Orientalism and Eurocentrism in Hollywood: A Critical Analysis of “Rules of Engagement” Film

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Orientalism and Eurocentrism in Hollywood: A Critical Analysis of ―Rules of Engagement‖ Film Maya Majzoub American University of Beirut

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Abstract The following paper argues that Hollywood’s discourse on Arabs and Muslims is inherently political. It therefore explores Orientalism, Eurocentrism, and power relations in the realm of Hollywood movies. Guided by Foucault’s theory on power and discourse and Spillmann and Spillmann’s ―enemy-image construction model‖, the paper offers a critical analysis of the film Rules of Engagement (2000). It shows that ―Washington and Hollywood share the same DNA‖.

Keywords: Orientalism, Eurocentrism, Power Relations, Arabs, America, Hollywood, Stereotypes, Rules of Engagement Film

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Orientalism and Eurocentrism in Hollywood: A Critical Analysis of the ―Rules of Engagement‖ Film Introduction The Arab land… a world that so little is known about, yet so much is feared of. It is a place engraved in popular imagination as the mystical land of sensuality, magic, and history. In addition to its exotic desert-like aura, it has also been the homeland for the likes of Ben Laden and Ali Baba’s thieves. It has bred men of anger and hatred, captivated by their own grudge and grapes of wrath, ready to attack the world at any chance.

Representations of Arabs have always been associated with stereotypical depictions.

According to Hall (1997), stereotypes on a personal level ―get hold of the few simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped, and widely recognized characteristics about a person, reduce everything about the person to those traits, exaggerate and simplify them, and fix them without change or development to eternity‖ ( p. 258). However, when depicting Arabs, stereotypes have been created to frame a whole culture. Arabs have been deliberately painted and molded to fit into a unilateral pattern of representations, where they get consistently portrayed as filthy barbarians and hateful thugs. In fact, Hollywood has never been a stranger to that policy, for it has kept on maintaining and enforcing a negative positioning of Arabs. It therefore served as a vital weapon in further ―otherizing‖ Arabs and Muslims and setting them apart from the rest of the world. Such biased media strategies have given rise to the following questions, which this paper attempts to tackle: how does Hollywood technically associate Arabs with terms such as terrorism, violence, ignorance, and incompetence? What are the underlying ideologies and connotations behind Hollywood’s portrayal of Arabs and Muslims?

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Addressing such questions requires providing practical examples. Therefore, in order to shed light on Hollywood’s engineered depictions of Arabs and Muslims, this paper shall apply a critical textual analysis of a major Hollywood production; the film ―Rules of Engagement‖ (2000), which was produced in cooperation with the American State Department of Defense (CAIR, 2012). It will first provide a relevant theoretical framework based on Faucoult’s theory of power and discourse. It will then review prominent studies that have explored Western depictions of Arabs and Muslims, especially in film discourse.

Theoretical Framework This research follows post-modern critical theory, specifically, Foucault’s theory on discursive power. Foucault theorized on the relationship between the concepts of ―discourse‖, ―power‖, and ―knowledge‖, and perceived power as a form of domination. He rejected the concept of an objective reality, or a ―truth‖ found in discourse, and considered it a product of power (Guillem, 2013, p. 188). According to him, those in power control public discourse by defining objects of knowledge (Martenson, 2007, p. 6), for ―knowledge transmits and disseminates the effects of power (Foucault, 1980, p. 69).‖ This is similar to saying that ―those in power make the rules’. This approach mainly focuses on the dominant institutionalized system of representations and the tactics of domination (Martenson, 2007, p. 6). It therefore draws on the political implications of discourse, and believes that power relations become internalized and naturalized (La Branche, 2005, p. 222).

However, Foucault’s view of power wasn’t purely negative, for he argued that power is both a productive and repressive force, and that ―a social body cannot function without it, despite its perennially oppressive manifestations (Karlberg, 2005, p. 4).‖ Therefore, power isn’t always

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repressive or an up-down coercive force (Guillem, 2013, p. 189), but is also a relational force that links social groups through mutual benefits (Karlberg, 2005, p. 4). In addition, he stressed that ―power is everywhere‖, diffused and embodied in discourse. That is, power transcends politics; it is socialized and embodied everywhere.

Accordingly, the film’s textual analysis will be guided by Foucault’s conceptions, and shall treat the film as an ideologically charged discourse embedding power relations. In this case, the film tactfully enforces the dominant American authoritarian position, in relation to the estranged Orient. Therefore, the deconstruction of the film’s Oriental depictions shall illustrate the hidden political motives advanced by producers, as well as the general cultural orientation adopted by the West when framing Arabs.

