The film, about Faith (Islam), Fasting (Muslims during Ramadan) and
Football (the film's setting), premiered on 9 September, two days before
the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The team had to train during Ramadan, and in order to fast for the month, they set their practice times from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.
Paul Brunick, reviewing the film for the
New York Times, notes
that "...sound bites of unidentified but recognizable talk radio and
cable news mainstays are the kind of provocations regularly criticized
by media watchdogs".
A narrator in the film says: "We’ve been called many names: an Islamic
School, an Arabic School, a Hezbollah High School, camel jockeys, damn
Arabs, towel heads, sand niggers."
One of the students comments: "It's real hate; you can feel it." But
they're young, they're football players and they want to win, not just
on the football field but as Arab Americans.
Says the narrator: "But when all of this hatemongering is mashed
together with a sweeping orchestral march, the individual instances of
bigotry are transformed into something larger: a glimpse of how
monstrous our post-9/11 hysteria may appear to future students of
American history."
In the film, residents of Dearborn react to the events of 9/11. One man
says: "Please God, don't let them be Arabs" about those who flew the
planes into the twin towers.
Another reflects: "We were hit twice; once by Osama bin Laden and second by those who associated us with Osama bin Laden."
Very few films or TV programmes portray Arabs in a favourable light.
Those that do need to counter the negative images reflected in the
bigotry of a century in Hollywood.
Films like Oscar-nominated “
Syriana” and “
Kingdom of Heaven”,
which display Arabs and Muslims as people rather than stereotypes, can
help break down the image that has been built up for years.
As Professor Emeritus Jack Shaheen made clear in his landmark study
Reel Bad Arabs and his
documentary based on the book, Hollywood has a long and reprehensible record of vilifying Arabs.
In a 2008 interview for Lebanon's
Daily Star, Jim Quilty noted that "Regarded as a sort of 'Orientalism' for film junkies, Shaheen's book inspired '
Planet of the Arabs,'
Jackie Salloum's
2003 video that stitches together nine minutes of reprehensible Arab
representations like a feature-film trailer. In 2006, the book generated
Sut Jhall's documentary '
Reel Bad Arabs'."
In the same year as his documentary appeared, Shaheen released his new book,
Guilty: Hollywood's verdict on Arabs after 9/11. In it, he reveals that instead of an improved image of Arabs, their portrayal has worsened following 9/11.
A review in
Publishers Weekly points out that "In an index of
more than 100 post-911 films, the book depicts and debunks the most
prevalent stereotypes of reel Arabs – exotic camel-riding nomad,
oppressed maiden, corrupt sheikh, terrorist. Dehumanizing portrayals of
Arabs have real consequences..."
The road to deserved improvement of the Arab image in the West will be paved with films that portray Arabs as they really are.
It's time to put ignorant stereotypes to rest by countering the propaganda with reality as in the Fordson film.
