COUNTERPUNCH LETTERS : Debating Hollywood’s Tarnished Images of Muslims
Grace Song’s charge that “The Villainous Depiction of Muslims” is because of American ignorance of Islamic culture (Calendar, April 1) is right on the money.
Unfortunately, I see only one way that this could change. Only if more Americans visit Islamic nations and witness the culture and history for themselves will this ignorance be abated. Anyone who has experienced the Islamic world firsthand (like this writer, who has been to Morocco twice and Tunisia once) will instantly see that the stereotypes that associate Islam with violence, terrorism, extremism and hatred, which films like “Executive Decision” traffic in, are completely without validity in terms of referring to Islam as a whole--as opposed to the political situation in specific nations.
The nations I have mentioned above, as well as the great majority of Egypt and Turkey (which only have problems in certain regions, and are considerably safer than Los Angeles, Miami or Phoenix), await us with their rich cultural heritages, culinary wonders, and--mostly--hospitable people.
MICHAEL SNIDER
Los Angeles
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Let’s start with the essential ingredient that constitutes a movie people will pay money to see--conflict. You need to have a good guy versus a bad guy. And the bad guy needs to be a worthy opponent or else the good guy looks like a sixth-grade schoolyard bully.
If you want to make an action-adventure shoot-’em-up and you want to have the best of our good guys fight the worst of the bad guys, where do you go? Who are the baddest, nastiest, most motivated and mission-focused bad guys around? Let’s see. Who’s in the paper duct-taping 50 pounds of Semtex to their chests and taking the 8:15 bus to downtown Tel Aviv? Who blows up jumbo jets over Scotland? Who blew up the World Trade Center?
Even Quentin Tarantino couldn’t make up stuff like machine-gunning and hand-grenading the snack bar at Rome airport for no good reason. Islamic fundamentalists are the all-purpose bad guys because their actions make Hannibal Lecter look like Leo Buscaglia. It’s called overwhelming weight of evidence.
And if Song is looking for Hollywood to portray Islam in the “balanced and complex way that it deserves” here’s a quadra-espresso wake-up. Hollywood is not in the business of portraying anything in a balanced and complex way.
Filmmakers take their heroes and their villains where they find them. If the Vatican had been sending death squads of nuns all over the world to do mischief, bet on it that one night we’d see Tori Spelling going mano a mano with Mother Teresa on “90210.” Hollywood is an equal opportunity exploiter.
TONY ASSENZA
Long Beach
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I find incredible Song’s uproar over three movies (“Executive Decision,” “True Lies” and “Not Without My Daughter”) that depicted Muslims in an unflattering light. That very thing has been happening to African Americans for many years and quite often mirrors real life. Having seen two of those three movies, they didn’t cause me to form a negative opinion of Muslims.
Regarding the disbelieving comments her son made about the film, I never allowed my son to see the violent types of movies referred to until he was old enough to understand the difference between the fantasy of Hollywood and the reality of life. Isn’t that why we rate the movies?
MARIAN A. THORNTON
North Hollywood