Literature Review Orientalism One valuable study that put Foucault’s concepts of power and knowledge at work was that of Said’s (1979) ―Orientalism‖. Similar to Foucault, Said argued that ―power is everywhere‖, diffused and embodied in discourse. Specifically, Said focused on analyzing western attitudes towards the east and their cultural depictions of it, or ―Orientalism‖ as he referred to it. Therefore, he traced the writings of Orientalists from each of France, Britain, and America, which have all formulated a kind of a romantic, exotic, and static depiction of the orient. By analyzing these seemingly innocent depictions; Said proved that such discourse was inherently political; it reflected Western imperialism and European dominance over the Middle East, following a colonial past that stretches back to over 2,000 years. The depictions of the Orient therefore stood for a political idea, and the real world they claimed to represent was not actually there. However, Said’s focus wasn’t entirely limited to political hegemony, for he

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emphasized that such dominance was also cultural, because ―power transcends politics‖ as Foucault argued. Said thus focused on Western prejudice and biases against Arabs and Muslims, and emphasized that Orientalists purposively depicted all eastern societies as similar to each other. He in fact believed that Orientalism is more about the European-Atlantic power over the Orient than it is a discourse about the Orient itself (p. 6). That is, Orientalism is less about the Orient, and more about ―our world‖ and its actual system of power relations (p. 12). Said therefore approached Orientalism as a discourse in order to understand the European’s authoritarian position, and their systematic and consistent system of Orientalist representations.

In fact, he remarkably mentioned that the ―Orient was Orientalized‖ (p. 5); a key statement that highlighted the West’s purposeful depiction of the Orient for political intentions. And similar to Foucault, who believed that power doesn’t always have to be a negatively repressive force, Said also argued that Western hegemony and what it imposed on writers was not unilaterally inhibitive, but ―productive‖ (p. 14). So believing that political imperialism has influenced Western literature does not mean dismissing its cultural significance. Said was also keen on warning Arabs not to impose the Western dominant depictions upon themselves, and fall prey for them (p. 25).

In his ―Covering Islam‖, Said (1997) also tackled the knowledge and power dialectics, to assert the relation between Western hegemony and Islam misrepresentation. He therefore emphasized the old desire for colonial conquest embedded in the Western scholarship on Islam, as well as the colonizer’s implanted ―nostalgia‖ to days where they ruled the Muslim world. He thus argued that the study of Islam is saturated with political importance, and is driven by passion and prejudice. Mainly, ―all discourse on Islam has an interest in some authority or power‖. He emphasized that Western media gatekeepers have intentionally demonized Islam to

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serve their political agenda. They’ve portrayed it as oppressive, extremist, and outmoded, controlled what people should and should not know about Islam, and framed it as a threat to the Western civilization. This was all part of their ―otherizing‖ strategy, and the ―us‖ vs. ―them‖ dichotomy. Therefore, Said mainly distinguished between ―covering Islam‖ and ―covering up Islam‖. He explained how stereotypical narratives are significantly dependent on political motives. For instance, the US media first avoided showing oppression in Iran during the Shah period, their ally, but following the Islamic revolution and the American embassy hostage crisis, they focused on demonizing Iran: ―anyone who disliked America and held Americans captive was dangerous and sick, beyond rationality, beyond humanity, beyond common decency (p. xxvi).‖ Israel’s particular role in demonizing Islam and influencing the American views were also highlighted (p. 31). In addition, Said drew a distinction between American and European Orientalism because ―the absence in America either of a colonial past or of a longstanding cultural attention to Islam makes the current all the more peculiar, more abstract, more secondhand (p. 12).‖ He also emphasized the term ―word politics‖ to highlight the political implications of rhetoric.

Orientalism and Eurocentrism in Hollywood Films Shohat and Stam (2013) interrogated power structures in mass media and film discourse, and unpacked what they referred to as ―Eurocentrism‖. They critiqued Eurocentric media and its imperialist imagery, which depicts Europe as the sole source of culture. Eurocentrism promotes the same old narrative of Western progress and superiority, while demonizing the non-west, depicting it in terms of its weaknesses and deficiencies. Therefore, the Non-West identity is not constructed naturally but as a result of these power relations and ―otherizing‖ strategy; an argument similar to that of Edward Said’s and his discussion of a colonial paradigm embedded in

