This article throws into relief the tropes by which Hollywood has come to churn out identical Arabs bent on destruction, yet ones that need to be salvaged. However, the salvation process is never complete(d) because the Arabs are not worthy of redemption, which sinks them further into the abyss of darkness. The representation of Arabs in Hollywood movies mostly aims at disseminating a stereotypical image that demeaninglyhomogenizestheir cultures and identities. Hollywood here participates in a process of imperial hegemony. The repetition in producing suchimagined cultureof Arabs and Muslims is seen as a hegemonic act of naturalizing orientalist ideologies that tend to over-idealize the Western culture and relegate the Eastern counterpart. In this light, this article attempts to deconstruct the visual representations (ideologies) produced to malign and vilify Arabs in Hollywood movies. Such movies are always premised upon a structure of binary oppositions that establish a motion picture of a civilized center dominating the margins, the so-called uncivilized subjects.
This article comes as a sort of voyage in the sense that it tries to go beyond the simple definitions that pin video clips down to being a mere form of entertainment and a mode of commercialization and instead shows them to be part and parcel of a well-established concourse of texts which repeat themselves with a difference. The study is thus an exploratory odyssey in the quest for the insinuations, intimations and nuances which impregnate a host of video clips made in and presumably about Morocco by a myriad of American and European artists whose works, considered in entirety, give way to what Barthes labels as the mythical, a phraseology studded with the stereotypical, which is no less insidious than the myth with its grand narratives as encapsulated in film or prose. Based on a qualitative approach, Babel, Marrakech Express, and Sex and the City are the three film samples we will set out to explore in juxtaposition with several singles: Do it Again by The Chemical Brothers, The World I Know by Collective Soul, Yalla by Inna, Marrakesh Express by Nash, Crosby, and Stills, Misere Mani by Era, and Nothing to Fear by Chris Rea.
This article comes as a sort of voyage in the sense that it tries to go beyond the simple definitions that pin video clips down to being a mere form of entertainment and a mode of commercialization and instead shows them to be part and parcel of a well-established concourse of texts which repeat themselves with a difference. The study is thus an exploratory odyssey in the quest for the insinuations, intimations and nuances which impregnate a host of video clips made in and presumably about Morocco by a myriad of American and European artists whose works, considered in entirety, give way to what Barthes labels as the mythical, a phraseology studded with the stereotypical, which is no less insidious than the myth with its grand narratives as encapsulated in film or prose. Based on a qualitative approach, Babel, Marrakech Express, and Sex and the City are the three film samples we will set out to explore in juxtaposition with several singles: Do it Again by The Chemical Brothers, The World I Know by Collective Soul, Yalla by Inna, Marrakesh Express by Nash, Crosby, and Stills, Misere Mani by Era, and Nothing to Fear by Chris Rea
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