Transcript: ABC News “Nightline: Up Close: Jack Shaheen”
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Air Date: October 10, 2002
Anisa Mehdi, Producer
Tom Bettag, Executive Producer
Ted Koppel, Anchor
John Donvan, Correspondent
TED KOPPEL, ABC NEWS
There’s nothing new about Hollywood and stereotypes. In fact, for the most part, it’s a very old story. And the good news is that the old stereotypes, the Irish cop or priest, the black mail, the tap dancer or sleeping car conductor have been all but eliminated. Still, there is one old stereotype in the movies that has, if anything, gained new currency in the current climate. And “Up Close” tonight, a man who’s made it his mission to document what he feels is the gross and repeated distortion of Arabs and Muslims in the movies. Jack Shaheen, an Arab-American, is not Muslim himself. But that, he says, should have nothing to do with it.
JACK SHAHEEN, MEDIA CRITIC
If we only defend our faith, if I only stand up and defend Orthodox Christians, I’m a hypocrite. And so, we have, I think, we have a responsibility to walk in the shoes of other people, regardless of their color, their creed, their culture. And in the case of Islam, it’s wrong.
TED KOPPEL
To introduce us to this man and his passion, my “Nightline” colleague John Donvan.
JOHN DONVAN, ABC NEWS
Ted, you’re going to hear Jack Shaheen describe himself as a Pittsburgh boy who was a child of the steel mills and grew up loving to go to the movies. But he ended up spending much of his life fighting Hollywood over the way that it depicts Arabs and Muslims. In the days since September 11 th, 2001, terrorism has become an even bigger theme in TV dramas. We took one example, a clip from a made-for-television movie called “The President’s Men.”
CLIP FROM “THE PRESIDENT’S MEN”
JOHN DONVAN, ABC NEWS
Shaheen’s point is that this didn’t start on September 11 th. He’s been tracking stereotypes for decades. He’s written several books on the subject, the most recent of which came out just before the September 11 th attack. He does not necessarily feel that he is winning the battle against stereotypes. And that is something he cannot help but take personally. He was born in Pennsylvania, but he is the son of Christian Lebanese immigrants. Incidentally, the majority of Arab-Americans are Christian. Shaheen doesn’t remember ever meeting a Muslims until, as an adult, he went to Beirut on a Fulbright fellowship to teach. He’s a college professor with a Ph.D. in mass communications, retired now, but still pursuing his vocation, which is making us see the movies through his eyes.
JACK SHAHEEN, MEDIA CRITIC
I never thought of myself as anything but Jack Shaheen, Pittsburgh boy, Clairton. We worked the mines, my grandfather, my uncles. My uncles, all three, served in the military. My mother had to leave school when she was in seventh grade to help her mother take care of three brothers and three sisters. She was a “A” student. She always wanted to be a schoolteacher. And in order for me to go to college she scrubbed floors in the school. She was a cashier in the movie theater and every Saturday morning I’d go with my grandmother, we’d go to the movies. I loved the movies from an early age.
JOHN DONVAN
So, you saw a lot of movies.
JACK SHAHEEN
A lot of them.
JOHN DONVAN
When did you start to sense that the movies were dealing Arabs a bad hand?
JACK SHAHEEN
Oh, not until I was an adult, actually. I think the first time was when my kids started shouting “daddy, daddy, they’ve got bad Arabs on television.” I was in my 30s and they were watching cartoons. They were look at Porky Pig and Popeye and all those horrible things. And …
JOHN DONVAN
Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig have negative images of Arabs?
JACK SHAHEEN
Historically, every cartoon character you can think of.
