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• 1 2017-05-17T22:57:56+00:00 Sounds of Arab Terrorism, 1970-1989 1 Chapter 2 image_header 2017-05-17T22:57:56+00:00
  Edward Said begins his critique of media portrayals of Muslims, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, with a short analysis of a Consolidated Edison (Con Ed) of New York commercial, which he argues, is illustrative of the subject of his book in its representation of the typical Islamophobia present in American media during that time. He describes the 1980 commercial’s presentation of, “various immediately recognizable OPEC personalities…alternated with stills as well as clips of other people associated with oil and Islam,” as an example of the use of negative images of Islam in American media to slander the religion by associating Muslims with the oil crisis of the 1970s-1980s.[1]
  
  No doubt the commercial expressed an American disdain for Middle Eastern oil suppliers typical of those decades, and surely the dramatic and negative portrayal of well-known Middle Eastern figures was used to elicit a negative emotional response from the viewers, in support of Con Ed’s agenda to promote alternative energy sources. But was the commercial really Islamophobic, or was it perhaps simply racist? The Western “image of Islam,” Said refers to, according to his description of the commercial, is simply shots of Middle Eastern figures, including the Saudi oil minister, Ahmed Zaki Yamani, an OPEC minster; Muammar Gaddafi, leader of the Libyan Arab Republic, an OPEC state; Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, another OPEC state; Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO; and Hafez al-Assad, the president of Syria.[2] According to Said, as these men appear on screen, a voice says, “ominously that ‘these men’ control America’s sources of oil.”[3] According to Said’s description, the Con Ed commercial does not actually include any mention of Islam or Muslims, and most of the figures Said cites as appearing, with the exception of Khomeini, have more to do with oil than with Islam, yet Said interprets this commercial as an association of Islam with the perceived danger of Middle Eastern-controlled oil supplies, arguing that the men depicted, and their involvement with oil has in fact become an image of Islam. It is this kind of negative association, Said argues, that colors America’s media representations of Muslims.
  
  If Tim Jon Semmerling had analyzed this same Con Ed commercial in the introduction of his book, ‘Evil’ Arabs in American Popular Film: Orientalist Fear, he would most likely have argued that the commercial used images of Orientalist fear to create an association between Arabs and the oil crisis. Perhaps he would have commented on the use of Yasser Arafat and Muammar Gaddafi in particular, arguing that their involvement with Palestinian and state terrorism, respectively, served as a visual association of terrorism with Arabs in general. Where Said saw Islamophobia, Semmerling would see Orientalist fear of the Arab Other. Where Said wrote of an “image of Islam,” Semmerling would perhaps write of an “image of Arab aggression.”
  
  The conundrum these two related yet different interpretations present is one that must be addressed. The issue of determining if something is Islamophobic, racist or both, is one that is not only critical in the analysis of filmic representations of Middle Easterners and Muslims—especially those of the 1970s-1980s—but so too in the analysis of countless other academic texts, many of which present the same discrepancy as Said’s and Semmerling’s. The distinction between Islamophobia and racism must be made because it is critical to a true understanding of the politics of representation of Middle Easterners and Muslims. When the two are conflated, or the distinction is not made, the realities and intricacies of the issue of representation are obscured. Negative representations are mistakenly identified as either Islamophobic, or racist, leaving the greater implications of the representations, and the specifics of their communicative roles unclear, and therefore more difficult to assess. Of course there are countless examples of Islamophobia and racism at work in single representations, but this is even more reason to parse out the modes of representation in use. Evelyn Alsultany’s method of analyzing the ideological work performed by media is particularly effective at this point in the analysis of Hollywood representations of the Middle East and Muslims, because many of the films produced during the 1970s-1980s—especially the 1980s—lack an obvious distinction between Islamophobia and racism. Attending to the ideological work performed by imagery, audio and storylines reveals the nature of the messages about Islam and Middle Easterners being communicated in film, and allows for a greater distinction to be made between Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism.
  
  Where clarity may be lacking in the imagery, dialogue, character profile, or plot devices of a film, its sound design can be a welcome aid in determining the nature of the messages being communicated, or, the ideological work being performed. Sound design can often be used to determine the degree of Islamophobia and/or anti-Arab racism being expressed. The presence of the sound of the adhan for example introduces an element of Islamophobic sonic rhetoric when it is used in conjunction with ominous music during scenes in which Middle Easterners commit violence. Without the adhan, or any other references to Islam—sonic or visual—the same scene would lack the necessary expressions of Islamophobia to accurately classify it as Islamophobic. In other words, nothing in the scene could be said to perform Islamophobic ideology. In this way attending to the sounds used in filmic representations, and examining the ideological work they do makes the task of distinguishing between Islamophobia and racism less difficult.
  
  The sounds of the films of the 1970s-1980s deviate from those of the 1950s-1960s in three significant ways. First, is the total change in the way Orientalist music was used. Whereas 1950s-1960s films used Orientalist music to set the tone for the fantasies and adventures that were so popular, films of the 1970s and 1980s abandon the typical soundtrack of the previous two decades in favor of more raucous Western music, peppered here and there with an occasional sinister-sounding Orientalist melody that accentuates the Otherness of the foreign images on screen. Orientalist music in 1970s-1980s films is used to sonically identify the Middle Eastern characters—who are always the villains and usually Arab—as they appear on screen. It is also used as a form of sonic foreshadowing before something sinister and violent happens. Orientalist music in the 1950s-1960s films, regardless of the specific association it was being used to create, was only present in scenes that were firmly placed in the Middle East, so that the associations were not only between the music and whatever aspect of Middle Eastern character was highlighted, but the Middle East itself and various perceived characteristics of the region. Orientalist music essentially created an association of the Middle East with exotic Otherness, whether it was through associations with mystery and intrigue, the allure of danger, or with sex and hedonism. Orientalist music was used throughout the various film genres, during a variety of scenes from neutral to violent, all of which take place in Middle Eastern spaces. In the films of the 1970s-1980s the role of Orientalist music changed completely. Through its almost exclusive use during violent and suspenseful scenes, the Middle East comes to be associated not with an exotic Other, but with a violent, dangerous Other. In Wanted Dead or Alive (1987), an Arab terrorism film, Orientalist music is used to sonically indicate impending danger, and identify Middle Eastern villains as they appear on screen, creating a sonic association between the Middle East and the danger of being physically harmed by Middle Easterners. In The Ambassador (1984), an Israeli-Palestinian conflict film, music is used in conjunction with images of Palestinian terrorists, creating a sonic association between the Middle East and terrorism.[4] It is also used in Iron Eagle (1986), another Arab Terrorism film when the evil Arab dictator appears on screen with his entourage, discussing various tyrannical and anti-American sentiments.[5]
  
