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Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 4 (2011) 225–243

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI 10.1163/187398611X571382

Tramps vs. Sweethearts: Changing Images of Arab and American Women in Hollywood Films

Gaelle Picherit-Duthler and Alia Yunis Zayed University, United Arab Emirates

Email: [email protected] ; [email protected]

Abstract Th e portrayal of Arab women in Hollywood from the silent movies to today stands in sharp contrast to the portrayal of American women over the same time period and can be defi ned by off screen politics. By examining important American fi lms over nearly 100 years, this article describes Arab and American women characters through fi ve political-historical phases of US international relations that defi ne their Hollywood images: 1) pre-World War II, 2) from World War II to the 1960s, 3) the 1970s, 4) the 1980s to 11 September 2001 and 5) post-9/11. Th e analysis reveals a variety of archetypes for both Arab and American women, but the main fi nding suggests a limited role for American women and the near absence of Arab women in Hollywood movies. Independent fi lmmakers and upcoming Arab-American movie makers may yet be able to fi ll this void.

Keywords Hollywood, Arabs, women, Americans, fi lm, stereotypes

Changing Images of Arab and American Women in Hollywood Films

Hollywood stereotypes of Arab/Middle Eastern/Muslim men are largely pre- dictable, such as sleazy sheikhs and terrorists. Examples of stereotypes of Arab women are more diffi cult to fi nd, as they are largely absent from the silver screen. When they do appear, it is no more fl attering than that of their male counterparts, albeit in diff erent ways. Despite her limited appearances, the Arab female archetype has changed, perhaps more than her male counterpart, who has rarely stepped away from being sleazy and/or terroristic. Similarly, the role of the American woman has evolved, and at times devolved since Hollywood’s inception in the early twentieth century. Th e Arab woman’s absence and one-dimensionality is not dissimilar to that of other ethnic and racial groups. However, in their limited appearances on the big screen, Arab women have remained one dimensional, but the key characteristic of the one

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dimensionality has evolved with the changing political climate in the United States. Within that context, we compare the portrayal in Hollywood fi lms of Arab Women to American women—defi ned for the purpose of this paper. In fact, American women have been remodeled in fi lm in parallel with Arab women, refl ecting the changes in US politics at home and abroad. In the hey- day of studio fi lms, for example, female Arab characters were used to fulfi ll roles the American woman could not, particularly that of sexual beings. Arab women have also been used by Hollywood in essentially the same way they are imagined in the dominant political discourse in the United States, i.e., with- out a recognition of their diversity, in order to provide a simplifi ed explana- tion of a part of the world that has becoming increasingly vital to how the United States views itself vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

It is worth noting that in fi lms that showcase both Arab and American males, the American male has now been adapted to the sociopolitical times, gaining a softer, more feminine side, while the Arab male continues to be portrayed as generically stupid and/or violent, with a few notable exceptions, as in the fi lm Munich ( 2005 ) and Syriana ( 2005 ). In mainstream cinema, which depends on quickly perceived images that do not require multifaceted interpretation, the Arab male has exemplifi ed the evil that must be destroyed by civilized men, much like the Indians were in the Westerns. However, such comparisons cannot be made about Arab and American women, as they rarely interact on screen.

In fact, the Arab woman is largely absent from the big screen, because any mass appeal fi lm or narrative often dehumanizes the bad guy, i.e., the Arab man, by showing his world without women, without love, romance and motherhood. In her rare appearances, the Arab woman is often seen as part of a larger political or sociopolitical agenda than American women, often repre- sented as a ‘terrorist’ or a voiceless mother/sister/daughter/wife of a terrorist. Unlike the majority of American women on screen, her primary concerns are not love, home and the pursuit of happiness. Lina Khatib ( 2006 ) notes that this is a deep contrast to women’s roles in Arab cinema, where women often embody the hope, dreams and fear of their world, often with rather heavy-handed symbolism. In contrast, American women mainly star in fi lms that highlight her American womanhood, her need to be the heart and hearth of her home.

Th ese diff erences in archetypes have changed over time. Using signifi cant fi lms from several decades, this article exposes the shifts in the gender por- trayal of these women according to fi ve political-historical phases: 1) pre- World War II, 2) from World War II to the 1960s, 3) the 1970s, 4) the 1980s to 11 September 2001, and 5) post-9/11. Th ese fi ve phases provide a frame- work for the analysis of the movies, which were chosen based on their critical

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or fi nancial success during these times. Th ese movies were found to have in fact created an alternative reality for Arab and American women, in order to appeal to a global audience whose biggest window on the outside world is often popular cinema.

Pre-World War II

In the silent era of Hollywood movies, American women were not loud in their screen presence and were usually portrayed as dutiful sidekicks to the main plot, with a few stars playing the role of virtuous females, such as Mary Pickford in My Best Girl ( 1927 ). Rare exceptions to this rule, such as Greta Garbo in Love ( 1927 ) and Flesh and the Devil ( 1926 ), set up the fi gure of a sexual female—a woman who brings about the destruction of the men who fall into her web, and in such roles, the woman was almost always por- trayed as a foreigner, not an American. Th e most expensive fi lm of the era, D. W. Griffi th’s Intolerance ( 1916 ), intended to be the antidote to the racism in his fi lm Th e Birth of a Nation ( 1915 ), is a fi lm in which the American and Oriental woman share the big screen, although not a storyline. As Rogin notes: ‘Th e movie counterposes public sexual pleasures to female-dominated state repression, but Griffi th’s expressionist images and montage editing over- whelm the male-subject-rescuing synthesis of family and city to which he aspired’ (Rogin 1989 : 510). In the fi lm, female domination comes from a western woman in the form of Catherine de Medici. Th e Middle Eastern women, set in his expansive re-creation of Babylon, make their appearances as dancing women from the harems who, despite their worship of the female goddess Ishtar, remain women who inspire sexual desire and are to be traded and bargained for, devoid of much humanity. When the Mountain Girls asserts herself, the court declares, ‘Th e judgment is that she be sent to the mar- riage market to get a good husband’. However, while Catherine is wicked, we are also given an example of perfect American womanhood in the form of the recurring cameo shot of Lillian Gish, a major star of the time, as representing Eternal Motherhood. Th is female, in a fi lm still studied in universities today as a classic and masterpiece, epitomizes the archetypical roles of the Western and Eastern woman of the silent era and the talkies to ensue.

