Dr. Shaheen, studying over 100 different popular entertainment programs, cartoons and major documentaries telecast on network, independent and public channels, totaling nearly 200 episodes that relate to Arabs, has thrown new and revealing light on the stereotypes of people from the Middle East.

A groundbreaking book that dissects a slanderous history dating from cinema’s earliest days to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters that feature machine-gun wielding and bomb-blowing "evil" Arabs Award-winning film authority Jack G. Shaheen, noting that only Native Americans have been more relentlessly smeared on the silver screen, painstakingly makes his case that "Arab" has remained Hollywood’s shameless shorthand for "bad guy," long after the movie industry has shifted its portrayal of other minority groups. In this comprehensive study of over one thousand films, arranged alphabetically in such chapters as "Villains," "Sheikhs," "Cameos," and "Cliffhangers," Shaheen documents the tendency to portray Muslim Arabs as Public Enemy #1—brutal, heartless, uncivilized Others bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners. Shaheen examines how and why such a stereotype has grown and spread in the film industry and what may be done to change Hollywood’s defamation of Arabs.

“Nothing will be the same again.” Americans scarred by the experience of 9/11 often express this sentiment. But what remains the same, argues Jack Shaheen, is Hollywood’s stereotyping of Arabs. In his new book about films made after 9/11, Shaheen finds that nearly all of Hollywood’s post-9/11 films legitimize a view of Arabs as stereotyped villains and the use of Arabs and Muslims as shorthand for the “Enemy” or “Other.” Along with an examination of a hundred recent movies, Shaheen addresses the cultural issues at play since 9/11: the government’s public relations campaigns to win “hearts and minds” and the impact of 9/11 on citizens and on the imagination. He suggests that winning the “war on terror” would take shattering the centuries-old stereotypes of Arabs, and frames the solutions needed to begin to tackle the problem and to change the industry and culture at large.

Secondary edition statement from table of contents.

Al Jazeera is one of the most widely watched news channels in the world--and one of the most controversial. A noted journalist speculates on the potentially dramatic effects of the network's new station on the Western world while uncovering the true story behind one of the most influential media outlets.

Before his assassination in 2005, Samir Kassir was one of Lebanon’s foremost public intellectuals. In Being Arab, a thought-provoking assessment of Arab identity, he calls on the people of the Middle East to reject both Western double standards and Islamism in order to take the future into their own hands. Passionately written and brilliantly argued, this rallying cry for change has now been heard by millions.

A Companion to Television is a magisterial collection of 31 original essays that charter the field of television studies over the past century Explores a diverse range of topics and theories that have led to television’s current incarnation, and predict its likely future Covers technology and aesthetics, television’s relationship to the state, televisual commerce; texts, representation, genre, internationalism, and audience reception and effects Essays are by an international group of first-rate scholars For information, news, and content from Blackwell's reference publishing program please visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/reference/

Metropolitan Detroit is home to one of the largest and most diverse Arab communities outside the Middle East. Arabic-speaking immigrants have been coming to Detroit for more than a century, yet the community they have built is barely visible on the landscape of ethnic America. Arab Detroit brings together the work of twenty-five contributors to create a richly detailed portrait of Arab Detroit. Memoirs and poems by Lebanese, Chaldean, Yemeni, and Palestinian writers anchor the book in personal experience, and more than fifty photographs drawn from family albums and the files of local photojournalists provide a backdrop of vivid, often unexpected images. Students and scholars of ethnicity, immigration, and Arab American communities will welcome this diverse collect on.

In recent years, Arab television has undergone a dramatic and profound transformation from terrestrial, government-owned, national channels to satellite, privately owned, transnational networks. The latter is the Arab television that matters today, economically, socially and politically. The resulting pan-Arab industry is vibrant, diverse, and fluid - very different, the authors of this major new study argue, from the prevailing view in the West, which focuses only on the al-Jazeera network. Based on a wealth of primary Arabic language sources, interviews with Arab television executives, and the authors' personal and professional experience with the industry, Arab Television Industries tells the story of that transformation, featuring compelling portraits of major players and institutions, and captures dominant trends in the industry. Readers learn how the transformation of Arab television came to be, the different kinds of channels, how programs are made and promoted, and how they are regulated. Throughout, the analysis focuses on the interaction of the television industry with Arab politics, business, societies and cultures.

After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of “the enemy” during the War on Terror. Evelyn Alsultany explains that a new standard in racial and cultural representations emerged out of the multicultural movement of the 1990s that involves balancing a negative representation with a positive one, what she refers to as “simplified complex representations.” This has meant that if the storyline of a TV drama or film represents an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist, then the storyline also includes a “positive” representation of an Arab, Muslim, Arab American, or Muslim American to offset the potential stereotype. Analyzing how TV dramas such as The Practice, 24, Law and Order, NYPD Blue, and Sleeper Cell, news-reporting, and non-profit advertising have represented Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans during the War on Terror, this book demonstrates how more diverse representations do not in themselves solve the problem of racial stereotyping and how even seemingly positive images can produce meanings that can justify exclusion and inequality.