TV/Movies Megathread

[Berkut]

An even wider point of course is the general effort by many people to destroy language and make words devoid of meaning. My opinion on those people is a negative one, but, I think, not a racist one.

Thought worth speaking directly to this bit. Language isn't static and meanings evolve. And understandable in this sense when religious identity isn't always readily available, so the intolerant look for proxies like the brown skinned appearance common to many Muslims. A terrible proxy to my mind, given that brown skin is common to many non-Muslim identities but then I'm not the one directing the intolerant.

Its important that idenity politics have an easily identifiable identity to be outraged about, and racism is the trump card for this effort, so everything that the left wing nutjobs want to be outraged about must be racist.

It really isn't that complicated.

The show shows some Muslims in abad light, so it must be racist. The fact that the primary Muslim villain in the show is painfully, excruciatingly white is no reason to not be outraged about the "racism", we just need to re-define what racism means so we can make sure our outrages is outrage against racism!

Just wanted to make clear that I'm pointedly not engaging with your posts as it is clear you aren't really posting in good faith. You've started with the principle that all of it must be bad and therefore there's nothing at all relevant about the discussion of religious intolerance and the impact that shows like Homeland can have on perceptions.  Doesn't really seem like it would be worth engaging you in a discussion so after this, I'll refrain from commenting.

If you want to talk about *religious* intolerance and a show like Homeland, then do so - but that is a very different discussion from racism.

Bitching about religious intolerance, while insisting that we use words like "racism" to mean "religious intolerance" is...whats a good term for that....???? Oh - not arguing in good faith. So to speak.

[crazy canuck]

I understand your point Garbon.  Racism and religious intolerance overlap in the case of Muslims.  It would be better to describe it as discrimination but that is a word that has lost meaning from overuse.   

[crazy canuck]

Bitching about religious intolerance, while insisting that we use words like "racism" to mean "religious intolerance" is...whats a good term for that....???? Oh - not arguing in good faith. So to speak.

When one points out religious intolerance is that "bitching".  If racism is a significant underlying factor motivating the religious intolerance is it so wrong to draw attention to that fact?  What has you so worked up here?   

[The Minsky Moment]

Spoilers, of course, in the below.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/02/homeland-is-the-most-bigoted-show-on-television/?utm_term=.2f6d2acf308b

'Homeland' is the most bigoted show on television

A blonde, white Red Riding Hood lost in a forest of faceless Muslim wolves: This is how "Homeland's" creators have chosen to represent their show as it begins its fourth season, which sees CIA officer Carrie Mathison stationed in Pakistan. It is also the perfect encapsulation of everything that's wrong with this show.

Since its first episode, "Homeland," which returns Sunday, has churned out Islamophobic stereotypes as if its writers were getting paid by the cliché. Yet the show, created by "24" veterans Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa and former Israeli paratrooper Gideon Raff, continues to rack up awards, critical praise and millions of viewers.

For starters, the show is riddled with basic errors about Islam and the Middle East. Laila Al Arian points out some of the more obvious ones: You don't need to bury the Koran after someone's dropped it on the ground; Issa, the son of terrorist leader Abu Nazir, has his name mispronounced by everyone on the show; Roya Hammad — there to remind us that even a Westernized, business-suit-wearing Arab is not to be trusted — is supposedly Palestinian but has a Persian first name.

More broadly, "Homeland" carelessly traffics in absurd and damaging stereotypes. The show hit peak idiocy, for instance, at the beginning of season two, when Beirut's posh Hamra Street was depicted as a grubby generic videogame universe of Scary Muslims in which Mathison must disguise herself to avoid detection. The real Hamra Street is a cosmopolitan, expat-filled area near the American University, where Western chains like Starbucks and Gloria Jean's compete for customers and no one would look twice at a blonde, blue-eyed white woman with uncovered hair. Islam itself is presented as sinister and suspicious: Brody secretly prays in his garage to foreboding music, and an imam who's outraged that worshippers were shot during a police operation at his mosque turns out to be hiding information about Brody's fellow POW-turned-terrorist Tom Walker.

These errors all add up to something important: The entire structure of "Homeland" is built on mashing together every manifestation of political Islam, Arabs, Muslims and the whole Middle East into a Frankenstein-monster global terrorist threat that simply doesn't exist.