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discourse. This way, Eurocentralism has been institutionalized and induced as common sense. In fact, they’ve explained that in film industry, recruitment strategies, ―racial politics‖ of casting, and audience expectations are all part of ―cinematic neo-colonialism‖, thus affecting end depictions. Therefore, it is crucial not to limit one’s analysis and understanding to the image or depiction itself, but to understand the media institutions that disseminate the texts and the audiences that receive them. They also stressed that analysis of stereotypes should never be isolated from its cultural moment. It should take into account the depiction’s timing and circumstances. In addition, they argued that in order for a film to succeed within hegemonic logic, producers need to respect the ideological values of the dominant audience: ―the Eurocentrism of audiences can also inflect cinematic production. Here the dominant audience, whose ideological assumptions must be respected if a film is to be successful, or even made at all, exerts a kind of indirect hegemony (p. 186).‖ As for the tactics of representation, they argued that representations of oppressed groups are usually generalized, but those of dominant groups are individualized (p. 183). Similar to Said’s ―word politics‖, they also drew on hegemonic structures of language, and how the west can enforce hegemony through linguistics.

Concepts of Orientalism and Eurocentrism have been dominantly traced in Hollywood films. For instance, Shaheen (2003) demonstrated that negative framing of Arabs is not only limited to news propaganda and biased news coverage, but is also heavily enforced through pop culture. He argued that Hollywood movies have a tremendous influence in shaping international public opinion by endorsing systematic racism against Arabs; all part of the ―policies impact opinions‖ strategy. Thus, his work revealed and critiqued how Arab characters have always been unfairly demonized by Hollywood’s ―image makers‖ throughout the years. He critically examined numerous films and big blockbusters, and by doing so, he highlighted a common

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pattern of Arab misrepresentations across them and set a conceptual framework of analysis. For instance, Shaheen revealed that out of 900 films he studied, about 50 films had a neutral image of Arabs, and very few were positive. Most of Hollywood’s films are thus peppered with stereotypes against Arabs. They’ve always endorsed an ―Orientalist‖ depiction of Arabs since the early silent days of cinema (for instance, starting with the film ―Arabia‖). Shaheen even mentioned that ―we inherited the Arab images mainly from Europeans‖; a statement similar to Edward Said’s argument in ―Orientalism‖, with the films’ fictional setting of Arab-land and their ―Ali Baba kit‖. Shaheen thus demonstrated how Arab characters were always presented as onedimensional characters, always painted with the same brush: they are either the savage camelriding sheikhs obsessed with American women, or the explosive bombed terrorists. Naïve, incompetent, and extravagant are some other ways to describe them as well. These negative images in fact became so persistent and recurrent, that they were consequently indoctrinated, normalized, and invoked as common sense. It therefore became sort of ―natural‖ to prejudge Arabs. Preconditioning people to think that they are threatened by a whole culture (Arabs in this case) consequently made them lose empathy for them. In such cases, acts of intolerance and violence against them were justified. Shaheen therefore mentioned: ―we’ve been pre-conditioned to think that those innocent civilians are clones of Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, are one and the same, and do not merit our sympathy, our understanding. And that’s very dangerous.‖ He also focused on specific significant cultural moments in American-Arab history to highlight the strong link between film and politics. In fact, a key statement Shaheen mentioned by Jack Vaenti was: ―Washington and Hollywood share the same genes‖; a statement that draws on the politics of representation and reveals that Hollywood cinema discourse is inherently political. Therefore, depictions have been highly influenced by events such as the founding of Israel state in 1948, the

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oil crisis and the refusal of Arabs to export oil to the states (the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s) , the Iranian revolution and the US embassy hostage crisis, the 9/11 event, etc,… PalestinianIsraeli conflict was also crucial in producing a new wave of stereotypes targeted at Arabs.

Therefore, this highly controversial relationship between the US and the Middle East has always shaped and guided Hollywood’s governing ideology. In addition, Shaheen encouraged the production of counter-narratives, because Arabs stereotypes are enforced when they remain unchallenged.

Hollywood and Politics Boggs and Pollard (2006) offered a historical background on Hollywood’s cinematic discourse to highlight its political motivations. By tracking different depictions Hollywood offered throughout the years, they emphasized the American public’s fascination with on-screen ―terrorism‖ and political violence, especially following the 9/11 event. In fact, Hollywood has dealt with the theme of terrorism since its early days. Cinema started by constructing the image of the ―fascist monster‖; this image was identified with the Nazis, and later with Soviets during the cold war, where ―James Bond‖ movies were the most famous among them (p. 337).

