Speaking Back: Expanding Paradigms in Middle East Film
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SPEAKING BACK: EXPANDING PARADIGMS IN MIDDLE EAST FILM by EVELYN MARCIA STUBBS submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Literature and Philosophy in the subject English at the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA SUPERVISOR: Prof Deirdre Byrne February 2017 DECLARATION Name: Evelyn Marcia Stubbs Student number: 02840952 Degree: Doctor of Literature and Philosophy Exact wording of the title of the dissertation or thesis as appearing on the copies submitted for examination: SPEAKING BACK: EXPANDING PARADIGMS IN MIDDLE EAST FILM I declare that the above dissertation/thesis is my own work and that all the sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references. ________________________ SIGNATURE DATE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A special thank you is due to my supervisor, Prof Deirdre Byrne, for her unwavering support during the course of many emails and drafts between South Africa and Dubai. Her expertise and meticulous attention to detail have helped me bring my observations of the new culture that I am living in onto paper. She has been my mentor and guide. I dedicate my doctorate to Ian, who shares with me the love of film and the belief that popular culture has the power to create perceptions, and whose encouragement led me to undertake this project. Abstract: This thesis undertakes a study of four films, directed by Arab directors from Palestine, Lebanon, America and the United Arab Emirates, and argues that these works speak back to the negative representation of Arabs in mainstream Hollywood films. It examines the methods these directors have deployed to contribute to a consciousness on a cultural level. These include the films Amreeka (dir. Dabis, 2009: USA, National Geographic Entertainment), Paradise Now (dir. Abu-Assad, 2005: USA, Warner Bros), West Beirut (dir. Doueiri, 1998: Belgium, France, Norway, Lebanon: 38 Production) and City of Life (dir. Mostafa, 2009: UAE: Filmworks). I argue that these films speak back to the representation of Arabs created by Hollywood. In all the films I analyse the representation of the characters, which allows viewers into their frames of reference and makes them relatable. The characters are ordinary people facing the situations of everyday life in various settings. Whether it is the limitation of their geographical location while living under occupation in Palestine as in Amreeka and Paradise Now, emigrating to America and coping with xenophobia as in Amreeka, living in a country exploding as civil war breaks out as in West Beirut, or adjusting to multiculturalism as in City of Life, filmmakers are allowing viewers into the lives of Arabs, representing them in terms of all their successes, failures, vulnerabilities and excesses. They are human beings with the same concerns as all humanity, for peace in their countries, the stability of their societies and the safety of their families. My investigation analyses the films through the theoretical lenses of Stuart Hall’s theory of representation (2012), Edward Said's Orientalism (1997), and decoloniality as advocated by 1 Maldonado-Torres (2014) and Mignolo (2011). A postmodern reading of City of Life is made within Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality (2010), Lyotard’s concept of the grand narrative (1986) and Žižek’s concept of the dematerialisation of real life. A close reading of the films, using the research methods of semiotics and narratology, enables a deconstruction of some obscure elements, such as the embedded meaning in dialogue or the messages implicit in the mise en scène. In the process, cultural contradictions and similarities are explored and uncovered. KEY TERMS: Representation, stereotyping, Islamophobia, Middle East film, Arab Film, post colonialism, Orientalism, decoloniality, postmodernism, semiotics, narratology 2 CONTENTS ABSTRACT 1 CONTENTS 3 CHAPTER ONE Introduction 4 CHAPTER TWO Literature Review 40 CHAPTER THREE AMREEKA: Immigration and Cultural Racism 86 CHAPTER FOUR PARADISE NOW: Living in the 'Now' 122 CHAPTER FIVE WEST BEIRUT: Civil War and its Manifestations 162 CHAPTER SIX CITY OF LIFE: Striding Two Worlds 203 CHAPTER SEVEN Conclusion 233 WORKS CITED 244 APPENDICES 264 Appendix 1…………………………………………………………..264 Appendix 2 ………………………………………………………….265 Appendix 3 ………………………………………………………….266 Appendix 4 ………………………………………………………….267 Appendix 5 ………………………………………………………….268 Appendix 6 ………………………………………………………….269 3 Chapter One Introduction The representation of Arabs in Hollywood films has been largely stereotypical and does injustice to Arabs. Previous researchers have identified this phenomenon and explored its occurrence in detailed content analyses. For instance, in