AMST 325: The Middle East in Hollywood - Course Terms and Concepts

Vocabulary and key concepts regarding the representation of the Middle East in Hollywood, including tropes, doctrines, and theoretical frameworks.

Anti-Muslim Racism

A shorthand for inter-personal, media, and state-based targeting of persons who are Muslim and those perceived to be Muslim, often relying on the assumption that Muslims are enemies of the U.S. nation (Nadine Naber and Junaid Rana).

Benevolent Supremacy

A principle of ruling others through generosity and kindness, representing the U.S. as leading the world into democracy and freedom; historically, this is how the U.S. defined itself post-WWII in opposition to the European colonizer and Russian communism.

Binary Opposition

A cultural logic that constructs meaning through opposite and hierarchical categories, such as West/East, civilized/barbaric, or self/Other.

The Bush Doctrine

A post-9/11 doctrine stating the U.S. has the right to use military power against those who threaten or have the potential to threaten the U.S., advancing the promotion of democracy globally.

Clash of Civilizations

A hegemonic viewpoint post-9/11, derived from Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, which portrays Islam as inherently totalitarian and intolerant, suggesting that conflicts are increasingly cultural rather than ideological.

Colonialism

The process by which European powers reached positions of hegemony in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, involving the extension of nation power beyond borders and the submission of the world to a single universal regime of truth and power.

Commodification

The process by which an idea, ideology, or object becomes a commodity that can be purchased in a market, often moving marginal or subversive ideas into the mainstream and potentially robbing them of their value for resistance.

Counter-hegemony

Forces in society that challenge dominant meaning and power systems, such as the idea that religious extremists exist in every religion, not just Islam.

Crisis Diversity

Moments of crisis that draw attention to long-standing racism, creating a brief cycle of public awareness and corporate/educational initiatives that wanes until the next crisis.

Diversity Compromise

Making minor or major tweaks toward diversifying representations just enough to be profitable and avoid controversy without shifting the paradigm.

Cultural Appropriation

When people of a dominant culture adopt cultural elements of a minority group, such as wearing headdresses or using blackface.

Discourse

A system of representation through language.

Eating the Other

The commodification and consumption of racial difference for pleasure, described by bell hooks as race acting as a "spice" to liven up mainstream white culture.

Essentialism

The idea that a group of people possesses an unchanging "essence" and that all members of that group naturally share the same characteristics/stereotypes.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one’s own culture, ethnic group, or nation is superior to all others; Ella Shohat describes colonialism as "ethnocentrism armed."

Exoticism

A form of representation where the "Other" is depicted as fascinating and erotic rather than repulsive, which bell hooks claims is a way the Other is appropriated for pleasure.

Eurocentrism

An ideology that views all peoples and cultures through the lens of European superiority, privileging European values to a degree that they have been naturalized.

First Cinema

Hollywood-produced cinema intended to entertain and make a profit, containing no radical intent.

The Good Fight

A shift in U.S. discourse regarding Israel post-1967, where Israel was represented as an effective military fighting a morally just war, leading the U.S. to act like Israel on international issues.

Cultural Hegemony

The dominance—economic, political, and cultural—of one group over another; the "common sense" of society as theorized by Antonio Gramsci.

Ideology

A shared set of values and beliefs that are often "naturalized" to seem like common sense aspects of everyday life.

Ideological Work

The performance by apparatuses like media to participate in the production of "common sense," which changes over time.

Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs)

Institutions that function by ideology, such as churches, family, law, media, culture, and schools (Althusser).

Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs)

Institutions that function by violence or repression, such as the government, military, police, court system, and prisons (Althusser).

Imperial Stewardship

A 1970s ideology where the U.S. articulated itself as the administrator of global resources (like oil or art) based on a universalist rhetoric that they belong to the world rather than a specific nation.

Interpellation

The way individuals identify with and internalize particular ideologies after being "hailed" by them (Althusser).

The Islamophobia Industry

A network of well-funded think tanks, officials, and scholars whose primary purpose is to promote and profit from prejudice against Islam and Muslims.

Military Multiculturalism

A 1990s rhetoric where the U.S. military was depicted as a site of patriotism and diversity, used to justify global interference despite the exclusion of Arab Americans from this display.

Monolithic

Represented in a singular fashion; represented as one and the same.

Naturalized

The process by which an ideology becomes so ingrained as "common sense" that it goes unnoticed.

Orientalism

A term defined by Edward Said referring to how Western culture conceives of Middle Eastern cultures as Other, using a lens that distorts realities and sets up binary oppositions between West and East.

Patriotic Muslim

A post-9/11 inclusion pathway in liberal multiculturalism where individuals differentiate themselves from terrorists by displaying U.S. flags and affirming commitment to the United States.

Primitivism

The romanticizing of the "natural" ways of indigenous people, which often overlooks their daily lived realities and struggles.

Racism

The assigning of values to real or imaginary differences to the accuser’s benefit and victim’s expense to justify privilege or aggression (Albert Memmi).

Overt Racism

Openly racist arguments that explicitly support racist policies, such as arguing that Islam promotes terrorism (Stuart Hall).

Covert or Inferential Racism

Representations with racist propositions inscribed as unquestioned assumptions that are often invisible and difficult to detect (Stuart Hall).

Repertory of Images

A collection of images that, while appearing diverse, produce the same meanings and ideas about subjects, particularly in Orientalism.

Secular Muslim

Muslims who are not religious or are Muslim in name only (nominal), popularized in the 2010s as an alternative to the patriotic Muslim representation.

Simplified Complex Representations

Strategies used by television producers to give the impression of complexity by balancing negative representations with positive ones to avoid stereotyping.

Stereotype-confined Expansions

A conditional and limited expansion in representations that is defined and confined by the stereotype it responds to, such as the Patriotic or Secular Muslim.

The Other

The symbolic opposite to a normative category, marked by absences (passive, emotional, chaotic) and divided into tropes like the "domesticated" or "libidinous" other.

Third Cinema

An anti-colonial cinema movement intended to use the power of film for class struggle and national liberation.

Transcoding

The act of taking an existing meaning and re-appropriating it with new meanings (Stuart Hall).

Truth/Knowledge and Power

Foucault's concept that "truth" is produced to support power structures, and each society has its own "regime of truth."

Trope

A familiar and repeated theme, character, or narrative element that permeated a text, such as "veiled territories."

Animalization

A trope of empire where the Other is narrated as an unrestrained wild beast or savage.

Infantilization

A trope of empire representing the Other as childlike or embodying an earlier stage of human development.

Adams in the Virgin Land

A trope of empire representing land as empty and uncultivated, with no legitimate owner until Europeans arrived.

The Desert Odyssey

A trope representing the Middle East as a vast desert expanse and a site of adventure where the Western imagination can "go native."

Vietnam Syndrome

A term describing a mood of defeat following the failure of the Vietnam War and the notion that American power was on the decline due to a failure of nerve or masculinity.

Mummies and Egyptology

Archaeological rescue narratives where Western knowledge "rescues" ancient civilizations from oblivion, representing Arab civilization as belonging to the past rather than the present.