  The second way in which sound is relegated to a new role in 1970s-1980s films is in the use of Middle Eastern speech, specifically Arabic. Arabic speech is used in a similar manner as Orientalist music. It is disproportionately spoken by the antagonists—enemies, murderers, and terrorists—and is often accompanied by sinister or ominous music. When the speech is translated the speakers are usually discussing plans to commit murder, terrorism, and other violent acts. When it is not translated it is simply spoken, or shouted, by nameless Arab thugs who are more often than not engaged in some form of violence. In The Black Stallion (1979), an adventure story about a boy and his horse, an Arab man appears randomly to speak Arabic while abusing the boy and the horse, and then disappears just as quickly as he came. Sound and imagery work together in this instance to associate Arabs with cruelty and violence.
  
  The aural caricatures of Middle Eastern-sounding people in 1950s-1960s films are crude representations, not to mention poorly executed, but they communicate Orientalist ideas about Middle Easterners as odd, strange, even funny, whereas the aural caricatures of the 1970s-1980s communicate ideas about Middle Easterners, specifically Arabs, as cruel, violent, and dangerous. Ishtar (1987), a comedy about two wannabe-singer/songwriters traveling through the Middle East, includes a particularly stunning aural caricature of what Berbers supposedly sound like. Dustin Hoffman spends five minutes impersonating a Berber, attempting to communicate with actual Berbers, and Arabs. He babbles in gibberish, then violently yells utter nonsense, which the Berbers miraculously understand, implying Berber language is so primitive that yelling nonsense syllables is an adequate means of communication. Despite the fact that Ishtar is a comedy, and this scene is meant to be funny, the way the aural caricature sounds is reflective of popular American beliefs about Middle Easterners as violent, erratic, and barbaric.
  
  Like the films of the previous two decades, those of the 1970s lack explicitly Islamophobic content, sonic or otherwise. The third change made to the sound design of the 1970s-1980s was to the use of the adhan, which in the 1970s was scarcely used, and then only as a means of geographic identification. In the 1980s however, Islamophobic content increased in the form of dialogue and disparaging remarks about Islam, the identification of villains as Muslim, and, in the last several years of the decade, the sonic association of Islam with violence. In two Arab terrorism films released in 1986, Delta Force and Iron Eagle, the adhan is used in conjunction with ominous music to communicate Islamophobic ideas about the nature of Islam, and of Muslims. The use of the adhan in these two films is the beginning of a sonic trend that would proliferate in the following decades, reaching ubiquity in post-9/11 film.
  
  By accompanying the sounds of Orientalist music and the adhan with ominous music during violent scenes, and relegating the deliverance of Arabic speech to violent antagonists, these three sounds come to be associated with danger, violence, torture, and terrorism, which is to say that Middle Easterners and Muslims come to be associated with danger, violence, torture and terrorism.
  The imagery in 1970s-1980s film differs significantly from that of the previous two decades. Belly dancers, sultans, and genies are replaced by bombers, gunmen, and nefarious Arab businessmen. The lavish palaces and Bedouin tents of the 1950s-1960s fantasies and adventures make way for terrorist training camps, and dirty city streets. Deserts in the 1970s-1980s hold less possibility of adventure and more probability of danger and death. There are no oases and colorful caravans, only terrorists hiding in the dunes, lying in wait for the unsuspecting Western hero. In short, the technicolor Orientalism of the 1950s is abandoned in favor of the dark and gritty realism of the 1970s-1980s.
  
  The change in the use of sound and imagery could be attributed simply to the shift in popularity of the fantasies and adventures of the former era to the action thrillers of the latter. This shift however is a result of significant changes in American attitudes toward, and perceptions of, the Middle East and its peoples—a shift which is expressed not only in the kinds of stories told, but also in the way Middle Easterners and the Middle East are portrayed, both visually and sonically. And even though stories about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Arab terrorism, and the oil crisis proliferated in the 1970s-1980s, the few comedies and fantasy/adventures such as The Wind and The Lion (1975), The Black Stallion (1979), Jewel of the Nile (1985), and Ishtar (1987), employ the same sonic and visual devices to ravage the Arab image and communicate anti-Arab messages.
  
  In the 1950s when the U.S. had limited interaction with the Middle East American attitudes toward the region and its peoples were ambiguous, and filmmakers relied on European Orientalist traditions to construct representations of Middle Easterners.[6] Interaction between the two increased throughout the 1960s as a result of U.S. financial and material support of Israel, leading to the souring of American attitudes toward the Middle East. Filmmakers began to develop new patterns of representation, which, though still influenced by European Orientalism, were shaped by uniquely American experiences with the Middle East, and expressed the attitudes that formed as a result. In the 1970s American attitudes shifted from Orientalist ambiguity to explicitly anti-Arab, in part a result of the U.S. news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the 1973 oil embargo and ensuing oil crisis, and the proliferation of international Arab terrorism. Films produced in the 1970s express American resentment of Arab power over coveted oil sources and fear of Arab terrorism, while perpetuating anti-Arab stereotypes and reinforcing anti-Arab attitudes.
  