However, Hollywood did not create a prototype of the Arab female. Instead, it borrowed it straight out of the Arabian Nights—not the actual Arabian Nights, but the discourse of the Arabian Nights created by the colo- nial powers, particularly the British. In the early twentieth century, Britain, France and other European countries carved up the Ottoman Empire for

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themselves; in order to encourage their citizens to serve there, they formulated a publicity campaign of the exotic, including magical, mystical females. Meanwhile, the United States sank into the Great Depression, and Hollywood capitalized on this by off ering inexpensive escapism via a portrayal of this far away land. In this representation of the Middle East, well documented by Said in Orientalism (1978), European artists and writers gave the western world the submissive and exotic Middle Eastern woman, a woman who moved to the big screen and became the unquestioned staple of European (and Hollywood) popular culture (Eisele 2002 ), just as their male counterparts became unques- tioned sex fi ends and social deviants.

Th is stereotype is comic in her overt sexuality, with hips that almost always seem to be belly dancing and full of magic potions geared to make men do her bidding. Noted media scholar Jack Shaheen (2007) notes that Fatima ( 1897 ) and Fatima’s Dance ( 1907 ) were the fi rst of this kind of movies portraying women in this way. Fatima was the star of Chicago’s 1896 World’s Fair. She was the typical Hollywood Arab character: a veiled bosomy belly dancer. Th e women were erotic, sexy, silent, nearly naked and for the most part por- trayed as slaves to Arab men. If a harem woman is individualized and given an identity, she became a vamp. In fact, Shaheen (2007) points out that the word vamp came to English dictionaries via the fi rst portrayal of Arab women as black magic temptresses in Fox’s silent Cleopatra ( 1917 ) starring Th eda Bara. Studios promoted her character and other Oriental women as ‘serpents’ and ‘vampires’, resulting in the combined word ‘vamp’. According to Swensen ( 2003 ) in her review of Tania Kamal-Eldin’s 2003 documentary Hollwyood Harems , Th eda Bara was portrayed as luring men to their demises, to their death—and Th eda Bara’s palindrome was Death Arab. However, it was not merely Orientalism that resulted in Arab women taking on the role of tramp. Th e Hays Code, which was instated in 1934 by the seven major studios run- ning Hollywood at the time to censor themselves so that the government would not do it for them, forbade scenes of passion, excessive and lustful kiss- ing and anything else that might stimulate the ‘lower and baser element’.

During this period, buttoned-up American women carrying the frontier spirit were desirable for their wit and vulnerability by handsome, successful men. Th e women’s feminine charms were expressed through rapid banter with these handsome men, rather than through any physical display of sexuality. Even the overtly sexual Mae West was toned down when she left the stage for Hollywood and became notorious for trying to keep her sexuality alive via double entendre one-liners she hoped the studio executives would not notice or would let slide. Katharine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story (1940), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and several other fi lms embodied the ideal American woman

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perhaps better than any other actress. And a fi lm that perhaps best illustrates the male/female dichotomy is Howard Hawk’s His Girl Friday ( 1940 ), still considered a great example of onscreen repartee. Hildy, played by Rosalind Russell, is the former wife of a harassed columnist played by that great pro- voker of women of the golden era, Cary Grant. Hildy is about to marry again, to the nice but dull Ralph Bellamy, but of course ends up with Cary Grant, as even divorces had to have happy endings—the happy ending being the woman returning to her husband. Even in fi lms such as Gone with the Wind (1939), the powerful and manipulative Scarlet O’Hara, played by Vivian Lee, wraps her sexuality up in dresses literally made out of heavy living room drapery. And again, as with all other American woman on screen, she is vulnerable before a polished, handsome man, Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler. Even though she can stand up to Yankees and carpetbaggers on her own, her overt sexuality and desires are detrimental to everyone around her. But the fi lms of this era would also prove to showcase some of the most developed American women on screen. Oxford scholar Diana Purkiss (as cited in Hill 2009 ) says ‘Hollywood had to respect women in those days, because for cinema’s fi rst fi ve decades women made up the majority of the movie-going audience. In 1939 four of the top 10 highest-grossing fi lms were about women, including Gone With Th e Wind ’ (Hill 2009 : 3).

So if the American woman could not be overtly sexual, who could? Shohat ( 1990 ) describes the results of the Hays Code on the image of Arab women, as the code that only allowed ‘passion’ when it was necessary to provide the narrative with realism. Hollywood fi lmmakers could show skin and more without feeling they would risk censorship. Th e Oriental woman could get away with sexual power, but the American woman could not, at least not without being punished on screen. In Jezabel ( 1938 ), Bette Davis is banished to an island with plague victims, an obvious symbolism for her being a plague on society by always trying to win at her games against men, including her fi ancé. ‘Girls don’t have to simper around in white just because they’re not married’, she says much earlier in the fi lm and with too much confi dence, we learn later. When the American woman needed to be rescued, her savior was the American male, often protecting her from some form of ‘other’, be that Fay Ray being saved from King Kong ( 1933 ), or a young Englishwoman being rescued from the swarthy Rudolph Valentino in Th e Sheik ( 1921 ), who of course turns out to be the son of Europeans, really there to rescue her from the real bad Arabs he has infi ltrated.

