Man, the news about media stereotypes just keeps coming today, so I really can't put the blog down.
I watched Fox's hit thriller "24" for the first time this weekend, and I was stunned. It looked in the beginning as though every single brown person on the show was going to be a terrorist. They showed several Muslim men in the show, all engaged in terrorism, bombing and shooting and what not. The language used over the internet to communicate the terrorist plot, spotted by a young white guy at work on the computer, was "Middle Eastern... Turkish or Arabic or something...." (Turkish and Arabic do not look at all alike.) All the white people in the show were the good guys, of course.
Then, I was relieved to see a new scene featuring a Muslim-American family at home enjoying breakfast. They were watching the news about the terrorist bombing and at first seemed a bit shocked. OK. Good, I thought, this will be the "good" immigrant family to juxtapose against the "bad" immigrant terrorists.
Then, the father said, "The plan is going perfectly."
This family was a sleeper cell!!!! Message: there are no good Muslims! They're all plotting against us! AHH!
The show only got worse from there. None of the counterterrorist "good guys" was an immigrant Muslim. All of them were white (except for one black guy). Apparently, in the next episode of the show which aired on Monday, the father from the family poisoned his son's girlfriend. Great message there.
Anyway, I'm not the only one to notice this, and Fox is trying to atone for its mistake by producing some PSA's. Lame. Apologize, Fox, and consider pulling the show.
I watched Fox's hit thriller "24" for the first time this weekend, and I was stunned. It looked in the beginning as though every single brown person on the show was going to be a terrorist. They showed several Muslim men in the show, all engaged in terrorism, bombing and shooting and what not. The language used over the internet to communicate the terrorist plot, spotted by a young white guy at work on the computer, was "Middle Eastern... Turkish or Arabic or something...." (Turkish and Arabic do not look at all alike.) All the white people in the show were the good guys, of course.
Then, I was relieved to see a new scene featuring a Muslim-American family at home enjoying breakfast. They were watching the news about the terrorist bombing and at first seemed a bit shocked. OK. Good, I thought, this will be the "good" immigrant family to juxtapose against the "bad" immigrant terrorists.
Then, the father said, "The plan is going perfectly."
This family was a sleeper cell!!!! Message: there are no good Muslims! They're all plotting against us! AHH!
The show only got worse from there. None of the counterterrorist "good guys" was an immigrant Muslim. All of them were white (except for one black guy). Apparently, in the next episode of the show which aired on Monday, the father from the family poisoned his son's girlfriend. Great message there.
Anyway, I'm not the only one to notice this, and Fox is trying to atone for its mistake by producing some PSA's. Lame. Apologize, Fox, and consider pulling the show.
Notice that FOX is not even apologizing for this. In addition, American Muslim are not well organized demand a formal apology. So CAIR is going to provide a pubic service announcement, so what? How is that better than demanding a formal apology? If something as degrading as this happens to, say, Jews, you bet there will be more uproar. And note that it's the mother who poisoned her son's NON-MUSLIM girlfriend. Don't we just love TV?
So the network should be required to show a positive image to provide balance for the negative images? Interesting requirement. I'm not quite sure if that's always a good idea though. Art should never be regulated by the fear to offend. With such a provision in place, it would handicap the artistic process.
Shows should be allowed to show both terrorists and terrorist sleeper cells at work. Maybe the are planning to introduce a positive Arab-American image at some point in the show. You don't know that they're not. Wait and see. However, to require them to provide a counterexample in every show will get in the way of the story. People who derive their political ideologies from a television serial are morons to begin with, and minority characters are always going to be stereotyped because they either exhibit race-derived traits to prominently ("racist"), or they are presented as "race neutral" ("worse than racist").
Ian
Ian, thank you again for your responsible opposition, although I think FOX is pretty indefensible on this one.
No, they shouldn't be required to show positive images of Middle Easterners. And I hope you're right that they'll introduce some positive Middle Eastern role models later in the season, but the damage has already been done.
The point of this post was to point out that the damage was done. If that isn't pointed out, then the damage is much worse, because the implicit message that all Middle Easterners are terrorists just goes unchallenged. If everyone reads The Most Important Blog... Ever like they're supposed to, then they'll be more critical of that message.
People who derive their opinions about groups who they come into contact with only via the TV aren't morons -- they're called "humans." I can't really blame someone living in Montana or some other place with very few Middle Easterners around for developing racist opinions about Mid Easterners after watching "24," or any one of a number of films and TV shows that use the same stereotype to acheive "realism." While our friend in Montana might be wrong and ignorant to believe everything he sees on TV, if that's all he or she gets, it's easy to see why he or she might develop racist viewpoints. That's one big reason why we have to challenge these images in popular media.
I'm not saying that FOX and the show's writers and producers didn't have the right to make a show like this -- hell, they have every right to be racist under the 1st amendment. But, I also have the right to criticze those bastards and demand that they pull the show and offer an apology.
And, to my anonymous commenter, thanks for correcting me on the fact that the show's mother was the cruel Ukrainian-style poisoner. And you're exactly right -- the Middle Easterners in the US aren't very policitcally organized. Yet. I'm predicting that this is changing as we speak, and the quick response from FOX to CAIR's complaint is evidence that Mid Easterners in the US today have much more clout than they did, say, 15-20 years ago. So, there's a piece of good news, right?
Thanks again to both of you for your important comments. Keep them coming.