  At the close of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s the American public became attuned to what was described in news media as an “Islamic Revival,” or a “resurgence of Islam,” and perceived as a spreading of Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic extremism, or despotic political Islam throughout the Middle East. The 1979 Iranian Revolution was perceived as evidence of this spreading of Islamic fundamentalism, and the subsequent hostage crisis incited American hostility toward Islam and Iranians. The lack of clarity between expressions of Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism in 1980s film is reflective of the conflation of multiple identities including “Arab,” “Iranian,” and “Muslim” in media, academia, and public thought during the 1980s.[7] This conflation, argues Alsultany, took place within the popular discourse surrounding the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis, and would later come to be strategically useful to the U.S. government during the post 9/11 War on Terror. [8] The “Muslim/Arab” conflation, by which is often wrongfully understood to include people from such non-Arab countries as Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—has been conceptualized as a monolithic, misogynistic, and despotic Other, one which, according to Alsultany, has been mobilized during the endless War on Terror because it allows for the easy conceptualization of “the United States as the inverse of everything that is ‘Arab/Muslim’: the United States is thus a land of equality and democracy, culturally diverse and civilized, a land of progressive men and liberated women.”[9]

  
  Sounds of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

  In 1960 the Israeli-Palestinian conflict genre was born with the release of Exodus. The genre grew in popularity and proliferated throughout the 1970s-1980s, eventually evolving into the more generic Arab terrorist genre. The increase in production of these films was an obvious reaction to the increase in U.S. involvement in and visibility of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the increasingly desperate and violent attempts of the Palestinian resistance to garner international recognition of the injustice Palestinians were suffering. Like the conflict films of the 1960s those of the 1970s-1980s do not express Islamophobic sentiments, nor do they present the conflict as a religious one. Though the films’ representations of the conflict are biased, its political nature is made clear. 
  
  Many scholars have demonstrated that the 1970s-1980s American news media’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was biased in favor of Israel, presented misleading interpretations of the conflict, and unfavorable depictions of the Palestinian resistance and Palestinian leadership.[10] American coverage in the 1970s-1980s was characterized first and foremost by its narrative framework of the conflict as one between a tenacious, underdog Jewish community and a hostile and hateful conglomeration of angry Arab nations surrounding Israel.[11] Palestinians in this narrative, according to R.S. Zaharna, are not Palestinians, but “Palestine’s Arabs,” “Arab inhabitants of Palestine,” or even “Israeli Arabs.”[12] These monikers divorce the Palestinians from their national identities by lumping them into a monolithic, “Arab” community, obscuring the reality of their connection to the land, and facilitating the David and Goliath narrative employed in the coverage of the conflict.
  
  The conflict films use the same framework as the news, pitting the sympathetic Israelis against the villainous “Arabs.” The Ambassador (1984) for instance, in which an American ambassador to Israel attempts to promote peace and understanding between Palestinian and Israeli university students, begins by explaining to the audience that the Middle East is, “a powder keg ready to explode” and that “Israel, with a population of 4 million, is surrounded by 8 Arab countries with a population of 80 million.”[15] Notice the conspicuous lack of the identifier, “Palestinian(s),” as though the issue was not between Israelis and Palestinians, but between Israelis and a hostile outside force of neighboring Arab nations. Instead of naming Palestinians the film’s description includes reference to, “A group known as the P.L.O. (Palestinian Liberation Organization),” which has, “vowed never to recognize Israel’s right to exist and to fight on until a Palestinian homeland is realized.”[13]
  
  This kind of treatment of the conflict is especially typical of the 1970s films, which in comparison to most of those released in the 1980s lack a more nuanced approach to the subject of Palestinian resistance.  In films like Rosebud (1975), Prisoner in the Middle (1977), and Black Sunday (1977), the battle is pitched between stereotypically evil Palestinian terrorists and likeable Israelis and American allies. As in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict films of the 1960s, Palestinians in the 1970s films are portrayed as angry, violent, anti-Semitic killers bent on destroying as many Israelis as possible. Some are afforded an opportunity to express the political motivations behind their violence, though briefly, while most are seemingly motivated by nothing more than their lust for blood and anti-Semitism, a motivational force in keeping with the image of an enemy comprised of Arab aggressors hailing from various surrounding Arab nations. Palestinians in Prisoner in the Middle for example, committed inexplicable murders of Israeli children, captured and raped Israeli women, and stole American nuclear weaponry with the intent of eradicating all Israelis, seemingly motivated by no more than their lust for blood and irrational hatred of Jews.[14] The villain in Black Sunday, based on the Palestinian terrorist organization, Black September, however, is granted a brief moment to express her dissatisfaction with the treatment of the Palestinians under American-aided Israeli control. Dahlia, the mastermind behind a plot to terrorize the U.S. and its values by attacking the Super Bowl, an obvious symbol of a beloved American institution, states that, “The American people have remained deaf to all the cries of the Palestinian nation. People of America, this situation is unbearable for us. From now on you will share our suffering. The choice is yours. Salam alaykum.” Her declaration of dissatisfaction lacks depth and detail of course, but it is nevertheless a step above the kind of primitive inclination toward violence expressed by the villains in films like Prisoner in the Middle, and though her use of the religious phrase, “Salam alaykum” serves to identify her as Muslim, her religious identity is not explored any further than this.[15]
  
  Rosebud, also based on the actions of Black September, deals with the issue of motivation in a much more convoluted way, and represents an exception to the typical lack of religious elements in 1970s Israeli-Palestinian conflict films. Rather than allowing the Palestinian characters to express themselves, the task is undertaken instead by a white, British, Muslim convert, who appears suddenly in the last third of the film to discuss his plan to manipulate the Palestinian resistance into waging a “holy war” in an attempt to “regain Arabia for all the faithful.”[16] This jarring reference to Islamic extremism is an expression of the slowly growing suspicion of Islam and of Muslims which would eventually come to dominate representations of Middle Easterners in later years. At this point however the reference is more of an anomaly in a majority of films that make no mention of Islam let alone attempt to forge a connection between the Palestinian resistance and a Muslim conspiracy to take over the Middle East. This scene would be more significant if the Palestinian characters themselves were also motivated by such religiosity. They are, however, utterly unexpressive of any such religious motivation, and in fact, this scene is the only one in which Islam makes an appearance.
  