CLIP “PORKY PIG” CARTOON
CLIP “BUGS BUNNY” CARTOON
JACK SHAHEEN
And so, I began documenting this cartoon image. And in the process, of course, I started looking at drama, TV drama and TV comedies. And all of a sudden I said, gee, these people are awfully ugly, you know. About that time, I received a Fulbright grant to teach at the American University in Beirut. I met my first Muslim in Beirut. I had never met a Muslim before. I saw my first mosque. I traveled to several different Arab countries. And what I saw there, what I found there was completely different and naturally I should have expected it, from what I saw on television. It was just different.
JOHN DONVAN
Different, how?
JACK SHAHEEN
In the send that they were normal human beings like you and me. And, that was a major difference. That was the major difference. Whereas on television they were the cardboard caricatures that did God-awful things.
JOHN DONVAN
Caricatures like wealthy …
JACK SHAHEEN
Well, yeah, you had the sheikh image in shows like “The Rockford Files.”
CLIP “ROCKFORD FILES”
JACK SHAHEEN
When I did research for my book The TV Arab, the producer of that show told me in confidence over the phone, she refused to be interviewed by me. She said she hated Arabs and didn’t have any use for Americans of Arab heritage as well. I always prided myself on doing original research dealing with controversial issues. I’d done research on public broadcasting, children’s programming. I was writing my book about nuclear war films. And I come back from Lebanon and I start doing research on images of Arabs on American television.
JOHN DONVAN
Because you had a kind of awakening overseas.
JACK SHAHEEN
Right. And it was something that no one else had done. I mean, it was, for an academic, it was perfect. It was ideal. And it was something I felt very strongly about, that, you know, I wanted to document this. Well, what happened is, all of a sudden, my research proposals came back. Came back. They weren’t funded. My friend came back from the research meeting saying, “Jack, your proposal was rejected and so and so stood up and called it ‘Arab propaganda,’ and ‘that Arab professor,’ et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There were some very harsh words.
JOHN DONVAN
When you were labeled the ‘Arab professor,’ in any way, are you the Arab professor?
JACK SHAHEEN
I’m no more an Arab professor than you’re the blond, blue-eyed journalist. I mean, of course not. How could I be? That’s ridiculous. How could I be, John? You know, if they labeled me the Pittsburgh professor or the Clairton professor or the Steeler professor, because I love the Pittsburgh Steelers, you know, that’s honest and that’s accurate. And besides, the “Arab professor” was a negative connotation. It wasn’t to flatter my heritage. It was to demean my heritage and to pint the finger at me to say I was pretty much a propagandist instead of a scholar.
JOHN DONVAN
Jack, your personal story seems to say two things. First that these images of Arabs are out there. And secondly, that nobody wants to hear about it.
JACK SHAHEEN
Right. Or if they do hear about it, they want to say, “Well, that’s what those people are really like.” And don’t most of us, regardless of our roots, aren’t there strains that we’re ashamed of? That there are people within our group, within our faith, that do horrible things in the name of God?
GRAPHICS: NIGHTLINE: UP CLOSE: JACK SHAHEEN
JOHN DONVAN
What do you do about the fact that Americans have seen an extreme act of violence perpetrated in the name of Islam?
COMMERCIAL BREAK
GRAPHICS: NIGHTLINE: UP CLOSE
JOHN DONVAN, ABC NEWS
How much more difficult has it been for you to make this argument after September 11tyh, when a lot of moviegoers would say, “there they go again?” In other words, the stereotype was fulfilled. How much harder is it now?
JACK SHAHEEN, MEDIA CRITIC
In, to some extent it’s more difficult because there are people out there pressuring Hollywood to, to perpetuate the stereotype even more. That’s the bad news. The good news is we’re a resilient people and we’re an open-minded people.
JOHN DONVAN
Which “we,” we, the Americans?
JACK SHAHEEN
Americans. We Americans. Don’t misunderstand, I’m proud of my roots, but I’m a Pittsburgh boy.