It is worth noting that many of the Oriental seductresses who came to the big screen were often based on mythical and Biblical characters, as opposed to real women living in the Middle East during the time in which these fi lms

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were shot. When the Arab fi lm industry began in full force in Egypt in the 1930s, western women were not present on screen, but the Arab woman was—a matriarch, a beauty, a smart-mouthed fi ancé—she was an Arab refl ec- tion of Hollywood’s interpretation of American women at the same time, and certainly not a refl ection of Hollywood’s interpretation of them.

World War II, Israel, and the Baby Boom Years

World War II ended with a very diff erent and troubled Middle East and the United States unquestionably one of the world’s two superpowers. During the war, the Arab woman, frivolous and sex-obsessed, had no place in Hollywood’s war eff ort. While the Arab male was in the background as a servant and soldier to colonial good guys trying to keep the world safe, the Arab woman’s image did not change so much as it disappeared during tough times, when her devi- ant eroticism would have been an insult to Hollywood’s hardworking, patri- otic American woman.

Meanwhile, Hollywood portrayed the American woman as an integral part of the US attempt to attain its new global status by holding down the home fort, putting family and country before her selfi sh needs. Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver ( 1942 ) is a good example of this trend. However, the fi lm that epitomizes the dichotomy between Arab and Western women in cinema at this time is Casablanca ( 1942 ), which consistently makes fi lm institution lists as one of the greatest fi lms of all time. Casablanca is set in an Arab country during the war. Ingrid Bergman, the idealized Western beauty, sacrifi ces love for country, for the war eff ort. We see some Arab men in Middle Eastern servants’ gear and as street vendors, such as the haggling monkey seller, but there are no Arab women that make the great sacrifi ces of Bergman. In fact there are barely any Arab women at all.

In the post-World War II years, American women were not the superpow- ers on screen that they had been during the war years. Indeed in the United States, when the war ended and the men came home, so did the women. Th e Hays Code was still in eff ect, Eisenhower was president, and the United States went into an era of self-imposed idealism, most perfectly defi ned by American’s new family hobby, the television. Watching situation comedies about ideal families that must overcome problems like a husband forgetting his anniver- sary or a son being late for school created a wholesome, if false, reality rein- forced on the big screen. American women were generally sidelined mothers, teachers, and daughters, often dealing with children that were precocious in their escapades. Sometimes women had to take charge too, but there wasn’t

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anything sexy about that—for example, Julie Andrews in Th e Sound Of Music (1965), as a nun no less.

When women weren’t homemakers, they were single and troublesome. Th ere was cute trouble—Doris Day in everything from Th e Pajama Game ( 1957 ) to Th e Glass Bottom Boat ( 1968 ), Shirley MacLaine in My Geisha ( 1962 ) and Th e Apartment ( 1960 ), and Audrey Hepburn in Charade ( 1963 ), to name a few. And despite the youth revolution beginning to simmer, Hollywood was also manufacturing cute trouble from young lasses such as Sally Field in Gidget ( 1959 ). Th en there were the ‘deadly troubles’, the women of epic beauty that could not be contained and that could only bring about disaster, such as Rosalind Russell in Picnic ( 1955 ) and Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ( 1958 ). Th ey were far rarer on screen and while vulnerable for having sexual needs, they were also somewhat unlikeable, keeping the Hays Code and American wholesomeness on track for censors everywhere. When Marilyn Monroe came on the scene, she seemed to carry single- handedly the entire sexuality of a nation. Th is iconic position would last long after her death.

In the Middle East, Arab women, who in reality faced brutal colonialism in some parts and the loss of land and homes in others, were busy holding together their families during political upheaval and war in the post-World War II era. In Hollywood, that Middle East did not exist. Hollywood reverted once again to the idea of Orientalism for its sexual release, and when Middle Eastern female characters did appear onscreen, it was ever more so the lusty and devious female, most likely the harem girl. Th e Orient was back again with the mythical notion of lumping together the Arab, Persian, Turkish, Muslim and Pharonic imagery frozen in a ‘once upon a time in the Arabian Nights’ set. Th e Orient went from black and white to huge panoramic fi lms Hollywood built around the new technology of CinemaScope and enhanced wide screen and color processes. Studios were as in love with the technology as with the need to off er up exotic, epic-size entertainment such as Lawrence of Arabia ( 1962 )—another fi lm set in Arabia that is strangely absent of females— that could not be provided by its new competitor: the television.

Th e boogeyman of the United States, and consequently Hollywood, became the Eastern block countries. Edwards ( 2001 ) states that the onset of the Cold War was a time when

the Arab world was not demonized in American popular culture, the Arab world still seemed to belong more to the timelessness and placelessness associated with desert sand than to the geopolitical immediacy of the cold war moment. As such the Arab world could play a particular role for Hollywood; if the Soviet Union was the primary ‘national Other’ to the US, the Arab world could

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operate as a third space, outside the constrictions of the binary opposition between U.S. and U.S.S.R and thus a freer template for representation. (Edwards 2001 : 16)

In reality the Arab world was undergoing many crucial changes: the end of French and British colonialism, the displacement of the Palestinians to create Israel, the revolution of the one million martyrs in Algeria, and the rise of socialist governments replacing colonially established royal families. Th e Middle East of Hollywood, however, continued to be the wild, exotic frontier of the past, fi lled with excess and sexuality frowned upon by the American morality of the time, but still enjoyed vicariously on the big screen. Cleopatra ( 1963 ), the most expensive production at the time, was an excess of wealth and sex both on and off the screen, as were fi lms such as Land of the Pharaohs ( 1955 ), in which Howard Hawks displayed the half-clad Joan Collins as Nellifer, a sexpot who has an aff air with a guard and kills her competitor for the aff ec- tions of the aging king with multiple wives and whose treasure she desires.