  By the end of the 1970s the conflict films began to lend a bit more sophistication to their representations of Palestinian resistance, but continued to employ the typical David and Goliath framework. Films like The Ambassador (1984), and The Little Drummer Girl (1984), are representative examples of how the genre’s treatment of the conflict, Palestinian terrorism, and the image of the Palestinian terrorist evolved in the 1980s. In these films, though the majority of Palestinian characters are stereotypically portrayed, more often than not, as angry and violent, they are nevertheless granted brief opportunities to vocalize the injustices involved in the conflict, and the intricacies of the contested concept of terrorism. In The Little Drummer Girl, for instance, a Palestinian man addresses a seminar full of Europeans and the American protagonist, with the following call for a more nuanced understanding of the Palestinian resistance, while simultaneously denouncing American financial and material support of Israeli aggression:

  They call us terrorists. Why? Because we must deliver our bombs with our hands. We have no American planes to drop them from. No tanks to shell their towns. This Israeli tank commander who fires his cannons into our camps, so that our women and children have their flesh burned from their bones—this Israeli is called a hero. But when we strike back, the only way we can, with our hands, we are called terrorists. If the Israelis will give us their airplanes, we will give them our suitcases…What we ask is what was taken from us, by force and by terror. We ask for justice. That’s all.[17]

   
  Palestinians in The Ambassador express similar desires for justice, and even peace, rather than a simple lust for blood. A PLO member in this film works alongside the American ambassador to Israel to organize a meeting between Palestinian and Israeli students in an attempt to foster understanding and reconciliation. In a fleeting moment during this meeting a Palestinian student articulates the need for Israel to acknowledge that the Palestinian people comprise “a nation, not a tribe,” effectively summarizing a key point of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which was so often obfuscated in American news coverage.[18] This kind of examination of the intricacies of the conflict are a rarity, however. With the exception of The Ambassador, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict films of the 1970s-1980s present the situation in Israel and Palestine as one in which a monolithic Arab enemy motivated by anti-Semitism perpetually attacks downtrodden yet courageous Israeli heroes who are simply fighting for their “right to exist.”[19] These films support the image of the conflict presented in American news coverage, resulting in a double-dose, so to speak, of misleading, racist, and hateful representations of Palestinians and the Palestinian resistance.
  
  In addition to framing the conflict in a misleading way, Zaharna argues that the American coverage of the conflict also dehumanized Palestinians while humanizing Israelis.[20] News stories included humanizing descriptions of Israeli individuals who struggled, suffered, and triumphed, while the Palestinians were described en masse as hundreds of thousands of fleeing “Arabs” or refugees.[21] This tendency to focus in on the individual Israeli, while pulling out to capture a large swath of nameless, faceless Palestinians is a technique used in film as well, having the same effect of humanizing the Israeli while dehumanizing the Palestinian. Prisoner in the Middle portrays an Israeli military operation as a tight-knit group of young, brave soldiers and friends. They fight together, but they also play together, joke together, share meals together, and when members of their team are killed they mourn together. The Palestinian villains on the other hand share no such humanizing moments. They are not shown being friendly with one another, telling jokes, or engaging in lighthearted conversation. Instead they are shown murdering children and sexually assaulting Israeli women. When members of their team are killed no one mourns because no one cares, and the only emotion they express is the perverse joy they feel while engaging in violence or discussing the prospect of eliminating Israeli Jews.
  
  Though given the opportunity to discuss Palestinian suffering, the Palestinian characters in The Little Drummer Girl are also shallow caricatures of violent terrorists. They do not share humanizing moments together, rather they are shown murdering entire families, and taking advantage of unsuspecting western women, manipulating them into unwittingly committing acts of terror. The Palestinians in Rosebud are introduced as long-time friends meeting for the first time in years. They chat together jovially as one welcomes the other into his home in a scene that would be perfectly acceptable as a humanizing moment if not for the fact that their jovial chit chat is about their plans to kidnap young women and hold them hostage in a basement. In a particularly dehumanizing moment, one friend shows the other a new weapon he created, claiming it will not cause as much pain when used, and is therefore a more humane means of committing murder. He grins absurdly as he admires it, driving home the image of Palestinians as bloodthirsty killers.
  
  Only one of the films reviewed can boast of humanizing treatment of its Palestinian characters. Though still quite lacking in dimension, the Palestinians in The Ambassador are humanized to a far greater degree than in any other film reviewed for the simple fact that most of the Palestinians given screen time are nonviolent students rather than terrorists. Scenes like the one in which Palestinian and Israeli students gather and communicate peacefully are not the norm. In what was surely meant to be a gratifying and heartwarming moment the Palestinians and Israelis all stand together chanting, “Peace, peace, peace.” These brief moments of humanity may seem trivial, but the perpetual lack of such moments between Middle Eastern characters, coupled with their frequency between Western characters, adds up to a highly significant discrepancy between the treatment of each group. This trend persists to this day and will become even more striking in post-9/11 films.
  
  Despite The Ambassador’s unique portrayal of Palestinians as human beings with feelings, the conclusion of the scene described above maintains the status quo of Palestinian villainy and inevitable failure. The students’ moment of reconciliation comes to an abrupt and brutal end when an extremist faction of the PLO attacks the gathering, slaughtering everyone in sight, and stopping only when the Israeli army shows up to take them down. This scene very clearly communicates the message that peace between Israelis and Palestinians is impossible because of senseless Palestinian violence. The inevitability of Palestinian violence and failure unites all the Israeli-Palestinian conflict films of the era. Regardless of the degree of hate or humanity in the portrayal of the Palestinian characters, Palestinians in these films play the parts of loser and villain every time. The inevitable failure of the Palestinians communicates the message that in the end “good” will always win against “evil,” David will always defeat Goliath, and it will be because Goliath suffers from self-sabotage, and David deserved to win anyway.  
  
  The Israeli-Palestinian conflict films’ typical lack of attention to Islam is indicative of Americans’ understanding of the conflict as a political one. Though the Palestinian adversaries in these films are often depicted as anti-Semitic, they are not depicted as particularly religious, and the motivations for their actions are not attributed to religious convictions or a religious agenda. The films’ sound design is also reflective of the political interpretation of the conflict, even in Rosebud, which does indeed use the sounds of praying and the adhan in the scene discussed above. The adhan is delivered quietly while men pray in hushed tones in the background. There is no violence or musical accompaniment of any kind. The sounds of prayer and the adhan are used in this scene merely to highlight the Muslim identity of the characters on screen rather than as a means of communicating Islamophobic sentiments. Granted, the scene does dialogically communicate Islamophobic ideas about a Muslim conspiracy of imperial expansion, but again, this is not typical of the 1970s films.