However, by the end of the cold war in the late 1980s and the rise of the ―New World Order‖ era, most of the films dealing with ―terrorism‖ shifted their narrative and became centered on the Middle East (p. 336). In the 1990s, Hollywood became obsessed with the Middle East, and more films dealing with the theme of nuclear weapons emerged. According to Boggs and Pollard, ―the notion that a terrorist could get hold of a nuclear device and use it for blackmail, however, something barely thinkable in 1965, would be considered quite feasible by the 1990s—in real life as in cinema (p. 337).‖ Therefore, the cinematically engineered Communist demon became replaced with the Arab/Muslim demon (p. 338). Most of these Anti-Arabs films were in fact

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financed or backed by Israel (p. 338). Boggs and Pollard provided several detailed examples such as the Delta Force series (from 1986 till 1991), Navy Seals (1990), Chain of Command (1993), True Lies (1994), Executive Decision (1996), and others. The film ―The Seige‖ (1998) even included what can be regarded as prophetic images of 9/11, where a group of Arab terrorists under a radical Muslim Sheikh strike New York City with highly explosive bombs (p.

342). However, the 9/11 event has significantly fueled American film culture, which consequently elevated its efforts to produce even more negative narratives and depictions of Arabs. Driven by the political agenda of America’s ―war on terror‖, cinematic discourse relied on terrorism and counter-terrorism plots. It strengthened this dialectic with all its ―international intrigue, exotic settings, graphic violence, and the putative conflict between good and evil (p.

335).‖ The clash was framed as that between a modern democratic Western civilization against a barbaric backwards foreign part of the world, where Arabs did not only pose a military threat, but also a cultural one against the values of the Western civilization and the global order (p.

347). Arab terrorists’ attacks were also shown to be virtually anywhere and everywhere, with no care for civilian’s life. The films’ narrative however always glorified the victorious Americans, where the masculine and forceful white heroes always ended up destroying the evil Arabs.

Hollywood is in fact so obsessed with clash of civilizations scenario that it deliberately paid no attention to portray its own cases of domestic violence (p. 348). In short, ―cinematic as well as political approaches to terrorism inevitably mirror recent shifts in world politics, just as they reproduce key elements of domestic ideological hegemony: patriotism, the cult of guns and violence, glorification of technology, the hyper- masculine hero, and obsession with ―alien‖ threats (p. 347).‖

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In a similar attempt to critically highlight the monolithic ―evil Arabs‖ image dominating the US popular culture and mass media, Merskin (2007) linked the engineered depictions and stereotypes with direct political rhetoric. He therefore provided a Textual analysis of five of President George W. Bush’s speeches, remarks, and a memorial address delivered by him shortly after 9/11 (p. 166). He then compared results with Hollywood’s dominant depictions of Arabs. In order to explain Bush’s tactics analytically, Merskin resorted to Spillmann and Spillmann (1997)’s ―enemy-image construction model‖. The model mainly defined the six main tactics used in the mediated construction of the enemy: negative anticipation (the enemy is planning to harm us), putting blame on the enemy, identification with evil, stereotyping and deindividualization, refusal to show empathy, and zero-sum thinking (what is good for the enemy is bad for us and vice versa) (p. 160). These propagandistic tactics mainly tend to dehumanize others and make a rhetorical distinction between ―us‖ and ―them‖ in order to naturalize hatred towards ―them‖. All Arabs become reduced into a single dark image and framed as hostile aliens.

Consequently, the ―face of terror is not only that of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein but also all persons of Arab descent, evoking the simulacrum of all Middle Eastern-looking men as the face of terrorism (Merskin, 2007, p. 158).‖ Merskin found that tactics of the enemy-image construction model were consistently employed by Bush throughout all his speeches, but with varying degrees. By referring to the enemy as a ―dark, faceless, soul-less source of evil, and referencing the forthcoming war as a ―crusade,‖ Bush positioned the retaliation as a battle between the forces of good and evil (p. 168).‖ In fact, he framed the ―good‖ (Americans) in Christian rhetoric against the ―evil‖ Islam (p. 169). For instance, he used the word ―God‖ extensively in his speeches, claiming that God is on their side to fight the other’s ―evil‖. He even mentioned the word ―evil‖ 23 times during one of his speeches. Bush also described their part of

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the world as the ―civilized world‖ (p. 168), while claiming that ―they‖ (Arabs) hate ―us‖ (Americans) because America has freedom, democracy, etc (p. 170). This is why in 9/11, he claimed, ―terrorists attacked a symbol of American prosperity (p. 171).‖ He even used a direct quote from the movie ―The Siege‖ (1998), where villains were portrayed as Islamic terrorists, and similarly declared: ―make no mistake about it: we will win.‖ (p. 167). According to Merskin, the reason why Bush and other powerful figures work on ―creating a monster‖, is because ―nations need enemies‖. That is, governments employ the enemy idea as a form of social control to advance their political agendas (p. 159). This is why Arabs are vilified following the cold war era, after which the Soviet Union was the earlier target.