his analysis of Hollywood films entitled Reel Bad Arabs, Jack Shaheen (2008) identifies over 1,000 films in which negative representations occur, and John Cones (2012) identifies Arabs as falling within a racial group blatantly stereotyped in Hollywood. For those who do not have any connection with Arabs, these representations might be the only ones that they see and the significations become established with constant repetition. In my thesis I will explore four films directed by Arabs and examine the methods the directors have deployed to contribute to a more nuanced approach to the representation of Arabs on a cultural level. These include the films Amreeka (dir. Dabis, 2009: USA, National Geographic Entertainment), Paradise Now (dir. Abu-Assad, 2005: USA, Warner), West Beirut (dir. Doueiri, 1998: Belgium, France, Norway, Lebanon: 38 Production) and City of Life (dir. Mostafa, 2009: UAE: Filmworks). My investigation positions the films within the theoretical paradigms of Stuart Hall's representation, Edward Said's Orientalism, Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Walter Mignolo’s decoloniality, Jean Baudrillard's hyperreality and Jean- François Lyotard’s grand narratives in a narrative and semiotic analysis of the films. 4 More stereotypical representations include depictions of Arabs as fundamentalists and terrorists, whose missions are to destroy America. Often depicted as greedy, murderous, rich and fanatical, they are responsible for hijackings, beheadings and destruction of the symbols of American culture. These representations, delivered via the powerful medium of film, enable wide circulation of the stereotype. Shaheen (2008:xix) points out, for instance, that blockbusters, such as True Lies (1994), Courage under Fire (1996), Executive Decision (1996) and Rules of Engagement (2000), show "GIs, civilians, secret agents, the American president, Israeli troops, even cowboys, terminating reel barbaric Arabs." In his study of patterns of bias in Hollywood films, John Cones (2012:13) explains that Hollywood's most blatant patterns of bias fall within the categories of race, ethnicity and/or national origin. He includes Arabs and Arab-Americans in this group. I argue that, post-9/11, this representation has escalated to the extent that the conflation of the equation “Arab” = “Muslim” and “Muslim” = “terrorist” has been established in the discourse of Hollywood. The activity of Muslim terrorists, such as the Paris attacks1 on 13 November 2015, serves to magnify and confirm this discourse. Political debate further inflames and ignites opinion, with President Donald Trump’s xenophobic comment during his election campaign on keeping all Muslims out of America, for instance, gaining great media attention. CNN (Diamond 2015) made this announcement: 1 “There were seven coordinated terror attacks in Paris carried out by militants, killing at least 130 people. The first attacks were launched virtually simultaneously, with two explosions close to the Stade de France at just after 9.20pm local time, four miles apart” (Steafel et al 2015). 5 Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump called Monday for barring all Muslims from entering the United States. "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on," a campaign press release said. In his response, Trump twice specifically mentions “World Trade Centre 1 and World Trade Centre 2” as well the Paris attacks. His random comments about “people chopping off heads” throughout the Middle East leads his interviewer to make the comment, “You can’t throw out notions without any checking of them.” However, it is this type of assumption about barbarism in the Middle East that leads to xenophobic intolerance of the Arabs in the region as the evil Other. A study by Bakalian and Bozorgmehr (2009) finds that immediately after the horrific attacks of 9/11, “individuals who appeared Middle Eastern or had Arabic- or Islamic- sounding names became the scapegoats of Americans’ anger and vengeance” (2009:1). They give examples of the people who were murdered in reprisals for the 9/11 attacks: Balbir Singh Sodhi was the first murder victim in the backlash and Bakalian and Bozorgmehr claim that this was because his traditional Sikh looks, consisting of a dastaar (turban) and kesh (unshorn hair), were confused with Osama Bin Laden’s kaffiyeh (male headdress) and beard. Ironically, Sikhs are neither Arab nor Muslim.2 Hate crimes and incidents of bias spiked immediately. According to an organization called South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow 2 In 2001 the New York Times was quick to report this case of mistaken identity: “The nation’s Sikhs, conspicuous in turbans that resemble the head wrap of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, have suddenly found themselves