  
  Sounds of the Oil Crisis

  Based on the consistent portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a political crisis in both news and entertainment media, it is clear that it did not lead to an outbreak of Islamophobia in American media. Rather, the conflict led to an outbreak of anti-Arab racism, which was exacerbated when OPEC countries imposed an embargo against the U.S. in response to the country’s decision to continue to support Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Edward Said argues that the ensuing oil crisis resulted in an increase in American Islamophobia, while other scholars, including Jack Shaheen and Joshua Bellin, argue that the oil crisis resulted in an increase in anti-Arab racism. According to Shaheen American anxieties regarding Arab power over oil led to the creation of the rich oil sheikh stereotype, which proliferated in American film during the 1970s-1980s. Joshua Bellin argues that this anxiety led to the American perception of Arabs as “public enemy number one,” an attitude that was expressed in the country’s visual culture and academia in the form of stereotypes of Arabs as violent, oil-rich terrorists.[22] Again, the distinction between Islamophobia and racism begs to be made. A critical analysis of three films that deal with the oil crisis helps to shed some light on the important differences between the two categories of interpretation.
  
  The Next Man (1976), Wrong is Right (1982), and Rollover (1982) are films from the era that express Americans’ profound anxiety related to the Arab control and withholding of oil through their characterization of Arabs as treacherous, oil-rich thugs with cruel intentions. In The Next Man, set during the oil embargo, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the UN, Khalil Abdul-Muhsan, proposes a mutual assistance pact with Israel, the disbandment of OPEC, and the provision of free oil to poor nations. Ambassadors from other Arab countries are horrified by his proposals and attempt to convince Khalil to abandon all thoughts of disbanding OPEC and promoting peace with Israel. Khalil claims that Palestinian suffering is the fault of Palestinian terrorism, not Israeli aggression, a claim as absurd as the casting of Sean Connery as Khalil. Eventually Khalil is assassinated by Arab terrorists. Islam finds no place in this film beyond the brief inclusion of the adhan sounding in the background of a neutral scene, unaccompanied by music and unassociated with anything negative. Terrorist violence is associated with Arab greed, not with Islam, and none of the Arab characters are particularly religious. Khalil’s character is one of the first examples of what would come to be a commonplace trope in films about the Middle East and Middle Easterners: the “good Muslim/Arab.”
  
  Six years later, and three years after the Iranian Revolution, Wrong is Right and Rollover were released. Like The Next Man, these two films express oil-related anxiety through the use of greedy Arab stereotypes. They also include subtle yet loaded references to Islam, much like the scene in Rosebud discussed earlier. In Rollover an American duo attempts to broker a financial deal with Saudis that would help resolve U.S. economic woes. The Saudis are depicted according to the popular stereotypes of greedy and dishonest Arabs, slick with oil-wealth, and eager to disrupt American lives. They dress, speak, eat and do business differently than do the American protagonists, and delight in wielding their power over the U.S. even as so many Americans suffer. The American couple is annoyed when they have to wait for prayers to finish before meeting to discuss the loan they wish to procure from the Saudis. The adhan is heard, and the Saudis postpone the meeting as they begin to pray. Though the prayers are not accompanied by ominous music, and the scene is not a violent one, an association of Islam with difference is made. Within the context of this scene, and the greater historical context of the film’s creation, Muslims are portrayed as utterly different and strange. When the film concludes with the Saudis somehow managing to destroy the entire world’s economy by withdrawing all their money from American banks, the final shot of a mosque draws a connection between Islam and Arab treachery.
  
  In a similar manner, Wrong is Right draws a connection between Islam and mental illness. King Awad of the fictional Arab country of Hagreb is a devout Muslim and good friend of the protagonist. King Awad’s frequent communions with God earn him the derision of the American government officials who discuss him at great length throughout the film. They describe him as an overly sensitive “crackpot” whose desert home and weak constitution lead him to suffer from auditory hallucinations that cause him to “hear voices in the desert.”[23] When King Awad’s collaboration with Rafeeq, the “world’s bloodiest terrorist,” and their “plan to beautify Islam,” is revealed, Islam is associated not only with lunacy but with terrorism as well. This connection however is immediately weakened when the protagonist, Patrick Hale, draws a clear line between King Awad’s attempts to beautify Islam with “the word of God,” and Rafeeq’s violent method of terrorism. Rafeeq responds to Hale’s accusation by challenging Hale to reevaluate his interpretation of terrorism: 

  Rafeeq: “What is terrorism?”
  PH: “Innocent victims. Political murders.”
  Rafeeq: “Like the Belgian use in the Congo? Like the French in Nigeria? The Japanese in Manchuria. Like the British against the Americans? Like the Irish against the British? Mussolini against Ethiopia. Like Hitler used against the Jews? Like the Jews used against us? Like the Americans used the bomb in Hiroshima? You mean, terrorism like that?”[24] 

   
  Hale falls silent, left without an adequate response, implying that Rafeeq, though portrayed throughout the film as a bloodthirsty villain, has made a valid point about the problem of perspective when attempting to label one violent act as terrorism, while denying another the same.
  
  The visual and narrative references to Islam in Rollover and Wrong is Right are overshadowed by the overwhelming expressions of anti-Arab racism motivated by resentment related to the oil embargo and its effects on American lives. These films communicate an intense dislike and distrust of Arabs, surely motivated by resentment of Arab power over much-desired oil. Islam figures so little in the storylines—which are clearly designed to communicate the dangers of Arab power and the cruelty inherent in Arab nature—that the Muslim identity of some of the Arab characters is second to their Arab identity. These films, including Rosebud, do however hold a significant place in the trajectory of American patterns of representation of Islam and Muslims. They are representative of a time in American film history when negative attitudes toward Islam and Muslims were articulated, even though Muslim identity was still subordinate to Arab identity—which was presented as the most significant difference between Us and Them. In this sense Rollover, Wrong is Right, Rosebud, and similar films laid the groundwork for future filmic expressions of Islamophobia, produced at a time when Islam and Muslim identity are not only clearly articulated, but figures prominently, presented first and foremost, as the ultimate defining difference between Us and Them.  

