Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hello, and welcome to woman off of the middle East podcast. This podcast relates three realities of Ableman and their rich and diverse experiences. It's aims to present the multiplicity of women's voices, and it wishes to break cultural stereotypes about women of the middle East, as well as educate and empower the younger generation of middle Eastern women who were stripped of their historical reference. And weren't necessarily raised to believe in their agency and power to create their own destiny. Um, I'm, <inaudible>, I'm a feminist scholar and educator. I'm also the author of Arab woman and Arab news, all stereotypes. And you meet you. I created this podcast to be an extension and an update of the book and its main topics. One, the persistent, stereotypical images of Arab women and the rest. I'll be talking a bit about the history of the misrepresentation of Arab woman and the Western popular culture. Then I will zoom in to talk about an old ticket's new example, and that is of Jasmine and Disney's 2019 alone.
Speaker 1 00:01:18 From the 1980s, there has been a state of empirical media studies showing that the Arab women and Arabs generally are represented in Western media in a negative light. These empirical studies confirmed anti Arab stereotypes that scholars have documented for hundreds of years in the West. The identification of Arab woman as passive and the Western imagination has an estimated birth around the turn of the 19th century with the confluence of colonialism and romanticism Western stereotypes of Arab woman evolves from pre-colonial images of shrewish harassing women to colonial and post-colonial images of Arab woman as oppressed, submissive, and passive slaves to men with the image of compliant on come hetero. All the LISC burnt into the Western psyche. The representation of Arab woman has coursed through a steady stream of medium, including the word of mouth of travelers, theater and literature, stage photography and Hollywood movies, vintage postcards, journalism, contemporary art fashion, the rise of hijabi, chic, pious performance arts and cultural and historical semiotics.
Speaker 1 00:02:35 And the Odyssey Homer describes UNISIS coat Etsy between two devastating forces, the monsters Carlo who devoured sailors and the men ans sherbets a wire pool that sucked a ship down to the bottom of the seat. Study's affair. A woman in media has been caught between the Skylar of unhealthy this and the short bits of regrettable fact. This Carla, in this case is the Western method of rescue. The belief that Arab woman veiled and secluded must be saved from their own cultures. This myth has been pervasive throughout to the West since 1980s. This myth has been pervasive throughout to the West since 1800 and has a long and unhappy history. The myth predates the era of European colonization of Arab territories and was certainly a contributing factor to it, both your inclination, and even after the myth has been reinforced and even commoditized, we have seen across all manners of artifacts from postcard images of Algerian woman sold as kitchen trinkets to French tourists, to editorial cartoons, mocking woman, and things to state photography of Western models posing as her woman and the formative days of Hollywood to depictions of Arab woman submitting willingly to male domination and modern Hollywood
Speaker 2 00:04:14 Feast.
Speaker 1 00:04:17 Well, let's look at the recent portrayal of Jasmine and Disney's 2019 Aladdin. This segment is a tribute to the late Jack Shaheen, who has spent his life working and writing about the misrepresentations of Arabs and Muslims in Western media, especially in Hollywood, he campaigned against, and what's the reason for changing the lyrics of the opening song Arabian nights and the Aladdin's animation. The song said, where did they cut off your ear if they don't like your face it's for work, but Hey, it's home for this segment of the episode I'm interviewing dr. Evelyn Sultani, dr. Soltani is a leading expert on the history of representations of Arabs and Muslims in the U S media and on farms of anti Arab, anti Muslim racism. This was funny as an associate professor and the department of American studies and ethnicity at the university of Southern California in Los Angeles. And she is the author of Arabs and Muslims and the media race and representation after nine 11.
Speaker 2 00:05:22 So there's a lot to say on this topic. I want to preface by saying that the 1992 cartoon version, it was very problematic, but despite that a lot of my students who were children at the time when the 1992 version came out and then they were in my class much later when they were in their twenties, early twenties loved the first Aladdin, even with all of its problems, because they felt like that's all they ever had, but there were so few representations of Arabs available to them. And that Aladdin seemed positive compared to all the others of terrorists. Even though a Latin reproduced, a binary between laminates, Jasmine had American accents, they were very much marked as white middle class Americans, even though they're supposed to be Arab, but as children, they just love it. You did so much. And then later on, they realized the problem, but they said, that's all we had.
Speaker 2 00:06:19 And it meant so much to us. So I can imagine the new generation now of children also having a very deep connection because there are, even though representations have evolved and changed over time, they're a little bit better in U S media. There's still so few that we're so desperate for them. I was, uh, on a community advisory committee council for the film Aladdin. I had a very tight, tiny role, but I got to sit in on a few meetings and I have to sign a nondisclosure agreement. So I can't talk to, unfortunately about the nitty gritty of those meetings. It was very interesting to witness that the people making a Latin, I wanted community feedback. So it was mainly, and, and South Asian scholars and activists and creatives that they brought in to give us the feedback they had already made their decisions before we came in, but they really wanted a, to be culturally sensitive.
