Blood and Oil

I watched the documentary tonight about the ongoing battle for oil in the Middle East called "Blood and Oil." I thought it was really interesting how it related exactly to what we discussed in class on Tuesday. How we (the U.S.) puts shady people in power to help our own goal of maintaining the flow of oil into the U.S. and then we have to go back later and take out those people like Saddam and Osama who WE put in power because they're terrorizing people. I also thought it was interesting because in class we talked about how the U.S. has to have their hand in everything. A perfect example of this is when we told Saudi Arabia that we would only occupy his country until the war in Kuwait was over which was the only reason he accepted our presence. But realizing that the only way to ensure the U.S. was getting the oil that we needed, our government decided we needed to be a constant presence. So before the war was finished, we decided we needed to contain Iraq which trumped the decision to leave and allowed the U.S. to have a permanent presence. It bothers me that we have to be so involved in everything. I know it is because of oil in these instances, but when I think about the way many of the countries in the entire world act...I get this image of the playground. I think of each country as a typical child you might find. I may be stereotyping and may need to edit this later, but I think of the U.S. as two different kids. I see us as the bully who is able to physically push others to the ground. But I also see us as the gossipy girl running around sticking her nose in everyone's business. Then all of the other countries would represent kids of the playground. The nerd, the athlete, the tag along, the wing-man, the trouble-maker. If you look at it, the countries as a whole are all acting like children, and some of those children are waving around daddy's loaded gun (WMD's and such). Even the U.S. has "Plan B" in his/her back pocket. Though she may not be blatantly waving it around, all the other children know its there. I just get frustrated that the government feels the need to lie and say its not about oil, but its obvious that oil is the driving force behind ever decision. When we (the people) call them out on it, they still lie right to our face. I think the film really shows that, how oil is the basis of every decision.

Group Project, Paper, and Life

I've been working on the group project a little bit. Our group decided to go to the play, 9 Parts of Desire and my group member Bailey and I will go this Thursday to see it. I think this play will really help us understand what being a woman in Iraq is really like. I think it'll help us prepare a good lecture and especially if other students see the play beforehand, we will have prior knowledge to pull from. I also finished my paper last night. I remembered in class, Rachel talking about some websites she found on gender roles and familial relationships. I was able to use those to help support my paper. I thought it was really interesting the comparison I could make between Turkish culture, Egyptian culture, and our own stereotypes. Everything's been pretty busy lately...but I remember a phrase that I learned in my communications class. Dumela! It means in South African, "hello or good day." But the way we used it in class was, "I believe in you, I affirm you, I support you."

Dumela!

Frustrated...

For the group project, I've been looking into information on Women in the Middle East and the book I chose was one that won't work for our group. I chose a book called "Women of Courage, Intimate Stories from Afghanistan," but it won't work for our group because it is just a collection of interviews. It doesn't seem to have a lot of substance for what the goal of the group project is to be. I did begin searching for films for us to watch during our presentation. The one given is called "Two Women" (1998) directed by Tahmineh Milani. This film chronicles the lives of two female students in Iran and how these two different women live their lives. I looked this film up online and found it for about $3.00 at half.com and Rotten Tomatoes gave it an 83% rating. I decided to keep looking for other films that would work well with our group project as well as other novels, since mine didn't work out!

Aunt Safiyya

While reading the novel, Aunt Safiyya, in the last two chapters the reader meets “the outlaws.” I find this term interesting because to me, it is used to describe a group of criminals. The image I get in my head is of the traditional American, old western outlaw. A rugged, rough and tumble criminal that drinks excessively and is not entirely all that smart. But the image the book portrays is one of maybe a group of rogue militia, but at the same time their interaction with the narrator’s father, Harbi, and the other monks definitely contrasts the standard image one gets with the term outlaw. These men are friends or at least sympathetic to Harbi and want to honor him as well as his friends. The bring gifts and are respectful to Harbi, the narrator’s father and even the villagers. When asked to leave because the image of having outlaws staying in their village looked inappropriate, the leader, Faris, reacts calmly to the request as opposed to Hinein. Faris even tells the narrator’s father that they arrived to the village by train which significantly contrasts the image in my head of country western outlaws thundering in on horses. I thought this was a very unique view of criminals for this novel, and it was one of situations that broke down a stereotype I had of what an outlaw is.

