over the world. In fact, more than a quarter of the world’s population is Muslim. Secondly, in reference to the association of Arabs with Middle Easterners, most of the countries in the Middle East are Arabic. However, the incorrect perception of Iran or Turkey as an Arabic country causes confusion in the Arabic image. Both countries speak non-Arabic languages and their people are not Semitic. Incidentally, the claim that Arabs are anti-Semitic is illogical. According to the Merriam-Webster's dictionary, the definition of an Arab is “a member of a Semitic group of people.”
In essence, the gist of Shaheen’s essay conveys that Arabs are an enduring evil character that represents fear and which is distanced from humanity in the American media. The emphasis on the media’s defects would have played a role in conveying his argument by virtue of doubting the media’s reliability in presenting information. Also, offering the negative impressions of stereotypes over society would preclude him from falling into a trap of assumption without evidence. The former two issues along with Shaheen’s essay are an attempt to eradicate bigotry and race or cultural intolerance. Another helpful factor could be examining the possible reasons of stereotypes and the feasibility of associating a culture or a phenomenon with a specific image.
