CPSA 2017 May 31, 3:45-5:15 PM, VIC-106 (Victoria Building) Panel

CPSA 2017 May 31, 3:45-5:15 PM, VIC-106 (Victoria Building) Panel: Post-9/11 Interventions and Inventions Muslims of Interest: Practices of Racialization in the Context of the War on Terror Danielle Blab McMaster University Abstract: This paper reflects on the findings of my doctoral thesis; defence in April 2017. My dissertation analyzes and codes all Muslim characters in programs that featured Muslims as main and recurring characters in American dramas and comedies from 2001 to 2015, according to an intersectional framework that is interested in race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. This large corpus of study – 18 television programs and 277 Muslim characters – reveals important trends in the tropes or stereotypes according to which ―Muslim-ness‖ is performed. Muslims are represented according to four major tropes: the villain/terrorist; the ―Good‖ (patriotic) Muslim; the Friendly Cultural Stereotype; and the Muslim victim. While villains/terrorists and other ―negative‖ representations account for about half of this corpus, only 10 per cent of the total are considered ―positive‖ portrayals that also defy stereotypes to instead present Muslims as complex individuals who are as nuanced or developed as their non-Muslim counterparts. In a context in which Islamophobia and hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise in Canada and elsewhere, and in which it is possible for an American presidential nominee to propose banning Muslims from entering the United States – representations of Muslims matter. As per the assumptions of Popular Culture and World Politics, pop culture is taken as both reflecting and reinforcing foreign policies and broader political and societal attitudes. This paper also looks at portrayals of Muslims in American television programs in 2016 – including ABC’s Quantico – to reflect on continuity or changes in very recent portrayals of Muslims. Introduction: Dissertation Findings A major contribution of my dissertation (Blab 2017) was the empirical contribution of studying performances of ―Muslim-ness‖ in American television programs (dramas and comedies) in a very large corpus: covering a fifteen year time period (2001-2015) and nearly 300 individual characters. Taken as a whole, representations of Muslims in American television programs are very gendered and racialized: 90% of Muslim characters are of (often ambiguous or fictional) ―Middle Eastern‖ providence, and the 1 majority of these (70%) are ―Middle Eastern‖ males.1 These demographics are despite the fact that, in reality, the demographic make-up of the global population of Muslims is much more varied, including the largest national population in Indonesia, along with large Muslim populations in India, and various parts of Asia and Africa, not to mention large convert and diasporic populations all over the world, which means that a ―Muslim‖ can be of any background and appearance. Despite this, ―reel‖2 Muslims tend to reflect racialized assumptions including ―Brown‖ skin; real or implied ―Middle Eastern‖ provenance; the use of the Arabic language; and other tropes in costuming decisions, set dressing, and so on. ―Negative‖ portrayals remain consistently prominent throughout this period, reflecting half of the corpus: 41% are portrayed as terrorists and other kinds of villains, along with another 9% that are variously ―negative‖ characterizations. Terrorists/villains are overwhelmingly characterized along gendered and racialized lines, as 86% are men and 87% are of ―Middle Eastern‖ origin. In a few cases, the latter group of ―Miscellaneous – Negative‖ characters (9% of the total) transcend stereotypes in a meaningful way, including complex, nuanced that are as developed and no more or less flawed than their non-Muslim counterparts (e.g. Brother Mouzone on The Wire). The ―Good‖ patriotic Muslim, meanwhile, is an unambiguously ―positive‖ portrayal. The ―Good‖ Muslim almost always identifies as Muslim-American and is usually a counter-terror agent. The ―Good‖ Muslim is defined by their rejection of terrorism – particularly terrorism justified on religious grounds – and their loyalty to and love for ―America‖. However, despite their ―goodness‖, the ―Good‖ Muslim’s motivations remain no more developed than those of the Muslim terrorist and they remain flat characters. Because the ―Good‖ Muslim retains unalterable ―otherness‖ on the basis of their ―Muslim-ness‖, they remain trapped in a loyalty paradox: the ―Good‖ Muslim condemns terrorism and is solely defined by their loyalty to ―America‖, and yet this loyalty is the one thing about them that can never be trusted. As such, the ―good‖ Muslim is vulnerable to racial profiling and accusations of supporting terrorism, and occupies an uneasy liminal space as having a dual