  
  Sounds of Arab Terrorism

  Though still in production for much of the 1980s, by the beginning of the decade the Israeli-Palestinian conflict genre had spawned a more generic yet perhaps even more damaging sister genre: The Arab terrorist genre. Arab terrorist films express the shift in American representation of the Middle East and its peoples from the typical 1950s Orientalism, heavily influenced by European Orientalist traditions, to a uniquely American representation, shaped by 1970s-1980s American interactions with the Middle East. Arab terrorist films—even more than Israeli-Palestinian conflict films—are expressive of Americans’ anxieties regarding Arab-controlled oil sources, the perceived threat of Arab terrorism to the U.S., and what was believed to be a rabidly anti-American, Islamic revival sweeping the Middle East. Tim Jon Semmerling argues that American anxieties during the 1970s-1980s led to:

  sweeping generalizations that easily engulfed many non-Arab countries (Iran in particular) within a threatening global imaginary and thereby lumped vast populations, cultures, economies, landscapes, political events, and Islamic practices erroneously into an amorphous Otherness that was often symbolized by the image of the oil-rich, Islamic terrorist Arab.[25]

  This conglomeration of identifiers increased in convolution after 1979 with Iran’s revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis. Aided by sensational news coverage of the events Americans would come to perceive the revolution and hostage crisis as having been motivated by a resurgence in Islamic religiosity, a movement which was described in various news in negative terms, including “an explosion of Islam,” and a spreading “infection” of fundamentalist Islamic ideology.[26] At this point in the history of American representation of the Middle East categories of “Arab,” “Iranian,” “Muslim,” “extremist,” and “terrorist,” became interchangeable, Iranians becoming Arabs, all Arabs becoming Muslim, and all Muslims extremists who committed random acts of terror. The representations of Middle Easterners and Middle Eastern spaces in the Arab terrorist films are expressive of the conflation of these identities, and the American ideas about the “threatening global imaginary” to which Semmerling refers.
  
  Like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict genre, Arab terrorist films employ racist stereotypes of Arabs as ruthless killers. In many of the films the terrorists are Palestinian even though the story has nothing to do with Palestine or Israel, further dissociating Palestinians from the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In these films terrorists attack Americans, both in the U.S. and in the Middle East, for little more than their hatred of the country. Often the terrorists are somehow connected to Middle Eastern oil sources, and use their control of oil as a means to control or threaten the U.S. The most significant aspect of the 1980s Arab terrorist films is the shift toward utilizing negative stereotypes of Islam to disparage Middle Eastern peoples, specifically Arabs. Arab characters are often depicted using imagery taken from the Iranian Revolution and Iran hostage crisis, resulting in a conflation of Iranian with Arab, and Arab with Muslim. Although expressions of Islamophobia in the form of dialogue (disparaging remarks about Muslims for example), and character identity (overtly Muslim-identifying characters behaving violently or in otherwise negative ways) begin to appear in the terrorist films of the 1980s, only in the last several years of the decade has sound been used to communicate Islamophobic sentiments.
  
  The Arab terrorist films of the 1980s are characterized first and foremost by the theme of Arab hatred of the U.S., a hatred that is used as an inarticulate implication of motivation for the terrorists’ actions. The reason for this hatred is not examined in the films, but it is clearly expressed in dialogue, storyline, and what has become the quintessential “angry Arab mob” scene, an overused and instantly recognizable sonic and visual motif that has reached ubiquity in post-9/11 films. This scene, regardless of storyline, geographical setting, or production year is characterized by the mob of angry Arabs, hence the name, who shout hateful sentiments such as, “Death to America!” and “Death to the Jews!” while burning American flags and effigies of Uncle Sam. Usually they are holding signs that express similar attitudes. Often they are mobbing a car transporting American journalists, government employees, or military officials, or protesting outside of American embassies.
  
  The sound of Middle Eastern speech, in this case Arabic, is used during mob scenes to create a sonic association between Arabs and violent anti-American hatred. The angry Arabs in these mobs shout in Arabic that is left untranslated, but is clearly expressive of their hatred for the U.S., based on the signs they hold and the occasional declaration in English. In a typical angry Arab mob scene in Terror Squad (1987) what appears to be an Arab military or government official (it is never made clear) delivers an almost violent speech, yelling and gesticulating wildly to the raucous approval of a mass of shouting Arabs holding “Death to America” signs and waving rifles in the air. Ominous music plays as the man delivers his speech vociferously. Though the speech is not translated, and neither are the shouts of his audience, the meaning is clear: this man and the crowd he has attracted hate the U.S. and are ready to prove it using violence. As the movie progresses a group of Arab terrorists do just this.
  
  The angry Arab mob scene was not an invention of the 1980s filmmaker, but yet another recycled bit of imagery from the news, plucked directly from programs such as ABC’s wildly popular The Iran Crisis—America Held Hostage.[30] Developed just four days after the American embassy in Tehran, and 52 American citizens were taken by Iranian protesters, The Iran Crisis was one of the most influential sources of information on Iran and the consequences of its Revolution, from which, Americans acquired “around ninety percent” of their “knowledge” of the matter, according to Said.[27] The Iran Crisis often featured footage of Iranian protestors marching, shouting anti-American slogans, holding signs, and transporting the American hostages.
  
  
  
  Footage of Iranian protesters looks alarmingly similar to the angry Arab mob scenes of Terror Squad (1988), Death Before Dishonor (1987), and Wrong is Right (1982), in which Libyans, Palestinians, and Arabs shout various anti-American epithets. The flag burning in front of the embassy in Tehran looks quite like the flag burning in Terror Squad, which takes place in Libya. The mobs outside the American embassies in the fictional countries of Jemal and Hagreb, both of which are somehow populated by angry Palestinians, in Death Before Dishonor, and Wrong is Right, look virtually indistinguishable from the Iranian protesters outside of the embassy in Iran.
  
  The angry Iranian mob, from which the angry Arab mob originated, was part of what Hamid Naficy calls, “a sign system, consisting of a limited repertoire of discrete and disembodied signs often repeated ad nauseam,” which was then commodified in the attempt of producers of news media to sell the Iran hostage crisis to audiences primed to understand the situation in Iran in terms of these discrete and disembodied signs.[28] Much like this sign system, visual elements, like the angry Arab mob, were employed to communicate with audiences primed to understand the filmic worlds before them—as well as the realities they purported to be representative of—in terms of such reductive elements. Arab hatred of the U.S. was communicated in these films by appropriating images of Iranians protesting against American interference in Iranian affairs, and recycling them as the angry Arab mob. This cooption of imagery from the Iranian Revolution is an example of how the conflation of “Iranian” and “Arab” came about.
  