Again, blatant female sexuality onscreen was seen as acceptable because it was fl aunted by non-white characters (even though played by white actresses). As the United States made over Rosie the Riveter into June Cleaver and Donna Reed, Hollywood gave the ‘bad girl’ role to Middle Eastern women, who were not developed as narrative characters any more—in fact, far less—than their American counterparts. Edwards ( 2001 ) explains what he describes as a shared narrative logic of fi lms such as Kismet ( 1955 ), Th e Egyptian ( 1954 ) and Siren of Baghdad (1953). In the 1950s, Hollywood used the harem as a nervous response to the role women played during World War II, indicating a need for women to regain their domesticated gender roles.

In Yankee Pasha ( 1954 ), an American frontiersman must rescue his love who is sold to a Moroccan merchant trading in American women. He is granted a female slave by the Moroccan, as well as access to a harem contain- ing a cast of seven fi nalists from 1953s Miss Universe pageant. Edwards ( 2001 ) argues that these fi lms show the harem women to be contained ultimately, often with the aid of a western man as savior. Th is demonstrates Hollywood’s unconscious interpretation of women and communism, part of the general psyche of the time that said these were two societal matters that needed to be contained. Th e representation of sex slaves in a harem expressed the idea of containment and bondage of women’s sexuality. It was also a way for Hollywood to display female sexuality without the social pressure that existed at the time.

Also part of this era are fi lms of biblical proportions, so to speak, epics such as Th e Ten Commandments ( 1956 ) and Ben Hur ( 1959 ), which again used an old Middle East as if it were current, setting up Jerusalem in biblical times

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rather than dealing with the tumultuous real time situation. And again, in these fi lms, bad women have power and good women simper, and in no way is there any resemblance to the struggle of the Arab women in Israel and Palestine at that time, whether on the domestic front or in their nationalist roles.

As the post-war years moved along and the babies of the Baby Boom grew up, the business of Hollywood changed, too. Anti-trust laws resulted in the end of the studio system, and studios could no longer own theaters. No longer having full control of the entire fi lm industry and being solely responsible to government censors, the studios began to loosen the self-imposed Hays Code. Th is opened the doors to independent fi lmmakers, who did not cater to the principle that all American women on screen should have, deep down in their hearts, the desire for a happy marriage above all else. In some cases these inde- pendent productions were released without the seal of the Motion Picture Association and were thus not subject to the Hays Code. Th e Marrying Kind ( 1952 ) was a movie produced by an independent production company in the 1950s. Th e movie traces a young couple’s deteriorating marriage as it heads into divorce court. In 1952, divorce was still generally frowned up, and some- thing the Hays Code would not have allowed for aside from a comedic take with a happy ending, as in His Girl Friday ( 1940 ). Th is fi lm ends with the couple’s decision to stay together, encouraged by a powerful female judge. However, it does so after shedding a dark, albeit comedic, light on the stereo- types of wholesome television and fi lm roles of the nagging wife and the stu- pid, inadequate husband. In a dream sequence, the husband has a nightmare in which his wife is shown wearing pants and holding a gun, thus depicting women as powerful. Another fi lm that defi ed the censors was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), a fi lm that showed how ugly marriage could get, but also kept it clear that it was the woman, played by a caustic Elizabeth Taylor, who could make it hell, rather than the man, who suff ers her castrating barbs.

Two fi lms of Elvis Presley, himself almost a caricature of maleness, can be used as examples of the changing landscape and developing split personality toward women in America. In Jailhouse Rock ( 1957 ), Presley played a talented ex-con who gets a chance to become a star because of his partnership with Peggy (Judy Tyler), an ambitious, clever music promoter with big plans for them both. She loves him through all his ups and downs and of course also wants to get mar- ried in the end, but she is still a fully developed woman. Eight years later, in Harum Scarum ( 1965 ), Elvis is kidnapped in mythical Arabia and surrounded by dancing Arabian seducers, the Oriental woman still in the same secure place in Hollywood’s imagination. It was not until the early 1970s that the role of women changed signifi cantly on the silver screen as political and social changes would alter the onscreen course for both Arab and American women.

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Th e 1970s: ‘Th e Times are a Changin’—Quickly

Politics and social change infl uenced Hollywood’s portrayal of both women and Arabs in the 1970s and into the early 1980s. With the arrival on the fi lm scene of a new generation of fi lmmakers born and trained out of the studio system, including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, and directors with a social conscious, such as Alan Parker and Robert Altman coming to the forefront, this is a unique decade in itself. Th e demise of the Hays Code, the acceptance of the birth control pill, the sexual revolution, the hippie movement and the anti-war movement translated onto the screen with roles for women with careers, women for whom sex was an integral part of their identity, needs and wants, and with scenes of a world in which divorce, careers and premarital sex start out as main plot line and gradually became commonplace onscreen.

