Page - 196 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Kenneth Starck | Perpetuating Prejudice 196 - Egyptians – “Reel Egyptians routinely descend upon Westerners, Israelis, and fellow Egyptians. Interspersed throughout the movies are souk swindlers as well as begging children scratching for baksheesh” (p. 24). - Palestinians – “Absent from Hollywood’s Israeli-Palestinian movies are human dramas revealing Palestinians as normal folk – computer specialists, domestic engineers, farmers, teachers, and artists. Never do movies present Palestinians as innocent victims and Israelis as brutal oppressors” (p. 26). The author’s own biases may creep through the excerpts cited here. The study, though exhaustive in its own way, lacks a clear scientific methodology. Yet the work deserves careful attention because of the author’s observations, often simple descriptions, and insights. The study reveals what happens when framing turns into stereotyping which, in turn, leads to an unconscious – and even perhaps conscious – distancing of oneself from others, that is, engaging in “othering”6. Images in particular command authority in affecting viewers. In an aptly titled chapter (“Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media”), Lester noted, “Because pictures affect a viewer emotionally more than words alone do, pictorial stereotypes often become misinformed perceptions that have the weight of established facts” (2000, p. 78). He is concerned primarily with dif- ferent cultures and ethnic groups. Since people mostly encounter those of other cultures through mass media, he concluded, people aren’t normally chal- lenged to examine their prejudices. One might go further and argue that not only do prejudices go unexamined, prejudices are reinforced. What impact did the events of September 11, 2001, have on the way media have dealt with Arabs and Arab Americans? Several studies suggest that after September 11 daily newspapers took a more sympathetic or positive view of Arab Americans (Weston 2003, Nacos and Torres-Reyna 2007). Utilizing the Lexis-Nexis data base, Weston examined nearly 200 news- paper articles for the three months before September 11 and for the month following September 11. The pre-September 11 coverage centered on Arab Americans resisting stereotypes and discrimination. An example was the Los Angeles Times article headlined “Negative Stereotyping Distorts Arabs’ Image” (Rosenberg 2001). Afterwards newspaper coverage presented Arabs as, in the words of the author, “double victims”, having suffered from the attacks themselves, including the loss of loved ones, but also being subjected after- 6 See also Semmerling’s examination of six films (e.g., The Exorcist, Three Kings, Rules of Engagement) in which he analyzes portraits of Arabs as imagined by America to exist in relation to American ideologies and myths (2006).