JOHN DONVAN
But, what do you do about the fact that, particularly for Americans particularly after September 11 th, they have seen an extreme act of violence perpetrated in the name of Islam, perpetrated by those who did the deed …
JACK SHAHEEN
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you have 19 Arab Muslim terrorists responsible for the death of 3,000 innocent Americans. 3,000 of us. And they’re Arab Muslims, right? Do their actions represent 1.2 billion Muslims? When we see Catholic priests and other men who abuse their faith and seduce and malign young boys, does that mean everyone in the faith is a child molester? The problem is and continues to be, unfortunately, that we have this “Islamophobia” in our country that everything Muslim is associated with evil. And we have these evil men who did these terrible things and they said they did it in the name of Islam.
JOHN DONVAN
In theory, probably at some point, somebody in Hollywood will want to make a movie about September 11 th, 2001. There’s no way they can make that movie without telling the story that the hijackers were Arabs.
JACK SHAHEEN
And they should. I mean, they absolutely should.
JOHN DONVAN
And, are they going to hear from you that it’s stereotyping?
JACK SHAHEEN
Absolutely not. That’s a reality and that movie should be made. But they’re going to hear from me and from anyone else when they continually vilify and demean people in films, on television shows, that have nothing to do with that incident. And that’s been the danger. On television this past year we just, almost every other week, entertainment shows, a show called “The Agency” and another program called “Jag,” I mean you see it vilified. The faith is vilified over and over again. And there’s no reason.
JOHN DONVAN
What makes it vilification? Where do you feel that the line is crossed between depicting a villain as a villain and depicting an Arab as a villain in a way that’s unfair or damaging?
JACK SHAHEEN
The character whom we hate and we detest, who is subhuman, who is different from you and me. That’s vilification.
JOHN DONVAN
World War II, plenty of movies were made where the villains were the enemy, German accent, German citizen, while there were Germans living in this country.
JACK SHAHEEN
Right.
JOHN DONVAN
What’s different today, if you acknowledge that there’s a war against people who get on airplanes, quote the Qur’an and blow them up, if you depict those people with Arabic accent quoting the Qur’an as villains, what’s the difference?
JACK SHAHEEN
Well, we were at war with a country. Here, you’re at war with a lunatic fringe, al-Qaeda. There’s a major difference.
JOHN DONVAN
How do you depict them without quoting people with an Arabic accent?
JACK SHAHEEN
You simply say they’re al-Qaeda. They’re not the people of the Arab world. They’re al-Qaeda.
GRAPHICS: NIGHTLINE: UP CLOSE: JACK SHAHEEN
JOHN DONVAN
Let’s talk about the movies that just send you around the bend. “Rules of Engagement,” what’s wrong with this movie?
COMMERCIAL BREAK
GRAPHICS: NIGHTLINE: UP CLOSE
JACK SHAHEEN, MEDIA CRITIC
There’s never been a movie showing us as veterans of any war. We’re never – you have the O’Leary’s and the Schwartz’s. You’ve had every ethnic group, right, in every World War II, World War I, Vietnam, Korean movie, except and American of Arab heritage. Now that angers me.
JOHN DONVAN, ABC NEWS
But all those Irish guys in those World War II movies are stereotypes themselves.
JACK SHAHEEN
But they’re great guys. They’re wonderful, they’re just wonderful.
JOHN DONVAN
So, it sounds to me as though you’re okay with positive stereotypes?
JACK SHAHEEN
You betcha. Let me have an O’Shean or an O’Shaheen, I’ll take that any time.
Let’s talk about some of the movies that just send you around the bend. “Rules of Engagement.” What’s wrong with this movie?
JACK SHAHEEN
“Rules of Engagement.” We need to have a course and we’re going to invite everyone in who specializes in racist images. And we’re going to show “Yude Suze,” how Jews were vilified in Nazi cinema. We’re going to show a “Fu Manchu” movie on how Asians are abused. And we’ll get a good old Gene Autry cowboys-and-Indians film and we’ll show that along with “Rules of Engagement.”