Th e fi lm Hollywood so frequently holds up to congratulate itself on its sup- port of women at that time is Norma Rae ( 1979 ), in which Sally Field played a young single mother and textile worker who helps unionize her mill in the face of tremendous obstacles. Another fi lm, Th e China Syndrome ( 1979 ), starred Jane Fonda as a reporter who won’t stop until she exposes the dangers at a nuclear power plant. But the 1970s were still a male-dominated world and though American movies may have become more sexual, this was not neces- sarily a positive development for women. In fact, fi lms became more violent as well; a male-dominated aspect of Hollywood that presented a new social prob- lem for women, including the exploitation and violation of women’s bodies. Maio cites as an example the role Faye Dunaway plays in Network ( 1976 ), in which she is an independent woman who is seen as ruthless and shrill, suggest- ing that if women aspire to top level jobs or attempt to be more assertive toward their career, they will lose their femininity. Th ey are depicted as villains who have shunned their humanity, their soft and nurturing image. One of the most iconic women of the 1970s was Diane Keaton in Annie Hall ( 1977 )— she seemed to be so independent that she even dressed like a man. But when her relationship ends with Woody Allen’s Alvy, she goes from being ‘Snow White’ to the ‘Wicked Queen’. In his analysis of the fi lm, Hirsch ( 1981 ) con- cludes that once Annie questions the premise that she is an idiot, their rela- tionship begins to fail. As soon as she starts having a life of her own, like having friends or new interests, she can no longer be in a relationship.

On the political front, OPEC’s oil embargo and the increased activities of the Palestinian liberation movements resulted in the demonization of Arabs onscreen and the end of the exotic Orientalist fi lms. Th e ‘other’, or the enemy, was no longer primarily the Soviet communists, but Arabs. Shaheen ( 2000 )

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says that the fi lms of this period were almost interchangeable. Hollywood’s sexy sheikh of the 1920s became the oily sheikh of the 1970s and 1980s. Concurrently, the industry’s Bedouin bandit of the 1920s became the ‘funda- mentalist’ bomber who says his prayers before killing innocent people or the evil person who kidnaps western women, as in Jewel of the Nile ( 1985 ).

Th e 1970s also saw the demise of the scheming, sexy harem girl. Arab women did appear as non-descript, or bland members of a sleazy oil sheikh’s entourage. Th ey were given more screen time, though their depiction remained unfl attering. Perhaps inspired by real life hijacker Leila Khaled (who never killed anyone), the Arab woman became the deadly, but sexy, terrorist in fi lms. She shed her Oriental garb, and by putting on Western clothes, brought the women into the present as a less recognizable danger because she looks just like us. She continued the sexual prowess of her harem predecessors, this time as a deadly weapon. Th e most ‘developed’ of these women was Dahlia in 1977’s Black Sunday , in which Mossad and the FBI had to foil a plot by Palestinian terrorists to attack the Super Bowl. As Semmerling ( 2006 ) explains, Black Sunday’s use of a female terrorist turned the Arab into a more frightening vision. Dahlia is both sexy and feminine, two serious weapons that turn her into a perfect deadly trap for the audience. Th e fact that she is a woman allows her to be inconspicuous and not perceived as a threat as an Arab man would be; thus there is a new role for Arab women.

As an adjunct to this male/female dichotomy, Semmerling ( 2006 ) points out that such fi lms refl ected the powerlessness of the American female in the face of the Arab male, whether as one of a stream of sexually threatening or comically perverted Arabs or, as in Th e Exorcist ( 1973 ), the ‘Arab demon that possesses her eludes our gaze and assaults our sense of security even when we apply our best sources of Western knowledge’ (Semmerling 2006 : 47). Th e decade ends with the Iranian revolution and the corporate greed or yuppie culture that begins to dominate US life in the 1980s, taking Hollywood’s American and Arab women into the next phase of their big screen lives.

Th e 1980s to 11 September 2001: Th e Acceleration of the Terrorist and the Retreat of the Feminist

Th e Iranian revolution began the melding of the words Arab and Muslim, and vilifi cation of both with a newfound energy, in part as a result of seminal events in the Middle East, including the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Iranian hostage crisis (1979–1981), the blowing up of US marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Hollywood

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fi lms dealing with the Middle East mainly included action fi lm terrorists, the domain of Arab men, such as True Lies ( 1994 ). But there also was also a grow- ing number of fi lms of terrorists in convoluted plots, fi lms that, in retrospect, seemed like an odd foreshadowing of the events of 11 September 2001. It was also in the post-Iranian revolution world that Arab women become what Shaheen (2003) calls ‘Bundles of Black’, invisible yet unattractive ‘beasts of burden’. Before giving into this role completely, there are a few more of the sexy but deadly Arabs depicted in fi lms such as Nighthawk (1981) and Never Say Never Again ( 1983 ).

By the 1980s, the American Baby Boom generation had grown up. Many were, by then, more concerned with making enough money to retire and pro- vide security for their children than pursue peace and harmony and rock ‘n’ roll. Th is reality was refl ected in the arrival of Ronald Reagan, himself a man in large part elected because of his cowboy roles in Hollywood, a man ready to protect Americans from the vulnerability it began to feel during the Iranian hostage crisis. He was also a man ready to come to the rescue of the American economy by promising lower taxes and higher military spending, something that could also be seen as supporting a general national psyche that there was an enemy out there that the country needed to fi ght, and which Hollywood increasingly portrayed as the Middle East.

Meanwhile, a backlash almost developed against feminism in Hollywood fi lms. When women did appear as intelligent, thoughtful people, it was in serious dramas such as Silkwood ( 1983 ) and Erin Brockovich (2000). At the same time, we see the return of the sassy all-American sweetheart of the golden age in the form of Meg Ryan, Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Andie MacDowell and several others. Th ese sweethearts of the 1980s and 1990s had jobs, but had lost some of their depth, striving for little in life aside from mar- riage. All they need is true love. Th e romantic comedies that develop at this time become a formulaic factory industry of their own, although there were a few originals, such as Tootsie ( 1982 ) and When Harry Met Sally ( 1989 ). Th e fi lms operated on the assumption that it was desirable if the woman could get married—then all would end well, as in fi lms such as Sleepless in Seattle ( 1993 ) and You’ve Got Mail ( 1998 ), with the female lead in both cases played by Meg Ryan. Th e American man, rather than the woman, was diff erent in the fi lms of the Reagan and post-Reagan years. Whereas Cary Grant and Clark Gable were suave, handsome and chivalrous, or like Jimmy Stewart, stalwart and strong, the men these women fell for are clunky and deeply fl awed. But the American woman had learned how to compromise and consequently to love these fl awed men rather than the suave, chivalrous man she had origi- nally had in mind. Even when the woman was a well-developed character, the

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man got the transformative arc in her eyes and ours, an example being Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets ( 1997 ): it is Jack Nicholson who is the deeply fl awed human she learns to love.