The arch villain of season one is Abu Nazir, a member of al-Qaeda (and obvious bin Laden stand-in) who's plotting an attack on the United States with the possible help of Marine-turned-terrorist Nicholas Brody. At the beginning of season two, we see Abu Nazir meeting with a Hezbollah leader (who's also a wife-beater, naturally) in Beirut. And in season three we learn that a deadly bomb attack on CIA headquarters was in fact financed by the Iranian government, and that terrorism suspect Brody is being hidden in rogue state Venezuela.

In just a few steps, the show has neatly stitched together all the current bogeymen of U.S. foreign policy. (The ISIS tie-in is presumably coming in season five.)

There's just one small problem: Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah don't actually like each other. Hezbollah is currently fighting the al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. Iran and al-Qaeda were on opposite side of the sectarian war in Iraq in the mid-2000s. And at the moment, the United States  is de facto cooperating with Iran to prop up the Shia central government of Iraq against the Sunni forces of ISIS.

But all of this is way too nuanced for "Homeland," in which Muslims can play one of exactly two roles: terrorists or willing collaborators with U.S. intelligence forces. (This latter role is repeatedly filled by women on the show, who of course need the CIA's protection from their violent Muslim husbands, epitomized by the murderous Majid Javadi in season three.) When Brody's wife discovers he's a Secret Muslim and waves the Koran at him, shouting, "These are the people who tortured you!" she's not just being melodramatic. She's expressing the show's core philosophy. Muslims — be they Arab, Iranian or Pakistani — are brutal terrorists who can't be trusted, and they're all out to get us.

It's easy to argue that "Homeland" is just a TV show, a thriller that naturally demands diabolical villains and high stakes. But these same stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims are used politically to justify actions in the real world — U.S. wars, covert operations and drone strikes; CIA detention and torture; racist policing, domestic surveillance and militarized borders. In this context, "Homeland" is not just mindless entertainment, but a device that perpetuates racist ideas that have real consequences for ordinary people's lives.

There's probably an argument to made against Homeland but this isn't it.
Issa's name isn't pronounced correctly?  NOOOOO!
Muslims are shown *egad* burying a Koran (BTW a common method of disposing of a old Koran - Jews do the same thing with Torah scrolls)? 
A guy who wears a business suit is a bad guy?  Should they make all bad guys wear traditional garb - what's the point there?
A Hezbollah terrorist beats his wife?  Gee so sorry we are stereotyping Hezbollah guys.  I'm sure most of them are really sweet to their wives when not blowing up buses and Marines.
The fictional version of al-Qaeda that is not actually al-Qaeda has different alliances then the real al-Qaeda.  OUTRAGEOUS!

[celedhring]

I was asking myself the "is this show racist?" question regarding Man in the High Castle and the whole "yellow peril" themes. But I can excuse it because of the subversion that represents putting white Americans in the position of being the dominated race. Then again, I'm not Asian, has this show been controversial on that regard?

Regarding Homeland, the show always tries to put sympathetic muslim characters (who are often fucked with by the "good guys") so to me it definitely tries to create a non-manichean narrative. It's certainly not very flattering to the CIA. In a way it reminds me a lot of Le Carré's books (quality of the writing nothwithstanding) and how the Cold War spionage game ended up morally destroying those who took part in it, no matter which side they were on.

[crazy canuck]

There's probably an argument to made against Homeland but this isn't it.
Issa's name isn't pronounced correctly?  NOOOOO!
Muslims are shown *egad* burying a Koran (BTW a common method of disposing of a old Koran - Jews do the same thing with Torah scrolls)? 
A guy who wears a business suit is a bad guy?  Should they make all bad guys wear traditional garb - what's the point there?
A Hezbollah terrorist beats his wife?  Gee so sorry we are stereotyping Hezbollah guys.  I'm sure most of them are really sweet to their wives when not blowing up buses and Marines.
The fictional version of al-Qaeda that is not actually al-Qaeda has different alliances then the real al-Qaeda.  OUTRAGEOUS!

If there was not a generalized anti-Muslim sentiment in the US and this particular administration your sarcasm would make more sense.

[Tamas]

I was asking myself the "is this show racist?" question regarding Man in the High Castle and the whole "yellow peril" themes. But I can excuse it because of the subversion that represents putting white Americans in the position of being the dominated race. Then again, I'm not Asian, has this show been controversial on that regard?

Regarding Homeland, the show always tries to put sympathetic muslim characters (who are often fucked with by the "good guys") so to me it definitely tries to create a non-manichean narrative. It's certainly not very flattering to the CIA. In a way it reminds me a lot of Le Carré's books (quality of the writing nothwithstanding) and how the Cold War spionage game ended up morally destroying those who took part in it, no matter which side they were on.

