Professor examines Hollywood's depiction of Muslims and Arabs

Published: 2005-02-02

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Hollywood depiction of Muslims and Arabs has taken a decidedly more ambivalent tone in the past half-century, according to Lourdes Alvarez, an assistant professor of modern languages at The Catholic University of America. "Political events and shifts in American perceptions of the Middle East" have played a large role in the shift from what had been a more benign and respectful treatment of Islam, Alvarez said in a Feb. 1 presentation at Catholic University. Now, she said, there are "ubiquitous Hollywood representations of the Middle East as a place of religious extremism, violence and terrorism." In an earlier era, when "the United States was not yet dependent on foreign oil and thus not yet vulnerable to fluctuations in price or supply, the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and the subsequent war with its Arab neighbors, made fantasy films about the Orient a much less marketable prospect at the box office," Alvarez said in her presentation, "Thieves of Baghdad: Hollywood Revisits the Arabian Nights."

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