As for Arab women, when not absent, which was more the norm, they were equally dispensable in hero movies, such as Rules of Engagement ( 2000 ), in which Samuel Jackson and his team have no problem gunning down a crowd of Yemenis, women in veils and children included, because they are willing to kill Americans. In the end, even a little girl who we might have had hopes could be saved, turns out to be another gun lover happy to kill. However, the all-American hero does come to the rescue in fi lms like Th ree Kings ( 1999 ). Arabs were still terrorists, but many, like Shaheen (2001), consider this fi lm to be the beginning of the softening of the stance toward Arabs, as seen by giving Arab women human emotions. However, others view it diff erently. Khatib ( 2006 ) says the Arab men in the fi lm belong to one of two groups. Th ey are either outsiders who explicitly long for American aid, and thus represent a passive surrendered masculinity, or they are soldiers who blindly follow Saddam’s orders and are therefore set to destroy and jeopardize the status of the United States. Semmerling ( 2006 ), in contrast, notes that Th ree Kings only served to reinforce stereotypes suggesting Arab ruthlessness and violence. In the fi lm, four American soldiers go to steal gold stolen from Kuwait during the fi rst Gulf War and hidden by Iraqis. Semmerling argues that this fi lm showed that Americans are no longer viewed by themselves as heroes, but rather are pragmatists. However, when they see an Iraqi female prisoner brutally killed, they rise to the occasion of hero, moved by the woman’s death and her daugh- ter’s cries for her mother to return to life. In Semmerling’s view, it was the woman who forced the Americans to realize that they have taken themselves to the ends of the world in pursuit of their own agenda. When one of the Iraqi women is executed by an Iraqi soldier, Gates (George Clooney) shows an emo- tional reaction—shame—by dropping his head.

Perhaps the Arab female to get the most screen time in the 1990s was Jasmine in Disney’s Aladdin ( 1992 ), a fi lm that was quickly denounced by groups such as the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) for portraying Arabs as murderous heathens. Oddly enough, Aladdin is the Western creation of a story from Th e 1001 Arabian Nights , a fi ctional collec- tion that refl ects the overt sexual power women had over men. Joseph Massad ( 2007 ) suggests that the era the collection refers to was one of great sexual freedom and debauchery in the Middle East. Converted into Disney fare, Jasmine becomes the cartoon version of the repressed Arab woman.

Th e attempted escape is not merely from the palace but from it authority as a site of Eastern power, sexualized by the princess, politicized by Jafar. From the fi lm’s

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perspective, as the princess’s plight makes clear, the only appropriate desire is to be empowered as the colonized subject of Western discourse. (Nadel 1997 : 191)

As in earlier Hollywood movies, the Arab and American women do not meet on screen, and both were viewed from the point of view of men, particularly the Arab woman, as she only made rare appearances in terrorist fi lms, which are often male fantasy fi lms in which men put themselves into the role of American superheroes. While the American woman fi nds and accepts her man, fl aws and all, the Arab woman is never developed enough to have such wants, and the best that she, along with her children, can hope for is to be rescued by an American man. Ironically, the United States is quick to criticize the treatment of women in the Middle East, but in one of its biggest export businesses, it renders them invisible.

Post-11 September and Beyond

Th e events of 11 September 2001 have become the watershed marker of our time, perhaps in its symbolic power surpassing previous historical markers such as Pearl Harbor. Th is has also been manifest on the big screen, where the number of fi lms set in the Middle East dealing with terrorists has grown expo- nentially since that tragic day. Hollywood has always told the simple stories of good vs. evil, from cowboy and Indian movies to Cold War movies. Massad notes adds that ‘the mixture of sex and violence in an American (or European) imperial setting characterized by racism and absolute power is a uniform occurrence’. In today’s war with Iraq and Afghanistan, the ‘American male sexual prowess usually reserved for American women, should be put to mili- tary use in imperial conquests’ (Massad 2007 : 46). Th ere is support for Massad’s argument in fi lms like Th e Kingdom ( 2007 ) and the Oscar winner Th e Hurt Locker ( 2008 ), in which Arab men, as usual in the absence of any Arab females, beg for mercy from all-powerful US soldiers with little compas- sion or understanding of the ‘other’. Nonetheless, today’s terrorist vs. America story is becoming a little more nuanced. We often get a glimpse of the terrorist as freedom fi ghter, i.e., his own view of his actions, in fi lms such as Munich ( 2005 ), ironically based on the real life incident that would propel the Arab terrorist into American cinema. Th ere have also been cautionary tales about rushing to judge Middle Easterners in fi lms such as Oscar winners Crash ( 2004 ) and Rendition ( 2007 ).

However, the Arab woman remains somewhat invisible, although there are a few notable exceptions in recent years. Babel ( 2006 ), for example, is an exception. Here an American woman (Cate Blanchett) injured in Morocco is

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nursed by an elderly Moroccan woman, who remains speechless, but at least is shown as a caring individual and a functioning part of a family. In Th e Visitor ( 2007 ), Mouna (Hiam Abbass) is a multifaceted Palestinian Syrian mother of a young man about to be deported. Mouna is an individual with feelings of love and fear surrounding the man who she discovers is trying to help her son. In fact, she is one of the most developed and complex female characters of any nationality on screen in recent years. Hiam Abbas also appears in Amreeka ( 2009 ), the fi rst fi lm by an Arab American about the Arab American experi- ence to be widely distributed in the United States. Cherien Dabis, the direc- tor, based the fi lm on her own experiences growing up in a small town in Ohio, and it features in its lead a woman who is not deadly, but rather a Palestinian immigrant trying to make it in a world she does not quite under- stand and that does not understand her.

