Belamghari Mohamed, Ibn Zohr University, FLHS, Agadir
Arabs and Muslims have had their share in the American media coverage for many years. Unfortunately, such exposure has markedly been tainted by attempts of stereotyping and vilification, especially in some Hollywood and Disney movies. Allegedly, film producers claim that reporting Arabs, Muslims or any other group of people is purely innocent, and the sole aim behind such representation is to further intercultural contacts and establish cross-cultural dialogues between the West and East. Still the way Arabs and Muslims are sometimes represented in Hollywood and Disney movies hints to the significant roles these two groups of people play in shaping the ideologies and politics of the countries representing them. Basically, Arabs/Muslims have come to occupy a central position in the formation of the American public consensus and the direction of American social, economic and political courses to desired ends of the ones who own the means to the media industry.
The reason why Arabs/Muslims are taken as the chief concern of this paper is predicated upon the rationale that the project which Hollywood advocates to uplift when stressing the importance of forging an intercultural communicational bridge between Arabs and Americans turns, when it comes down to practice, to be a mere cover for ideological constructions that fit nothing but the attainment of power and mass mind control of a whole people. This objective cannot be realized except through manufacturing fear through making a whole culture and its people serve as tools of scaring rather than communicating their differences for cultural dialogue and therefore global coexistence. It is through virtual contacts that the American media projects Arabs/Muslims as epitomes of imageries of terrorism, barbarism, misogyny and a multitude of uncivilized traits. It is, therefore, by creating an enemy that Hollywood contributes to fostering politics of mind control of the bewildered herd or the people who are meant to actively get involved in active processes of interculturality rather than absorb whatever ideology is in the air.
Keywords: Arabs – Muslims – Mind control – stereotypes – ideology.
Bio-data:
Mohamed BELAMGHARI (1986) is an assistant professor of English language and Literature at Ibno Zohr University. In 2014, he earned his doctoral degree from the faculty of letters and humanities of Mohamed the first in Oujda, Morocco. His fields of academic interest are Cultural and Literary Studies, Critical Theory, Moroccan Literature, Culture & Civilization, Cultural Sociology, and Colonial and Post-colonial Studies, among others. He has penned a number of research papers appertaining to the aforementioned area studies, and has also authored a book titled, Regimenting Americanism: A Short Cut into a Dialogical Globe! He is a member of the culture and translation research unit at the Centre for Human and Social Studies and Researches (CERHSO) in Oujda, Morocco. He is an editor and reviewer in the international peer-refereed journal of Arts and social sciences of OMICS International journals. He is also a member of the editorial board and a reviewer in the ELT VIBES: an international peer-refereed E-journal for Research in ELT.