  The Arab hatred of the U.S. communicated in 1980s terrorism films was largely unexamined, so that one is left with the sense that Arab hatred of Americans was based on ideological differences rather than specific events and American policy in the Middle East. Some films simply leave motivation out of the story entirely. Wanted Dead or Alive (1987) features a slew of Arab and Arab-American terrorists who slaughter American civilians in movie theatres, the Los Angeles airport, a restaurant, and the protagonist’s houseboat for no apparent reason other than their extreme hatred of the U.S. and their passion for violence. Other films subtly associate Islam with these ideological differences, implying that Islam is incompatible with American values. Terror Squad for instance, which pits a group of hapless Arab terrorists against a class of clever high schoolers in Kokomo, Indiana, associates the actions of the terrorists with their Islamic faith when they say, “Go in the name of God,” and “God is with us,” just before speeding through the pleasant streets of Kokomo and gunning down unsuspecting innocent civilians.[29] Lebanese terrorists in Delta Force (1986) hijack a plane and declare war on “American imperialists, Zionists, terrorists, and anti-socialist atrocities.” The leader of the terrorist group says, “Allahu akbar,” just before hijacking the plane, expressing violent anti-Semitism, and almost beating a Navy corpsman to death. Later in Beirut posters of the Ayatollah Khomeini can be seen plastered across all of the walls as the terrorists transport their hostages to the “Terrorist Headquarters” in the center of the city. Delta Force not only associates Islam with terrorism, but Islamic terrorism with, what was perceived by Americans as, a particularly threatening brand of Islamic fundamentalism practiced in Iran. The imprecise motivation of the terrorists, whose only self-proclaimed explanation for their actions is a declaration of war against a bevy of disparate enemies, is by default then, attributed to their hatred of Americans and Jews, and inspired by their extremist faith.
  
  The association between Islam and the perceived ideological difference between Us and Them was also being communicated during the time in news media, and later in academia. Take for instance a Time article published in 1979, five months after the hostages were taken in Iran, entitled “The World of Islam,” in which, “Much of Islam’s resurgence,” it is argued, was in part “inspired by a disdain for Western values.”[30] This article attributes dislike of American values to the resurgence of Muslim religiosity, which in turn is responsible for instigating the Iranian Revolution and the general “instability in the Middle East.”[31] After asserting that, “to the average Muslim, his faith is much more in evidence in everyday life than is Christianity to people in most Western lands,” a so-called “Arabist,” Peter A. Iseman is quoted as having argued that, “One of the more striking aspects of the Arabians is that doubt, inner guilt, anxiety are alien to them. Their world is more reassuring, pervaded as it is with a soothing sense of inevitability,” which, according to the article’s author, is a function of determinism, somehow unique to Islam.[32] Like the 1980s Arab terrorist films that would follow it, this Time article steers quite clear of drawing any direct links between specific American activity in the Middle East to Middle Eastern animosity toward the U.S. The article also presents the resurgence in Muslim religiosity as somehow motivated by this hatred of the U.S., without ever elaborating on how exactly the two have anything to do with one another. The unexamined link drawn between Muslim religiosity and Arab hatred of the U.S. blurs the line between “Muslim” and “Arab,” supporting the conflation of the two identities taking place at the time.
  
  This conflation of identities, and American disdain for, and fear of Muslim Arabs are expressed by the use of the adhan to sonically associate Islam with violence, terrorism, and hatred of the U.S. in Iron Eagle (1986), and Delta Force (1986). In Iron Eagle an American teen, Doug Masters, who against all odds and conventions of real life, flies an F-16 fighter to Bilya, a fictional Arab country, where he rescues his father from being executed by the country’s evil Arab dictator after being wrongfully accused of flying through their airspace. After Doug hears that his father has been captured in Bilya, the scene cuts to the image of a mosque’s minaret. Soldiers holding rifles walk along the wall surrounding a courtyard where Doug’s father is being interrogated by the dictator. The adhan plays in conjunction with ominous music as Doug’s father attempts to defend himself. The dictator lights a cigar and snickers at his futile attempts, as the ominous music and adhan continue to sound. The dictator shouts that the U.S. “has been warned time and time again! Yet your leaders choose to make light of our demands. Reparation is our due, and we shall have our due.” Doug’s father is sentenced to hang in three days. In Iron Eagle the adhan is used to sonically associate Islam with backwardness, barbarity, inhumane punishment, and murder.
  
  In Delta Force the adhan is used to sonically associate Islam with material, social, and moral decay. The adhan and ominous music play as one of the hostages looks out a window through bars and barbed wire at a dirt lot filled with military vehicles used by the terrorists who mill around, laughing faintly while a young boy carries a bazooka off scene, and smoke billows in the air from an unseen fire. The hostage looks away from the window at his fellow hostages and says sorrowfully, “I was in Beirut 20 years ago. Shoulda been there then. It was something. Had everything. Nightclubs, dancing, concerts…laughter. It was the Las Vegas of the Middle East. Beirut was beautiful then…Beautiful.” Together with this man’s woeful recollection of the Beirut of yesteryears, the adhan and ominous music draw a connection between Islam and the degradation of Lebanese society. The adhan works as a sonic symbol of Islam, communicating the role of Islam in the deterioration of what the hostage deems are hallmarks of a beautiful and happy life: drinking, dancing, singing and so on. In this way the adhan also works to communicate the message that Islam is the antithesis of the West; that Islam is somehow responsible for eliminating Western elements in Lebanon—elements that had previously made Beirut beautiful—and without them, Beirut is nothing but a dusty, smoky, violent nightmare.
  
  American animosity toward Arabs and Muslims is also expressed dialogically in Ministry of Vengeance (1989), in which a Vietnam vet turned Christian minister is sent to Lebanon by the CIA to track down the Palestinian terrorist who murdered his wife and child years ago. In Lebanon he encounters stereotypical Arabs, who are identified by the American characters as Muslims who “hate Christians,” and consider uncovered women, “a sin against God.”[33]  Throughout the film these Muslims antagonize the minister, stalking him and calling him “cross worshipper.” The Arabs in Ministry of Vengeance are portrayed as violent, Muslim fanatics and terrorists who torture and murder scores of innocents at a Christian mission. Ministry of Vengeance is an unusually Islamophobic film in the temporal context of the 1980s, but it does foreshadow the kind of treatment of Islam and Muslims that would become commonplace in American cinema in later years.