American women in general in Hollywood have not fared better than their Arab counterparts. According to Purkiss (as cited in Hill 2009 ), female char- acters have become ‘dumber and dumber’. She cites as examples recent chick- fl icks, including He’s Just Not Th at Into You ( 2009 ) and Confessions of a Shopaholic ( 2009 ), saying they are the

worst kind of regressive, pre-feminist stereotype of misogynistic cliché. It’s a sad day when you look back at Bridget Jones with some aff ection. Although Bridget Jones was far less emancipated and intelligent than, say, Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice , she was a great deal better than the inane women we are getting nowadays. We really have reached a nadir in the way women are portrayed on screen. (Hill 2009 : 3)

Conclusion

Clearly the representation of Arab and American women has changed over the years, and will continue to change as the sociopolitical climate shifts. Arab women in Hollywood have certainly shed their harem looks and ways; while no longer portrayed as sexual predators, they have been cast into another extreme, as a sexless blob in black, exceptions like Th e Visitor ( 2007 ) and Amreeka ( 2009 ) aside. Like other ethnic and racial groups given stereotypes by Hollywood today—the hotheaded Latina, the Asian hooker, the exasperated Indian mother—that limit and trivialize them, perhaps invisibility is just another stereotype.

Does Hollywood have a responsibility to work toward giving them both more screen time and diversity? Hollywood does not create worlds as much as refl ect them through its lens, and its lens has been quite distorted when it

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comes to women, Arabs and Muslims. Should it be Hollywood that adds diversity to the defi nition of these groups, when other media and the political arena do not? Consider that 1) women make up just over half the population of the United States, 2) Arabs and Muslims are one of the fastest growing groups in the United States, and 3) the birthrate of the Arab and Muslim world outpaces that of most of the world. Th ese facts would be particularly worth considering if women and Arab and Muslims made a signifi cant dent in Hollywood’s box offi ce, as American women did during World War II, a period when they may not have carried much diversity but at least were allowed to shine as heroes.

Perhaps the responsibility for changing Hollywood’s nearly formulaic imagery does not come from within, but from fi lmmakers who are working outside Hollywood. It may indeed be up to Arab women to defi ne themselves and their male and American counterparts, and this is beginning to happen. In addition to Amreeka ( 2009 ), Caramel ( 2007 ), Pomegranates and Myrrh ( 2008 ), and Salt of Th is Sea ( 2007 ), three fi lms directed by Arab women and featuring central Arab female characters, have developed a lot of traction on the international festival circuit, and in the case of Amreeka (2008), eventual studio distribution in the United States. Oddly, given the repressed perception of Arab women, at present it seems that the number of female Arab fi lmmakers getting global attention is not so diff erent from the number of male Arab fi lm- makers, whereas in Hollywood, the number of female directors is remarkably small in comparison to the number of male directors. Th e highest grossing fi lm in recent years that was directed in Hollywood by a woman is Catherine Hardwicke’s Twiligh t ( 2008 ), which as of October 2009 had earned 351 mil- lion US dollars worldwide, and it continues to perpetuate the notion of the helpless female needing to be rescued by a stronger male.

Signifi cant changes will take time. ‘Hollywood is tone deaf on women in general, and that applies doubly so to Arab women’, says Omar Naim, a young Arab American director working in Hollywood. ‘It being that Hollywood’s representation of women in Western society rarely veers from Madonna-whore dynamics, I can’t imagine they will develop something more sophisticated to say about women at the other side of the world very quickly’. Indeed, as global events shaped the world, these also changed the direction women’s lives took onscreen, though not necessarily in ways either group would have hoped for. Th e changing Arab and American archetypes in Hollywood fi lms have devel- oped, grown, and/or dissipated in the history of American cinema as a result of political and sociopolitical changes in both the Middle East and the United States and time will tell what future global changes bring to Hollywood’s por- trayal of women around the world.

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Films Cited

Aladdin ( 1992 ). [Animation]. Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker . USA : Walt Disney Feature Animation .

Amreeka ( 2009 ). Directed by Cherien Dabis . USA : First Generation Films . Annie Hall ( 1977 ). Directed by Woody Allen . USA : Rollins-Joff e Productions . Th e Apartment ( 1960 ). Directed by Billy Wilder . USA : Mirisch Corporation . As Good As It Gets ( 1997 ). Directed by James L. Brooks . USA : TriStar Pictures . Babel ( 2006 ). Directed by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu . USA : Paramount Pictures . Ben Hur ( 1959 ). Directed by William Wyler . USA : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . Birth of a Nation ( 1915 ). Directed by D. W. Griffi th . USA : David W. Griffi th Corp. Black Sunday ( 1977 ). Directed by John Frankenheimer . USA : Paramount Pictures .