Examination of Orientalist Film Depictions In order to offer a narrow view on Hollywood’s Orientalist depictions, McKahan (2008) presented an insightful study on film ―Black Sunday‖ (1977), which was one of the first Hollywood big-budget action films that ever tackled the theme of Arab terrorism targeting the United Sates and the need to act against it through ―domestic counterterrorism‖. In the aftermath of the 1967 Six Days War, America was on strong political terms with Israel, thus, Hollywood started to further identify itself with Israel by adopting the Israeli way of framing Arabs as ―terrorists‖. Therefore, ―with the growth of indigenous struggles against Israeli and U.S. domination in the Middle East and pressure for decolonization throughout 1960s, the U.S. stepped up its blatantly coercive measure‖ (p. 3). In this case, Hollywood was a major tool to assert these coercive measures and representations. In fact, the film was produced at a time where the western audience was infatuated with the ―disaster film genre‖, and production companies were competing on producing such films following the huge success of disaster blockbusters like ―Jaw‖. Such formats were supposedly guaranteed to succeed and garner

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audience attention. The Paramount-produced film was based on the novel ―Black September‖, which was inspired by the Munich attacks in 1972, where a group of Palestinians under the name of ―Black September‖ assassinated 11 Israeli athletes from the Israeli Olympics team. The film however based the attacks in America’s Super bowl instead of Israel. In order to emphasize the politically motivated creative process, McKahan offered an analysis of the different stages and decisions made at the production level. For instance, when writers were transforming the original novel into a film script, and then shortening the script into several smaller drafts, they were acting as decisive gatekeepers. Although producers publicly insisted that their film was an apolitical action thriller, script writers omitted the book’s reference to the US role in the ArabIsraeli conflict, but ―retained Harris’s depiction of Al Fatah as a bunch of ―monsters‖ (p. 12).

Thus, the US military support of Israel, which was the novel’s motive behind the attacks, was left ignored in the film’s script. Writers also changed the fate of the novel’s Israeli hero by keeping him alive, unlike the novel’s storyline where he is killed. Writers also killed all the Palestinian characters involved (p. 29). In addition to the stereotypical representation of Arabs and Palestinians, ―Israeli forces are largely presented as a corrective to the emasculated U.S. institutions of the Pentagon, State Department, CIA and FBI in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate (p. 14).‖ Surprisingly, such depictions proved costly, because the film failed to captivate the audience despite its big budget, powerful promotion, and its favored ―disaster‖ scenario. Producers claimed that the reason for the film’s failure was that the audience expressed a psychological shift in consumption; they avoided ―terrorism‖ scenarios that reminded them of the Vietnam War, and preferred the more ―happy‖ scenarios. However, McKahan argued that the real reason behind the failure was the film’s ―emasculation‖ of America, which was portrayed as a country in need of Israel. This didn’t work because even if demonizing Arabs was okay with

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the audience, they didn’t accept the portrayal of Israel as superior to America, and highly preferred the ―America First‖ approach (p. 33). Therefore, similar to Shohat and Stam (2013) argument, a film can fail if it didn’t respect the ideological convictions of its audience.

Another study that examined aspects of Orientalism and hegemony in American film discourse is that of Byrant’s (2012) analysis of film ―Iron Man‖ (2008). She first pointed that one of the main reasons why superhero comic characters are so popular in the states is that Americans felt insecure, and needed their heroic figures during times of political uncertainty, even if they were pure pigments of imagination (p. 6). As for Iron Man, the film tells the story of a genius American inventor and Billionaire Tony Stark who owns a weapons-manufacturing company. He travels to Afghanistan to demonstrate his new weapon to the American troops there. However, Afghani terrorists abduct him, and force him to manufacture a missile for them.

He however escapes, transforms himself to ―Iron Man‖, and is set to save the world from the consequences of having the advanced weapons fall into the wrong corrupt hands, the Afghani terrorists that is. Analytically, the film combined several Orientalist stereotypes, starting with its abandoned dessert setting. Arab characters were all dark-looking villains, except for the one who assisted Iron Man in his escape, who was more ―westernized‖ in terms of his looks and behavior.