identity according to which they can neither truly belong as either a ―Muslim‖ or an ―American‖. Performances of Muslim-ness are gendered and racialized in a number of ways. Muslim women of ―Middle Eastern‖ origin are most likely to be portrayed as victims, and particularly victims of ―bad‖ Muslim men, many of whom are portrayed as terrorists. Muslim men who perform the trope of victimhood are more likely to be victims of racial profiling or Western discrimination, whereas women are comparatively under-represented 1 ―Middle-Eastern‖ is a deliberately broad and problematic term used because, as discussed at greater length in the dissertation, most of the programs racialize Muslims according to a constructed ―Middle Eastern‖ identity that collapses everywhere from Morocco to Pakistan as of fairly homogenous ―Middle-Eastern‖ provenance. This often includes fictional countries, which may be stand-ins for real countries, or composites thereof. Furthermore, ―Middle- Eastern‖ characters are often played by actors of any background, most often of South Asian descent, who are deemed to fit the expectations of racially profiling Muslims. As such, because most programs do not distinguish between ―brown‖-skinned Muslims of varying origins and collapse them into the same group, it is not useful to try to distinguish the different origins here, especially because the origins of Muslim characters are sometimes unspecified and/or fictional. 2 To borrow Shaheen’s (2009/2001) term – he contrasts ―reel‖ (i.e. cinematic) Arabs with ―real‖ Arabs. 2 in these sub-categories of victimhood. ―Middle-Eastern‖ women are also frequently portrayed as victims of sexual and/or spousal violence. White women who are converts to Islam, meanwhile, are predominantly portrayed as terrorists: although this is a negative rather than sympathetic portrayal (as compared with the portrayals of Muslim women as victims), White Muslim women who are terrorists show considerably more agency and tend to have more prominent roles in television programs than their victim counterparts. Another trope is that of the ―Friendly Cultural Stereotype‖, which is predominantly male and exclusively composed of persons of colour. Television programs depicting the ―Friendly Cultural Stereotype‖ poke fun at American/Western ignorance about Islam and Muslim cultures, and tend to be ―buddy comedies‖ that make jokes based on superficial cultural differences such as clothing, but reveal that beneath these differences the characters share the common condition of humanity and learn to appreciate what they have in common rather than focusing on their differences. Although these tend to be ―positive‖ and well-meaning portrayals, characters performing this trope tend to be under-developed and little more than cultural caricatures. Approximately 10% of Muslim characters in the programs studied are ―positive‖ portrayals that also transcend stereotypes (classified in the research as ―Miscellaneous – Positive‖3). These characters represent meaningful resistance to stereotypes and reductionist assumptions about Muslims. These characters are not necessarily ―positive‖ portrayals in the sense that they are always ―good‖ or ―moral‖ characters, but rather they are nuanced and often flawed characters that are no less complex or even problematic than their non-Muslim counterpoints, and whose characterization is not primarily negative. For example, Lost’s Sayid is an important example of a non-stereotypical Muslim: although he has a dark and violent past as an Iraqi torturer for the Republican Guard, other characters on the show have similarly problematic histories, and Sayid’s character is more strongly defined by his courage, compassion, kindness, and natural leadership capabilities. Community’s Abed is another well-known example of a character who defies stereotypes of Muslim-ness because, although his character is explicitly revealed to be a Muslim of Palestinian and Polish parentage, his main character features (i.e. his obsession with popular culture and difficulty relating to others) are independent of and not reducible to his Muslim-ness. The dissertation studied all American programs (dramas and comedies) that aired between 2001 and 2015 that featured Muslims as main and/or recurring characters. The programs included in the corpus were the following: 3 The classification of ―Miscellaneous – Negative‖, as noted above, is used for characters that do not perform stereotypes, but who are difficult to consider as ―positive‖ representations. ―Miscellaneous – Minor‖, meanwhile, refers to characters who do not perform stereotypes, but whose characters are so minor and/or underdeveloped that they do not clearly distinguish themselves in any way, either as a stereotype or as a ―positive‖ or ―negative‖ portrayal. 3 24

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