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Bringing up Baby ( 1938 ). Directed by Howard Hawks . USA : RKO Radio Pictures . Caramel ( 2007 ). Directed by Nadine Labaki . Lebanon : Les Films des Tournelles . Casablanca ( 1942 ). Directed by Michael Curtiz . USA : Warner Bros. Pictures . Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ( 1958 ). Directed by Richard Brooks . USA : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . Charade ( 1963 ). Directed by Stanley Donen . USA : Universal Pictures . China Syndrome ( 1979 ). Directed by James Bridges . USA : IPC Films . Cleopatra ( 1917 ). Directed by J. Gordon Edwards . USA : Fox Film Corp . Cleopatra ( 1963 ). Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz . USA : Twentieth Century-Fox Film

Corporation . Confessions of a Shopaholic ( 2009 ). Directed by P. J. Hogan . USA : Touchstone Pictures . Crash ( 2004 ). Directed by Paul Haggis . USA : Bob Yari Productions . Th e Egyptian ( 1954 ). Directed by Michael Curtiz . USA : Twentieth Century-Fox Film

Corporation . Th e Exorcist ( 1973 ). Directed by William Friedkin . USA : Hoya Productions . Fatima ( 1897 ). USA : American Mutoscope Company . Fatima’s Dance ( 1907 ). USA : American Mutoscope Company . Flesh and the Devil ( 1926 ). Directed by Clarence Brown . USA : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . Gidget ( 1959 ). Directed by Paul Wendkos . USA : Columbia Pictures Corp . Th e Glass Bottom Boat ( 1968 ). Directed by Frank Tashlin . USA : Euterpe . Gone by the Wind ( 1939 ). Directed by Victor Fleming . USA : Selznick International Pictures . Harum Scarum ( 1965 ). Directed by Gene Nelson . USA : Four Leaf Productions . He’s Just Not Th at Into You ( 2009 ). Directed by Ken Kwapis . USA : Flower Films . His Girl Friday ( 1940 ). Directed by Howard Hawks . USA : Columbia Pictures Corporation . Th e Hurt Locker ( 2008 ). Directed by Kathryn Bigelow . USA : Voltage Pictures . Intolerance ( 1916 ). Directed by D. W. Griffi th . USA : Triangle FilmCorporation . Jailhouse Rock ( 1957 ). Directed by Richard Th orpe . USA : Avon Productions . Jewel of the Nile ( 1985 ). Directed by Lewis Teague . USA : SLM Production Group . Jezabel ( 1938 ). Directed by William Wyler . USA : Warner Bros. Pictures . King Kong ( 1933 ). Directed by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack . USA : RKO Radio

Pictures . Th e Kingdom ( 2007 ). Directed by Peter Berg . USA : Universal Pictures . Kismet ( 1955 ). Directed by Vincente Minnelli . USA : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . Land of the Pharaohs ( 1955 ). Directed by Howard Hawks . USA : Continental Company . Lawrence of Arabia ( 1962 ). Directed by David Lean . USA : Horizon Pictures . Love ( 1927 ). Directed by Edmund Goulding . USA : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . Th e Marrying Kind ( 1952 ). Directed by George Cukor . USA : Columbia Pictures Corporation . Mrs. Miniver ( 1942 ). Directed by William Wyler . USA : Loew’s . Munich ( 2005 ). Directed by Steven Spielberg . USA : Dreamworks . My Best Girl ( 1927 ). Directed by Sam Taylor . USA : Mary Pickford Company . My Geisha ( 1962 ). Directed by Jack Cardiff . USA : Paramount Pictures . Network ( 1976 ). Directed by Sidney Lumet . USA : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . Never Say Never Again ( 1983 ). Directed by Irvin Kershner . USA : PSO International . Nighthawks ( 1981 ). Directed by Bruce Malmuth . USA : Universal Pictures . Norma Rae ( 1979 ). Directed by Martin Ritt . USA : Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation . Th e Pajama Game ( 1957 ). Directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen . USA : Warner Bros.

Pictures . Th e Philadelphia Story ( 1940 ). Directed by George Cukor . USA : Loew’s . Picnic ( 1955 ). Directed by Joshua Logan . USA : Columbia Pictures Corp . Pomegranates and Myrrh ( 2008 ). Directed by Najwa Najjar . Palestine : Ustura Films, ZDF, Arte,

International Sales .

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Rendition ( 2007 ). Directed by Gavin Hood . USA : Anonymous Content . Rules of Engagement ( 2000 ). Directed by William Friedkin . USA : Paramount Picturesl Salt of Th is Sea ( 2007 ). Directed by Annemarie Jadir . Palestine : Augustus Film . Th e Sheik ( 1921 ). Directed by George Melford . USA : Paramount Pictures . Silkwood ( 1983 ). Directed by Mike Nichols . USA : ABC Motion Pictures . Siren of Bagdad ( 1953 ). Directed by Richard Quine . USA : Esskay Pictures Corporation . Sleepless in Seattle ( 1993 ). Directed by Nora Ephron . USA : TriStar Pictures . Th e Sound of Music ( 1965 ). Directed by Robert Wise . USA : Robert Wise Productions . Syriana ( 2005 ). Directed by Stephen Gaghan . USA : Warner Bros . Th e Ten Commandments ( 1956 ). Directed by Robert Dornhelm . USA : Actuality Productions . Th ree Kings ( 1999 ). Directed by David O. Russel . USA : Warner Bros. Pictures . Tootsie ( 1982 ). Directed by Sydney Pollack . USA : Columbia Pictures Corporation . True Lies ( 1994 ). Directed by James Cameron . USA : Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation . Twilight ( 2008 ). Directed by Catherine Hardwicke . USA : Summit Entertainment . Th e Visitor ( 2007 ). Directed by Th omas McCarthy . USA : Groundwell Productions . When Harry Met Sally ( 1989 ). Directed by Rob Reiner . USA : Castle Rock Entertainment . Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf ( 1966 ). Directed by Mike Nichols . USA : Warner Bros. Pictures . Yankee Pasha ( 1954 ). Directed by Joseph Pevney . USA : Universal International Pictures . You’ve Got Mail ( 1998 ). Directed by Nora Ephron . USA : Warner Bros. Pictures .

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