The film’s narrative and details enforced common Hollywood stereotypes, but tactfully packaged them using comic entertainment appeals. It also portrayed Americans as much more technologically advanced, while Arabs as incompetent barbarians. The plot even reveals later that Stark’s abduct was designed by his American partner, who empowered terrorists with weapons and schemes, thus showing that the Afghani militants’ strength was in fact supplied by an American. Americans were portrayed as the superior saviors. Such tactics are the ones identified in Spillmann and Spillman’s (1997) enemy-construction model. Therefore, through the

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use of the popular ―superhero‖ entertainment genre, the film ―Iron Man‖ has enforced American hegemony.

Other Cultural Factors that Enforce Orientalism and Eurocentrism Wingfield and Karaman (1995) argued that American stereotypes against Arabs also feed from factors other than mediated representations. Therefore, they drew on stereotypes against Arabs within the context of the American education system. They analyzed the young American students’ perception of Arabs, and indicated that the way they envisioned Arabs was highly influenced by popular culture productions, especially the film production area and animations, such as the films ―Aladdin‖, ―Tarzan‖, and ―Fantastic Four‖. All these motion pictures have systematically depicted Arabs as villains. Ironically, some stores in Halloween were even selling the evil ―Arab Face Mask‖ next to other famous villain cartoon characters (p. 2). Young American students were heavily influenced by American pop culture, but what deeply enforced their stereotypical perception of Arabs is in fact the Eurocentricity of the American education system. Wingfield and Karaman identified the education system as very problematic. For a start, educators didn’t even perceive anti Arab racism as a problem (p. 3). In fact, ―multi-cultural books‖ ignored discussing the Arab culture, but rather included a discussion on each of the cultural heritage of African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asia/Pacific Americans. They widely avoided discussing Arabs’ contribution to civilization. However, when Arabs get discussed in history books, stereotypes were enforced by having images of camels, desserts, and Bedouins. Such biased depictions have caused Arab American students to suffer.

They even started believing that they’re inferior (p. 6). Therefore, in order to attain a more fair representation of Arabs, Wingfield and Karaman encouraged educators themselves to start by learning more about the Arab culture. They stated that ―only when educators regard Arab

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students as having a rich and living culture, separate and distinct from the popular media images, can we have a proud new Arab American generation (p. 6).‖ In conclusion, the reviewed literature has provided various insights regarding the critical approach to film analysis. It has emphasized that Western media discourse on Arabs/Muslims is inherently political, and that Hollywood constitutes a major tool for ―Orientalizing‖ the Orient.

Motivated by a political agenda, Western films have generally enforced and consequently naturalized stereotypes against Muslims and Arabs, in order to assert Western hegemony. Such stereotypes have been greatly influenced by the cultural moment involved and its particular significance and circumstances. For that, stereotypes’ narratives can shift accordingly. In addition, other cultural factors such as the American education system have also enforces stereotypical representations. Therefore, the following film analysis section will employ Foucault’s dialectics on power and discourse as well as technical insights provided by Spillmann and Spillmann (1997)’s ―enemy-image construction model‖ in order to deconstruct Orientalism, Eurocentrism, and power relations in the film ―Rules of Engagement‖.

Analysis The ―Rules of Engagement‖ (2000) film has enforced stereotypical representations of Arabs and Muslims by asserting Orientalism, Eurocentrism, and American ―power‖ over Middle East. The film has also employed different tactics of the ―enemy-image construction model‖ to create its Arab villain.

For a start, the film is a 2-hour 8 minutes long war drama that was a box office hit in year 2000 and featured A-list stars. It tells the story of a U.S Marine Colonel Terry Childers (Samuel L. Jackson) who was sentenced to trial after he ordered his men to fire into a group of protesting civilians outside the American embassy in Yemen. The shooting resulted in the death of 3 US

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Marines, 83 Yemeni civilians, and the injury of 100 others. Accordingly, the trial investigates whether Childers acted rationally based on the military ―rules of engagement‖, or if it was an act of murder. Childers appointed his friend, Colonel Hays Lawrence "Hodge‖ (Tommy Lee Jones), whom he rescued during the Vietnam War, as his lawyer. After an extensive trail, Childers is found innocent of the charge of murder and no further charges were filed against him. It was proven that the Yemeni innocent civilians were not so innocent after all; they were all armed, and were the ones who initially started the fight.