Speaker 2 00:07:16 So for example, one thing they did did that's distinct with Jasmine. Then in 1992, all of her outfits show her midriff. They're very revealing. They're very much sexually objectifying her and the new Jasmine in 2019 is fully clothed. She's modestly dressed. And part of it was a strategy because they wanted the film to be meaningful to Muslims children around the world and not only to American audiences. So that's one striking just difference about her. Another, the main difference is that in the first Aladdin or I won't call it the first one, this is the very long trajectory, but in terms of so Hollywood films, the 1992 version Jasmine's goal is to pick her mate. She doesn't want her father to choose who she's going to marry. And so her goal is to have some kind of agency over who she's going to marry and then fast forward.
Speaker 2 00:08:12 And that's not Jasmine's primary goal. She's going to rule the kingdom. So we have a big shift in terms of how gender roles, those are conceptualized. She is no longer a princess who needs to have a man and she's going to stand behind the man. She is now educated. She's smart. She's going to be the leader. There's no question. She has ideas for how she's going to rule the kingdom. She wants it to be multicultural. Uh, so those are two of the main distinctions. The other is, um, her song that she won't go speechless is significant in terms of the me too movement in the United States, where many women have spoken out about the abuse, the fab of experience, many are famous actors who faced, uh, rape and sexual harassment by men and power. And so the songs seems very much to be linking to the current moment in the U S and making it relevant in that kind of kind of way.
Speaker 2 00:09:15 So those are the, the main changes with Jasmine and I've thought a lot about the changes and how it reflects social change. There are many other ways that the new version reflects social change. They, in the earlier version, 1992, there was a distinction with the accents. So there was a strange old English accent that signified evil and the American accents were good. The, um, bad characters were Brown or the good characters were lighter. These her were stark and extremely offensive. There was a song in the original one, which actually dr. Jack Shaheen worked very hard to have changed, uh, that this land Abra, blah, which was supposed to the Baghdad, but because of the Gulf war in 19, 19, 1991, they didn't want to associate the film with war. So they changed it to a fictional location and they describe it in the song as, um, where they cut off your ear, if they don't like your face, it's barbaric, but Hey, it's home.
Speaker 2 00:10:15 And dr. Jackson worked to change that in the earlier version, but yeah, the songs are, you know, are not blatantly offensive. Some major changes. The other big change is around casting. And just like there seems to be some movement because of the me too movement. There's also some movement because of the Oscars. So white controversy. So the Oscar, uh, the Academy awards, there was a hashtag that went viral Oscar. So white criticizing Hollywood for not only, um, awarding most of the awards to white actors and actresses, but there's also been a trend of white washing, which means giving the Brown roles to white actors and Hollywood, uh, discovered black Panther and crazy rich Asians that you can create movies with predominantly Brown casts and they still make money. And then, and they have produced Exodus gods and Kings about ancient Egypt and they cast white actors. It didn't do well in the box office. They did that with ghost in the shell, which is supposed to be cast an Asian actress, but they cast a white actress. And so they had a few flops in the box office from casting white actors in Brown roll. So they changed that. So a Latin is predominantly Brown. Uh, it was a huge deal that the actor for Aladdin MENA Massoud was cast as a Latin, he's an optica Egypt.
Speaker 2 00:11:45 Uh, and it was a little controversy around Jasmine and her casting because many people wanted her to be Arab. And they, a South Asian Britain actress and, uh, the Disney executives said, and this is on the record. Uh, Julie Ann Chromat who works at Disney was I read an interview in the newspaper with her. And she said that they intentionally chose a South Asian actors because just like the Latin is so meaningful to Arab children around the world, it's also very meaningful to South Asian children around the world. They wanted to make that connection. Uh, and in the film, it's very brief. It's very easy to miss, but there's a reference that Jasmine's mother comes from another land and trying to acknowledge they're trying not to bad Arab or the same thing, she's from another land. And they try to use that to say, she's aware of well, if they culturalism, she wants to rule in this new way.
Speaker 2 00:12:44 Uh, so they've made these tweaks. I do have a larger criticism, which is, this is great, and this is reflective of social change. But to what extent is this real social change? If the operating framework is still orientalist, if we still don't know the difference between Bollywood and belly dancing coffea and Sikh turbine, we don't know the Iranian accent compared to the Arab accent compared to the Indian accent. It's all still mashed together. They're all still the same. And my concern is that there is a trend in Hollywood that improving representations and not reproducing the terrorist one. That's so common that the improvement is going back to old orientalist depictions because they're romantic and they're fun and they're exotic, and they're not mean, and they're not evil and they're not portraying necessarily barbarism. But to what extent can we really embrace the social change when we're in the same orientation framework?
