JACK G. SHAHEEN, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Northampton, Mass.: Interlink Publishing Group, 2001). Pp. 582. $25.00 paper.

Extract

In its incessant focus on the universal battle between good and evil, the Hollywood film industry has traditionally regarded Arabs as a source to provide the dark side of the equation. Jack Shaheen's recent book Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People is an encyclopedic attempt to catalogue and document all Hollywood films that include Arabs, exposing the sheer magnitude of the film industry's bias against Arabs. For film after film, listed and discussed in alphabetical order, Shaheen provides plot summaries and brief examples of how these films have libeled Arabs, from classics such as The Sheik (George Melford, 1921) to more recent films that include Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Stephen Spielberg, 1989) and The Siege (Edward Zwick, 1998).