In The Siege, a series of terrorist attacks wreak havoc on New York City, and it is up to a series of military and intelligence personnel (Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, Tony Shalhoub, Annette Bening, et al.) to stop any further attacks from occurring. These terrorist attacks are attributed to Islamic terrorists, who are seeking to commit vicious attacks on the United States, who they believe to be enemies of Islam. Arabs within the film are almost always attributed to the radical Muslim terrorists, and many people in the film engage in racial profiling. Despite the fact that there are some negative portrayals of this action, including the resigning of Tony Shalhoub’s Iranian character from the CIA, the portrayal of Arabs is extremely clumsy and offensive.
James Sheehan, in his article “Reel Bad Arabs,” denounces the portrayal of Arabs in The Siege. From the opening scene, Arab countries are stereotypically displayed as consisting of crumbling ruins, camels and sand, full of goat herders and primitives wearing turbans. Every Arab character in the movie is portrayed as Muslim; not only that, a Muslim who is radically opposed to the United States, and who wishes to exact their vengeance on the decadent West. They are portrayed as “buffoons…dogs and monkeys,” having low intelligence but infinite anger and evil (Sheehan, 2005). This is further evidence of a terrible misconception by American film producers that all Arabs are terrorists, and it leads to a cultural oversimplification of an entire people. This can spur people to action against the Arab people for perceived actions against the United States. This allows film producers to have an “easy” villain ripped straight from the headlines, without regard for how it might affect the cultural landscape, and any Arabs living in America who are not terrorists (read: most of them).
Works Cited
Sheehan, Jack. "Reel Bad Arabs." Multicultural film: an anthology fall 2005. Custom ed. Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Pub., 2005. Print.
The Siege. Dir. Edward Zwick. Perf. Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, Bruce Willis. 20th Century Fox, 1998. DVD.