The first major issue faced in this film is the absence of context and background on the embassy incident. Viewers are faced with a scenario where a hostile Yemeni crowd attacks the American embassy and shoots American marine forces without any valid explanation on why they did that. Throughout the film, the reason remains vague and unstated, and is only presented as the common Arab rage towards America. The plot avoided to make any reference to America’s acts of imperialism and their constant interference in the Middle East affairs as a possible explanation of the demonstrated public outrage. Such a scenario has framed Arabs as wild barbarians who are intrinsically motivated by their inner rage to attack and murder Americans without any rational argument to justify their acts; unlike the Americans who seemingly have all the reasons to stand up against the hostile Arabs. In fact, the whole trial plot was designed just to prove that Americans had their reasons and justifications to carry on even the most outrageous crimes. Thus, the whole dilemma gets deliberately reduced into a ―good versus evil‖ conflict without any real treatment of the complex nature of the relationship between America and the Middle East.

Another major stereotype presented in the film is that expressed by a key scene: the little Yemeni girl with an amputated leg. When Hodge visited the American Embassy in Yemen in an

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attempt to collect useful evidence for the trial, he came across a little Yemeni girl who had one of her legs amputated following the Childers’ incident. The way the girl was first presented garnered viewers’ sympathy. She was very young, pretty, and had a miserable look in her eyes while walking on one leg with the help of wooden sticks. Hodge looked at her with a sad heart, and started doubting his whole mission upon her sight. However, it is later revealed in the film that the little girl wasn’t just an innocent Arab civilian; she in fact had a gun aimed at the Marines and was shooting unremorsefully during the embassy incident. This depiction was so dangerous; it justified the killing of Arab children. That is, the lines between adulthood and childhood were completely blurred and Arab children were portrayed no different than adults; they were all framed as bloody terrorists. In such a case, it becomes logical to target children as well, considering that their rage and hostility is inherent. Such a portrayal has strong implications that transcend the silver screen. It all becomes part of the political-military reality, where the killing of civilians and children becomes justified under the vague name of ―war on terror‖, just like what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan under the American invasion. Similarly, Israeli massacres and war crimes against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians have been dismissed and validated at times under the right of self-defense. This further enforces Foucault’s notion that those in power control discourse and set the rules. It also emphasizes the strong interlock between mediated representations and political agendas.

In fact, as revealed in the literature review, a lot can be learned about the ideological connotations of the film after identifying its production team and the cultural moment involved.

The film was produced in 2000, that is, during the year of the second Palestinian intifada, and in the aftermath of the Gulf War. This asserts the strong interlink between politics and cinematic discourse, where films were used as a political-military arm to ―construct the enemy‖ and justify

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war against it. It is similar to how Nazis used propaganda against Jews to justify their slaughter.

In fact, the film was also produced in collaboration with the American Department of Defense (CAIR, 2012), which asserts that image is controlled by policy makers. They employ mediated representations to enforce cinematic neo-colonialism and political hegemony. For that, the film has indirectly justified the American use of force in the Middle East in order to control the barbaric chaos. For instance, during one of the scenes, the US National Security Adviser commented on Arab’s chaos and hostility by stating: ―he could have fired over their heads this moron, didn’t he know where he was? The Middle East!‖. The film was also written by James Webb, a former U.S. Marine combat officer who served in Vietnam. This further explains the film’s tendency to portray Marines as invincible heroes, as well as its references to the Vietnam War. For instance, the opening scene featured Childers and Hodge serving in the Vietnam War in 1986. Childers captured the commander of Vietnam’s troops, but then released him on condition that he orders his men to seize fire. The man after many years showed up to Childer’s trail to present his testimonial about Childer’s behavior in battlefields. The last scene showed the Vietnami Commander saluting Childers on his way out of trial; a scene that glorified American marines and soldiers to an excessively unrealistic extent. It portrayed them as the indisputable idols of military ethics and values, to the point where even their past enemies have so much respect and admiration for them. In addition, the whole trial plot was created to show that the American state cares so much about the loss of civilian lives and the ―rules of engagement‖, and will stop at nothing to insure that justice is served, even if it had to sentence one of its finest soldiers to death. That was reflected when an American officer said regarding Childers’s trial: ―we’re trying to set an example here, so let’s set it and show the world we mean business.‖ Again, it is the hegemonic American reality setting the rules.

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It was quite notable as well that all Arabs in the film were dehumanized. There weren’t any stories or names given to any of them. In addition, they were all painted with the same brush.

The Yemenis were shown as dark ugly towel-heads, with barely few teeth on. They all walked around with their swords wrapped around their waist while shouting and arguing. One scene even showed Yemeni men dancing joyfully while playing with their swords; a scene that enforced the idea that even when Arabs are not fighting and celebrating, they are still barbaric.