  
  Conclusion

  In the 1950s Middle Easterners were presented in a variety of contexts from luxurious and visually appealing palaces to exciting desert adventures. In the 1960s the Orientalist contexts continued to be used while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict context was introduced to the scene. Middle Easterners could still be seen in the palace, harem, and desert caravan, but they were also seen engaging in guerrilla warfare with Israelis, perpetrating terrorist acts and committing murder. In the 1970s, the Orientalist contexts that had once dominated American theatre screens dwindled down to near irrelevance. The context of Palestinian resistance, coded as Arab terrorism and aggression, overwhelmed American theatre screens, and created an association of Arabs with violence that would gain momentum in the 1980s and become the most prolific context in which Middle Easterners and Muslims were portrayed in American film. The significance of context cannot be overstated, as it is through the repeated presentation of these groups in violent contexts that non-Muslim/Middle Eastern audiences learn about the Middle East and Islam. The constant framing of Middle Eastern and Muslim identity within the restrictive context of violence and terrorism creates the impression that violence and terroristic proclivities are inherent in their nature. The predominance of stories that situate Middle Easterners and Muslims in the context of terrorism is obvious in the 1980s, but becomes impossible to ignore as the 1990s gave way to the 2000s.
   

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  [1] Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 3.

  [2] Ibid.

  [3] Ibid.

  [4] Joshua David Bellin, Framing Monsters: Fantasy Film and Social Alienation, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 77.

  [5] Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation After 9/11, (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 9.

  [6] Ibid. See also John Grey, Black Mass, who argues a similar conflation to support the concept of an “Axis of Evil.”

  [7] Ibid.

  [8] Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), R.S. Zaharna, “The Palestinian Leadership and the American Media: Changing Images, Conflicting Results,” & AnneMarie Daniel, “U.S. Media Coverage of the Intifada and American Public Opinion,” in The U.S. Media and the Middle East: Image and Perception, 1995, ed. Yahya R. Kamalipour (Westport: Praeger, 1995)., & Janice Monti Belkaoui, “Images of Arabs and Israelis in the Prestige Press, 1966-74,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 55(4), (1978): 732-799., & Soheir Morsy, “Politicization Through the Mass Information Media: American Images of the Arabs,” The Journal of Popular Culture, 17, (1983): 91-97., & Shelley Slade, “The Image of the Arab in America: Analysis of a Poll on American Attitudes,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Spring, 1981): 143-162., & Richard Curtiss, A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute, (Washington D.C.: American Educational Trust, 1982).

  [9] R.S. Zaharna, “The Palestinian Leadership and the American Media: Changing Images, Conflicting Results,” in The U.S. Media and the Middle East: Image and Perception, 1995, ed. Yahya R. Kamalipour (Westport: Praeger, 1995), 38.

  [10] Ibid.

  [11] The Ambassador, directed by J. Lee Thompson (1984; Northbrook Films/Cannon Film Distributors, 1985.), Amazon Digital Services LLC.

  [12] Ibid.

  [13] Prisoner in the Middle, (AKA Warhead) directed by John O’Connor. (1977; Independent).

  [14] It is worthy of note that the principal villain in Black September was a woman. Dahlia is representative of the typical 1970s characterization of Middle Eastern women. In the 1950s-1960s Middle Eastern women were relegated to the harem. In the 1970s-1980s Middle Eastern women were characterized as seductive terrorist villains, like Dahlia. In the 1990s-the present characterizations of Middle Eastern women changed from seductive terrorists to subjugated Muslimahs, almost always clothed in burqas or niqabs, and kept utterly silent, unless they were screaming unintelligibly. In the 1950s-1960s they were vocal insofar as it was in expression of their status as sex symbols. In the 1970s-1980s they were vocal insofar as it was in expression of their violent nature. Today if a Middle Eastern woman has a speaking role it is usually in untranslated Arabic or Farsi. If they speak in English, it is in support of the American protagonists. Sheila Vand, an Iranian-American actress, offers a perfect example of the wildly different treatment of Middle Eastern women in main-stream Hollywood film and independent film written and directed by people of Middle Eastern descent.

  [15] Rosebud, directed by Otto Preminger. (1975; Oting SA/United Artists, 1975).

  [16] Little Drummer Girl, directed by George Roy Hill. (1984; Warner Brothers, 1984).

  [17] The Ambassador, directed by J. Lee Thompson (1984; Northbrook Films/Cannon Film Distributors, 1985.), Amazon Digital Services LLC.

  [18] Ibid.

  [19] R.S. Zaharna, “The Palestinian Leadership and the American Media: Changing Images, Conflicting Results,” in The U.S. Media and the Middle East: Image and Perception, 1995, ed. Yahya R. Kamalipour (Westport: Praeger, 1995), 40.

  [20] Ibid.  

  [21] Joshua David Bellin, Framing Monsters: Fantasy Film and Social Alienation (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 80-81.

  [22] Wrong is Right, directed by Richard Brooks. (1982; Columbia Pictures Corporation/Columbia Pictures, 1982).

  [23] Ibid.

  [24] Tim Jon Semmerling, “Evil”Arabs in American Popular Film: Orientalist Fear, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 18. 

  [25] “The World of Islam,” Time, April 1979, 40.

  [26] ABC News, Iran Hostage Crisis 1979 (ABC News Report From 11/11/1979), YouTube video, 10:02, October 12, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8bC1DEYbI4.

  [27] Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 81.

  [28] Hamid Naficy, “Mediating the Other: American Pop Culture Representation of Postrevolutionary Iran,” in The U.S. Media and the Middle East: Image and Perception, 1995, ed. Yahya R. Kamalipour (Westport: Praeger, 1995), 79.

  [29] The premise of Terror Squad is interesting in its use of the idyllically Middle-American high school as a symbol of the American values being threatened by the violent Muslim Other. Red Dawn (1984) uses a similar premise in its portrayal of a Communist threat in its symbolism of American values by the quintessential band of small town high school heroes who stage a resistance against the Soviet and North Korean invaders. In both films the U.S. and its ideologies are symbolized by a stereotypically “American” high school, whose students are attacked by a menacing, foreign Other, but who ultimately overcome the enemy through their bravery and scrappy resourcefulness.  

  [30] “The World of Islam,” Time, April 1979, 40.

  [31] Ibid.

  [32] Ibid.

  [33] Ministry of Vengeance, directed by Peter Maris. (Los Angeles; 1989, Independent).