Aunt Safiyya

Reading the novel, Aunt Safiyya, one scene that caught my attention was in chapter two. The scene where the bey beats up and tortures Harbi. First of all, I didn’t understand why the bey was so upset in the first place. I got the feeling that based on his old age and senility, Harbi may have said something that angered him and he got paranoid. In his paranoia, he found Harbi a threat to his family and decided to take action against it. Secondly, I could not believe the scene where Harbi is being beaten up and tortured, and the narrator must watch. It was so graphic and angry. Harbi was pleading with his father, pleading with the narrator to stop and go get help. Then when the bey’s guards tied him up to a tree and began picking him up and down, scratching the skin from his back and legs, it was so torturous and cruel. The bey shows his callousness when Harbi is pleading and he continues to taunt and prod at Harbi’s chest. It seems to me that in this novel, same-sex relationships are very violent and volatile. The way the narrator’s mother disciplines the female children- physically hurting them for dropping a plate of cookies and basically for no real reason at all other than they turned out to be girls. The male-male relationship between the bey and his nephew, Harbi is just as violent. In our culture, most would never consider harming family like that, but in this culture it’s different. However, the opposite sex relationships are strikingly different. There is a significant amount of respect that one sex has for the other. In the relationship between the narrator’s father and Safiyya, though he has the final decision, he allows Safiyya to have a good amount of say in her relationships. I think the respect that is there is so great that it confuses be because the same-sex relationships are so violent. It was interesting to look at the familial social relationships in this family and culture.

Aladdin

In watching the film, “Reel Bad Arabs,” last Thursday an interesting topic came up in our class discussion. Most of my classmates pointed out how the commentary on the Disney film “Aladdin” really struck a cord with them. It did for me as well, and in “Reel Bad Arabs,” Shaheen discusses how the soundtrack in the film exemplifies this negative view of Arabs. Part of the song in the opening credits says, “They’ll cut off your ear if they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” If we take a look other aspects of the film rather than just the lyrics themselves, we can see other ways of how even Disney has exemplified the negative view on Arabs. One thing that caught my attention was the accents given to the characters. Like all Disney films, the most basic plot is good versus evil. In “Aladdin,” the “good characters” Aladdin and Jasmine are up against the villain, Jafar. Important things to notice is American accents are given to Aladdin and Jasmine, but a stereotypical Arabic accent is given to Jafar. I bet if the three characters mentioned had their images put side by side and a child was asked to point out the bad man, he or she would immediately point to Jafar. Even the way the characters are drawn in a cartoon promotes the stereotype. Jafar was given more of the facial features associated with Arabs as well as made to look more sinister. Jasmine and Aladdin had less pronounced Middle Eastern features other than they were slightly browner in color in comparison to traditionally white characters. Other than that there really weren’t any defining facial features that would make them look “Arab.” There is an underlying message that Disney is promoting and their main demographic is young children. So even our youth are being taught from the time they can watch films that Arabs are bad.

"Reel Bad Arabs"

Last night I watched the short film called, “Reel Bad Arabs” for my ENGL 1100 class. Our focus is on Middle Eastern Literature and Film, and in this movie Jack Shaheen explains how Hollywood vilifies Arabs in accordance with several different agendas. The way Arabs are vilified that I found most interesting was in the case of American films portraying Arabs using a negative stereotype according to the U.S. government’s political agenda. Shaheen explained how three different events changed the Arab image after World War II, including the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, the Arab oil embargo, and the Iranian revolution. In the case of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, the U.S. government sided with Israel which put Palestine in a negative light. Shaheen explained that especially in the 1980’s and 1990’s Washington policies dictated how the country viewed Palestine, it was primarily seeing them as terrorists rather than people. So, for instance films like “Rules of Engagement” show a slaughter of people by American armed forces as a righteous killing. In the film, as in real life as well, if Arabs are not seen as human then anything can be justified. I think this is an important connection to make to the Holocaust of World War II. The mass genocide by Hitler shows how downright hatred for a group of people perpetuates violence because that group is seen as less than human. There is no emotional connection for those committing the violence to make, which is also a connection that can be made with African Americans in the United States. A group of people vilified because of the way they look or the images and stereotypes that surround them. Overall, I thought it was interesting how much Washington policies dictate American film. We see it now, a governmental push for an environmentally-friendly country and some of the more recent films out of Hollywood mirror that same push such as “Wall-e” or “The Happening.” I did like the film “Reel Bad Arabs” though; I think for our class it will be important to see how literature and film influence our cultural ideas on the Middle Eastern world.