Muslim Stereotypes in the Media

I have never seen the FOX television show '24' but from an article I recently read I can see why Muslims and other Arab people may take offense to the portrayal of Muslims on the show as terrorists. Unfortunately, I do not see anything changing because the network has already issued a statement saying they have not singled out any ethnic or religious group in their portrayal of the main characters' enemies. Also, FOX has so much money and teams of lawyers behind them that the interests of individuals is not that high on their list of concerns.

This article got me thinking about other negative images of Muslims and Arabs in American media. One example that is particularly disturbing to me because it is targeted at children comes from the Disney movie, Aladdin. The first song in the movie is called "Arabian Nights" and the first few lines of it as they appear in the film are as follows: "Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place / Where the caravan camels roam / Where it's flat and immense / And the heat is intense / It's barbaric, but hey, it's home." First of all, it calls the Arabian Peninsula "barbaric" but that is not even the worst part. The original lyrics that were changed at the behest of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee were: "Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place / Where the caravan camels roam / Where they cut off your ear / If they don't like your face / It's barbaric, but hey, it's home." It is appalling that the people responsible for making this movie for children would perpetuate that kind of a stereotype on purpose.

I truly hope that we are becoming less ignorant about these issues and this type of media representation will become less frequent.

Insider/Outsider Debate

Coming up this week in class we are going to devote a good deal of time to discussing the insider/outsider debate regarding who best to author multicultural literature. To prepare for this debate I read 4 articles that are part of an ongoing discussion about the true definition of multicultural literature. The Cai article we read described three different definitions: it is literature that covers all different cultures, focuses on people of color, or that all literature is in fact multicultural in nature.

After reading the articles I am more unsure than before what exactly the definition should be and I am also not settled on whether or not having a member of the discussed group write the book is better than having a knowledgeable outsider as the writer. I do agree with Sims Bishop that "you have to know a culture intimately if you're going to reflect it accurately in your fiction." But, I see no reason that someone who is not necessarily Native American can't write a good quality book about that culture and way of life. It may be a little more time consuming and require more research, but as long as the person is learned and qualified than the outsider works. Harris says something similar to this when she states that outsider authors can write quality multicultural literature if "they are experts in literacy...they are informed about the group's literature, and they possess the critical consciousness that enabled them to assess the literature in a forthright manner." However, even a scholar like Harris sees the difficulties in this debate when she comments, "others have spoken for them far too long and they need to speak for themselves."

I am looking forward to discussing this difficult issue further with my classmates and colleagues this week because it will give me more than my own perspective and opinions to go on. If the literary scholars that wrote these articles have trouble deciding the right answer than I am not surprised the issue it tricky for me.