Speaker 2 00:13:46 Interesting. What do you mean that, that goes back to romanticizing the audience? And this is just if it can, you know, example. So in the, uh, history of Hollywood filmmaking, which begins roughly in the late 18 hundreds, I think the first film was 1897. It was called Hakima. It was the dance that portrayed the middle East, and it was the dance of foster mother. She was a belly dancer and a lot of the earlier movies, early 19 hundreds, the chic, uh, wrote to Morocco, uh, thief of Baghdad, Arabian nights, and the 1940s that the earlier films portray the middle East as exotic, romantic, dangerous in a romantic way, uh, strange and early depictions definitely reduce the middle East soon abstraction as Edward Sayeed would say around Orientalism, but they appear less harmful than the later depictions around terrorism. That really after the creation state of Israel in 1948 and the Arab Israeli war in 1967, then we get to see the terrorist betrayal.
Speaker 2 00:14:58 And in terms of women's portrayal earlier films, we have Arab women. We're also conflated with Muslim women as belly dancers and harem girls predominantly they're in the background. They're just there to feed men and dance for men and entertain men. And then later we get the depiction in the 1960s, seventies, eighties, uh, of actually they disappear for a while. And when they come back, they are oppressed and veiled, and occasionally they are terrorists too. So the empowered Arab woman has a machine gun and is also a terrorist. And then her counterpart is the oppressed one. Who's silent and can't speak, uh, more recently in us media after nine 11, a new figure emerged for both men and women, but there've been more and more women lately in this role, which is of the patriotic American women. So the good Arab or good Muslims in the U S has to prove that they're patriotic towards the United States.
Speaker 2 00:15:57 So there's some examples, the TV show Homeland as a character <inaudible> she wears a hijab. She works for the CIA. She ends up being killed to prove that she will do anything for the United States. Quantico had Rayna and NEMA two sisters who worked for, uh, I think the CIA. Um, so there there's this new figure of the patriotic. Uh, she supposed to be smart and empowered cause she works for the government, but it's all about proving that you're good. And so my question around this figure is what does it mean to have a positive representation of it's so limited? The Patriot patriotism also means one thing. It doesn't mean questioning the government of the United States. It doesn't mean challenging to ensure democracy. It means being on the side of the government, even in light of any war or killing that they are doing. There's also a victimized version, which is, um, someone who's been to pay crimes after nine 11.
Speaker 2 00:16:58 So that's another figure that has emerged. So there's been some change over time, and we can say that the patriotic one is better than the terrorist one or the oppressed one. Similarly with Jasmine, we can say, yes, this is great that she is going to rule the kingdom, the significant, but my question is my caution is when I talk about representations to steer away from gluten bad analysis, because if you say good and bad, well, then it's good that we can end the conversation. But if we think about how's this working and how can we think about this change, but it's in this orientalist framework. So how much is it really changing? And when I think about that question of Orientalism in the U S Orientalism is not controversial, it's still romantic. It's still something you can consume. Um, whereas casting white people for Brown roles, it was controversial.
Speaker 2 00:17:50 They made a change. The me to raise an issue. It was controversial. They made a change. As long as Orientalism is not controversial or many people don't even know what it means. It will continue. And it will appear like it's good in compare. Is it better short? It's better. But it doesn't mean that it would be encouraging our youth to be a part of the solution. These stereotypes are so powerful and damaging. I dug up a poll that many people cite in relation to Aladdin. The 2015 poll revealed that 30% of Republicans and 18% of Deborah Democrats would favor a bombing aggravated, Oh, they don't even know that it's a fictional country. They don't even know what it is, but they would favor palming the country. So it speaks to a lot of ignorance and it speaks to the power of representation. Hey, how do you want to, do you want to bomb this fictional, this country that you've never heard of? Yeah, sure. There's vomit. So the work itself encouraging our youth to go into this profession, encouraging funders out there. You know, there are a lot of people who have money or funding, different kinds of projects, they're funding, important things, whether it's health projects or infrastructure projects, to think about funding workshops, to develop creative talent, help us tell our stories, healthy youth. I didn't say the Hollywood industry and storytelling is so powerful and it just had such a, a negative consequence on, on Arab and Muslim communities.
Speaker 1 00:19:30 That's it for the first episode for the next one, I'll be attempting to define Arab woman for questions and comments. Please contact me on Amazon at <inaudible> dot com. And that's it a M a L a M a L a L M a L K i.com. I would love to end this episode with Jasmine song speechless, which I personally like the songs performed by Ashesi Yani, who is a rising singer and songwriter from kata. So until next time, take care and stay safe.
Speaker 2 00:20:11 Here comes my voice. <inaudible> <inaudible>.