CLIP “RULES OF ENGAGEMENT”
JACK SHAHEEN
This is a film made by Paramount showing American Marines in Yemen, killing close to 100 Yemeni men, women and children.
JOHN DONVAN
Have you seen audiences watch this movie?
JACK SHAHEEN
Yes, I was there.
JOHN DONVAN
What happened?
JACK SHAHEEN
They stood up and applauded at the end of the film. I mean, that’s in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. They stood and applauded. This film, there was no excuse for this film. The message of this film is that all Yemeni, or all Arabs, hate the West, even children --and justification of our Marines gunning down women and children.
CLIP “RULES OF ENGAGEMENT”
JACK SHAHEEN
Now, let’s pause and look at the message of that film. What does that tech American Marines serving in the Arab world? Or any American serviceman? What’s the lesson plan of that film? What does it teach Arabs who watch the film about how we perceive them? We never ask the question why they may dislike us based on the images we export, throughout not only the Arab world but the entire planet. How can we get close to a people if we demean them in our cinemas? And the fact that our Department of Defense cooperated in this film, in “True Lies,” and “Executive Decision” and nearly 14 other films since the mid-80s, showing American servicemen blowing apart Arabs, what does that say about our government in terms of the political process and the relationship with Washington and Hollywood and how, together, they perceive the Arab world and the Arab people?
JOHN DONVAN
Can you get around the fact that one man’s stereotype is another man’s truth? And one man’s truth is another man’s propaganda?
JACK SHAHEEN
I think you get around it by evidence. In Reel Bad Arabs it’s the evidence, it’s the overwhelming evidence. The only reason I subjected myself to looking at so many movies is I knew if I didn’t have the evidence, no one would believe it.
JOHN DONVAN
What did it take out of you to watch those movies? Considering that you seem to feel this stuff very personally. What did it take out of you to – over all those years, to go through all those films?
JACK SHAHEEN
Took time away from my family.
JOHN DONVAN
That’s a pragmatic concern. But what did it take out of your soul?
JACK SHAHEEN
I like to think it put something into my soul. And that was the determination to put out this book and the faith in the young filmmakers that would read this book. Because we fail to empathize with anything Arab because all of our lives we’ve been brought up to think that they were different. Much like Germans were brought up to think Jews were different, even though Germany’s Jews were part of the culture and they had neighbors that they got along with. The dehumanization of Jews in the German press, mainly the German press, and the editorial cartoons, made the Holocaust much more feasible.
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JACK SHAHEEN
There’s not going to be any pressure on any producer who makes a film vilifying Arabs
COMMERCIAL BREAK
GRAPHICS: NIGHTLINE UP CLOSE
JACK SHAHEEN, MEDIA CRITIC
There’s not going to be any pressure on any producer who makes a film vilifying Arabs. There’ll be a tremendous amount of pressure, even before the film is made, if producers start vilifying Israelis or Jews. There’s a double standard. There always has been. And Hollywood is sort of clinging to this stereotype. In other words, it’s sort of like, well, we can’t do it to blacks any more. And we certainly can’t do it to Asians. And women are out. And gays and lesbians, they’re not acceptable. Who’s left? There they are.
JOHN DONVAN, ABC NEWS
Do you feel like they’re the last villains, the last ready, off-the-shelf villains?
JACK SHAHEEN
Yes, yes. I mean, you can get away with it. You can hit an Arab free. You can do whatever you want; actually, you’ll be applauded. I mean, if you come up and you tell someone in Hollywood, “you’re anti-Arab,” I’m not sure if they take it as a compliment or something that they should do to change it. You see? I think of a person who goes out of his or her way to demean a people as evil. I don’t think of them as entertainers or as mythmakers. I think of them as evil because they’re poisoning and corrupting the minds of young people. And they’re instilling within these young people a sense of hatred. That’s wrong.
GRAPHICS: NIGHTLINE UP CLOSE
[END]
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