Comparative Civilizations Review Volume 13 Number 13 As Others See Us: Mutual Article 3 Perceptions, East and West 1-1-1985 Movies and the Middle East L. Carl Brown Princeton University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr Recommended Citation Brown, L. Carl (1985) "Movies and the Middle East," Comparative Civilizations Review: Vol. 13 : No. 13 , Article 3. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol13/iss13/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Comparative Civilizations Review by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. Brown: Movies and the Middle East Movies and the Middle East L. Carl Brown One culture's image of another may well be best revealed not in explicit dialogue or dispute between representatives of the two, not in the learned disquisitions of scholars, but in the less self-conscious expres- sion of a culture's own self-image. The cinema can be especially revealing in this regard. Commercial fiction film was born in the market place and has always been a pervasive art form. Occasional later efforts to give the medium rarefied chic (e.g., eminent film critics, exclusive film clubs and sporadic college courses on fiction film as an art form) have in no way reined in the power of movies to penetrate all levels of society. Movies are, moreover, a multi-art medium combining music, drama and visual art. Movies, thus, can evoke the dress, speech, architecture, natural environment and even the physiognomy of another people and their culture.