The Sum of All PCHollywood's reverse racial profiling.
Posted Tuesday, May 28, 2002, at 5:41 PM ET
The threat of al-Qaida terrorist attacks is currently scaring America stiff. But you'd be hard-pressed to find Muslim terrorists in any of today's blockbuster action movies, which instead offer such uncontroversial bad guys as killer aliens and abusive husbands. Why is Hollywood shying away from al-Qaida-like villains?
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUponMovies have always relied on politically relevant villains, from Russian spies to South African apartheidniks to Serbian ethnic cleansers. Tom Clancy's much-loved Jack Ryan series is the gold standard. Based on Clancy's best-selling novels, the movies featured hero Jack Ryan tackling the decaying Soviet empire in The Hunt for Red October, Irish nationalists in Patriot Games, and Colombian drug lords in Clear and Present Danger. Recently, Clancy has been credited by everyone from former CIA Director R. James Woolsey to Fox News' Bill O'Reilly with foreseeing the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
But in the about-to-be-released film version of The Sum of All Fears, based loosely on Clancy's 1991 novel of the same name, Paramount pulled a switcheroo. Clancy's original baddies were a motley crew of unreconstructed German Communists, a Sioux convict, and—the stumbling block—Hamas-like Palestinian terrorists opposed to the peace process. Long before Sept. 11, these were replaced with slickly dressed, easy-to-hate European neo-Nazis. While the basic plot remains the same (terrorists try to spark armed conflict between Russia and America by detonating a nuclear device at the Super Bowl, and Ryan saves the day) the movie is, for obvious reasons, far less relevant than the novel. It is also far more acceptable both to Hollywood sensibilities and the Arab ethnic lobby.
Though a staple of political thrillers since the days of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Muslim terrorists on-screen have been dwindling in numbers since the mid-1990s. Since then, groups like the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have condemned movies like 1994's True Lies and 2000's Rules of Engagement, both of which featured violent, fanatical Muslims (as opposed to 1996's The Rock, which featured violent, fanatical Gulf War veterans or 2001's AntiTrust, which featured violent, fanatical software executives). They even protested 1998's critically acclaimed The Siege, a searing critique of anti-Arab hysteria. According to CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, "The barrage of negative or stereotypical portrayals of Muslims in this film," which presumably refers to the movie's all-too-realistic anti-American cabal, "will overpower any positive message."
By the time The Sum of All Fears movie was being developed, CAIR launched a pre-emptive campaign to rid the adaptation of the novel's Muslim terrorists ("Before we had typed a word on paper," producer Mace Neufeld has said, "I was getting complaints.") Harrison Ford, then slated for the lead, reportedly felt much the same way. Early script treatments cast Timothy McVeigh-style "superpatriots" as the heavies behind the bomb plot, not Muslims—a PC move par excellence. Later, director Phil Alden Robinson settled on neo-Nazis, a perennial favorite, at which point he wrote the following in a letter to CAIR: "I hope you will be reassured that I have no intention of promoting negative images of Muslims or Arabs, and I wish you the best in your continuing efforts to combat discrimination." Ben Affleck, the new Jack Ryan, has applauded the decision, arguing that "the Arab terrorist thing has been done a million times in the movies." (As opposed to the neo-Nazi thing?) And the terror attacks only heightened concerns over ethnic insensitivity. In late September, Paramount chairman Sherry Lansing expressed sympathy for "these Afghan or Arab children in high schools who are getting picked on," suggesting that she'd steer clear of movies with Muslim villains.
But Americans have demonstrated that they can separate a small, violent minority from the vast majority of peace-loving Arabs and Muslims, and a little realism in the movies wouldn't change that. This kind of ostentatious nonracial profiling can make action movies feel clueless and irrelevant. Besides, the real victims here may be the chills that are supposed to run down your spine during one of these films. With al-Qaida threatening more attacks on U.S. cities, moviegoers may not quiver at the sight of a few more imaginary neo-Nazis.
What It Will Cost You To Deny Illegal Immigrants Health Insurance
Stupid Drug Story of the Week: NBC's Today Show Discovers Huffing
Can the Government Call God Jesus? What About Allah?
How Twilight Made Goth Fashion Mainstream
Is Disney's The Suite Life Making Your Child Into an Evil Lothario?
The Blind Side: Illegal Use of Sandra Bullock
Reader Comments From The Fray:
Just as most people of Italian extraction or heritage are not Mafioso, and Wall Street is not "controlled" by Jews, neither are most people of Arab origin, or the Muslim faith terrorists. However, with respect to Hollywood falling all over itself in an effort to avoid offending Arab/Muslim sensibilities, or might it be the sensibilities of self-appointed spokespersons for these groups, it served its customers poorly indeed regarding the plot changes made in The Sum of All Fears.
--Alan
(To find or answer this post, click here.)
The Hollywood execs should be congratulated for not fanning the flames of ethnic hatred in the context of the so-called "war on terrorism." The real story here--and it is rather remarkable--is that mainstream entertainment is, for once, not blindly marching in lock step with government propaganda and mass hysteria, which is what it usually does in a time of war.
--Anthony Williams
(To find or answer this post, click here.)
The characterization of the badguys in Clancy's book has not only proved to be prophetic in theoretical hindsight, it has become today's reality. To make a change in this characterization in order to offset possible hurt feelings from a special interest minority group screams Political Correctness, and frankly, ignores the truth. To claim otherwise, is just intellectual dishonesty.
--Marty Murray
(To find or answer this post, click here.)
Seeing that most of the blockbuster, smash-them-up, blow-them-apart, I'll be back, avoid-any-type-of-engaging-dialogue movies are loved by foreign movie audiences--from the UK-loving to the French-hating to the Middle East-loathing--I am not a bit surprised as to why an ethnic switch-a-roo of the screen happened--and for good reason. That being that these films are going to fail terribly in the States and do magnificently well overseas. Why would you make a 20-30 million dollar movie, lace that investment with racial insult, and expect a good return after sending it overseas?...
--Kauweloa
(To find or answer this post, click here.)
(5/31)