As for women, all Yemeni women featured were covered up and veiled in black. Most of them covered up their entire face except for their eyes. In the embassy incident however, all women were shooting at the Marines, just as violently as men. In one of the scenes, the eyes of a Yemeni woman were alone able to fire out at Americans, for as she was serving Hodge coffee when he was interrogating her husband, she looked at him through her veil in a devilish way that gave him chills. Therefore, all Arabs apart from their age or sex were generalized into a onedimensional evil character, and into a single frame of an angry crowd.

The film made no attempt to balance its story a little by providing at least one ―good‖ Arab character, which is a technique other stereotypical films resort to cover up their direct intentions. On the other hand, American characters were personalized and given stories and unique characteristics. Some were good hearted, others tried to obscure justice, but they all had characters to play. The virtue of compassion was also a common trait shown among the Marines.

In fact, in many of the fighting scenes, American soldiers and marines were shown as reluctant to shoot at Arabs, and even sad and tearful after they did it. Hodge in one scene leaves a Yemeni hospital with cries of children haunting him all the way back to America. Such strategies and stereotypical depictions enforce Said’s Orientalism, for they serve as mediated reminders of Americans’ alleged superiority and humanity against Arabs’ inferiority and barbarism.

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The film also stressed on the patriotic theme. For instance, during the embassy incident, Childers rescued the ambassador, but then came back and risked his life facing snipers just to retrieve the American flag before the demonstrators destroy it. In another scene, Childers beats a young man who spit on his marine uniform. He angrily shouted at him ―who are you to spit on this uniform?‖. All these details again enforce the ―America first‖ attitude and the need to feel a nationalistic pride in being a citizen of the great superior America.

Religion was also given a special emphasis in the film. Islam was portrayed as a religion of inherent violence that stirred up hatred against Americans. For instance, when examining evidences in Yemen to show in the trial, Hodge found an Arabic audio tape under the hospital bed of a wounded victim. When translated and played in the court, the tape turned out to be a Sheikh’s declaration of Jihad against the Americans. It featured statements like ―we call on every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for rewards, to obey God’s command, to kill Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them. To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is a duty of every Muslim.‖ The Sheikh’s speech was presented as the only representation available of all Muslims, which vilified the Islamic religion as a whole. As Said argued, it showed Islam as a threat to the Western civilization, thus asserting Western hegemony and power through Islam misrepresentation.

The plot was keen on framing Arabs as the aggressors and the Americans as the defense counter-terrorism forces. For instance, in the final trial of Childers, Hodge delivered his commended speech, where he mentioned that ―Colonel Childers didn’t open fire. He returned fire‖, and ―it’s not murder, it’s a combat.‖ Childers also shouted: ―Yes innocent people died.

Innocent people always die, but I did not exceed my orders!‖. Such statements treated Arab victims as collateral damage and normal causalities of war. They insured that no mercy and

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empathy shall be felt towards Arabs because they are the aggressors. The scene where the camera zooms into the bodies of the 83 Yemeni demonstrators killed by Marines was also shown without any music in order not to garner viewers’ sympathy. Therefore, similar to Shaheen’s argument, such repetitive depictions become institutionalized and naturalized. It eventually becomes natural to lose empathy towards the dehumanized Arabs, and direct it towards the humanized Westerns. Therefore, it is apparent that the film employed various tactics identified

by Spillmann and Spillmann’s ―enemy construction model‖. For instance, it put blame on the enemy (Arabs and Muslims), identified the enemy with evil, and stereotyped and deindividualized it.

Finally, it is important to note that the film was not shot in Yemen, but in Morocco, after the King of Morocco read the script and granted film producers permission to shoot (BBC, 2000). In this case, the viable question that stands is: how can Morocco, an Arabian country, grant permission to a film highly stereotypical of Arabs? Arabs should be aware of the tremendous international impact of Hollywood’s films and should stand up against it. They should work on developing their own films and counter-narratives to defy the dominant one enforced by Hollywood.

Conclusion This paper has presented the argument that Western discourse on the Orient is inherently political. It reflects a sense of western imperialism and hegemony over the Middle East.

Specifically, the research argued that ―Hollywood and Washington share the same DNA‖. By critically analyzing the film ―Rules of Engagement‖ and deconstructing its embedded ideologies, the paper proved that politics and media representations go hand in hand, and that cinema acts as a political governmental arm. The film has in fact enforced Orientalism, Eurocentrism, and

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power relations. It glorified American hegemony but emasculated and dehumanized Arabs in order to insure their superiority and power over the Middle East during the ―New World Order‖ era. This can only be countered when Arabs realize the tactics and implications of Hollywood’s representations, and start resisting them by producing their own counter-narratives.

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