I am not targeting this specifically at you, but rather you reminded me of this: I do wonder how often the accusation/cryout of racism reflects more the suppressed views of the accuser than anything else.

Your comment reminded me of this because it never even occurred to me that the show was racist against Asians. I even found their portrayal of the Japanese society more nuanced than the Nazi one.

[Eddie Teach]

There's probably an argument to made against Homeland but this isn't it.
Issa's name isn't pronounced correctly?  NOOOOO!
Muslims are shown *egad* burying a Koran (BTW a common method of disposing of a old Koran - Jews do the same thing with Torah scrolls)? 
A guy who wears a business suit is a bad guy?  Should they make all bad guys wear traditional garb - what's the point there?
A Hezbollah terrorist beats his wife?  Gee so sorry we are stereotyping Hezbollah guys.  I'm sure most of them are really sweet to their wives when not blowing up buses and Marines.
The fictional version of al-Qaeda that is not actually al-Qaeda has different alliances then the real al-Qaeda.  OUTRAGEOUS!

If there was not a generalized anti-Muslim sentiment in the US and this particular administration your sarcasm would make more sense.

Post article written in 2014. But go on thinking the world revolves around Trump, at least one person agrees with you.

[The Brain]

Is it racism that makes everyone beet up on Tampax?

[Tamas]

 

[garbon]

There's probably an argument to made against Homeland but this isn't it.
Issa's name isn't pronounced correctly?  NOOOOO!
Muslims are shown *egad* burying a Koran (BTW a common method of disposing of a old Koran - Jews do the same thing with Torah scrolls)? 
A guy who wears a business suit is a bad guy?  Should they make all bad guys wear traditional garb - what's the point there?
A Hezbollah terrorist beats his wife?  Gee so sorry we are stereotyping Hezbollah guys.  I'm sure most of them are really sweet to their wives when not blowing up buses and Marines.
The fictional version of al-Qaeda that is not actually al-Qaeda has different alliances then the real al-Qaeda.  OUTRAGEOUS!

If there was not a generalized anti-Muslim sentiment in the US and this particular administration your sarcasm would make more sense.

Post article written in 2014. But go on thinking the world revolves around Trump, at least one person agrees with you.

True but then general point holds. We've had a fair amount of anti-Muslim sentiment sine '01 and while not as bad as that year (when an Indian's friend's family shop was vandalized with anti-Muslim slurs though they were Hindu), it is pretty bad during the current administration.

[garbon]

I understand your point Garbon.  Racism and religious intolerance overlap in the case of Muslims.  It would be better to describe it as discrimination but that is a word that has lost meaning from overuse.   

Yeah, I'd agree with that.  Also, as I said, I wouldn't advance that you can be racist against Muslims but that racism is very closely tied with anti-Muslim sentiment that it seems odd to get worked up about that misuse as they are connected.

[garbon]

Spoilers, of course, in the below.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/02/homeland-is-the-most-bigoted-show-on-television/?utm_term=.2f6d2acf308b

'Homeland' is the most bigoted show on television

A blonde, white Red Riding Hood lost in a forest of faceless Muslim wolves: This is how "Homeland's" creators have chosen to represent their show as it begins its fourth season, which sees CIA officer Carrie Mathison stationed in Pakistan. It is also the perfect encapsulation of everything that's wrong with this show.

Since its first episode, "Homeland," which returns Sunday, has churned out Islamophobic stereotypes as if its writers were getting paid by the cliché. Yet the show, created by "24" veterans Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa and former Israeli paratrooper Gideon Raff, continues to rack up awards, critical praise and millions of viewers.

For starters, the show is riddled with basic errors about Islam and the Middle East. Laila Al Arian points out some of the more obvious ones: You don't need to bury the Koran after someone's dropped it on the ground; Issa, the son of terrorist leader Abu Nazir, has his name mispronounced by everyone on the show; Roya Hammad — there to remind us that even a Westernized, business-suit-wearing Arab is not to be trusted — is supposedly Palestinian but has a Persian first name.

More broadly, "Homeland" carelessly traffics in absurd and damaging stereotypes. The show hit peak idiocy, for instance, at the beginning of season two, when Beirut's posh Hamra Street was depicted as a grubby generic videogame universe of Scary Muslims in which Mathison must disguise herself to avoid detection. The real Hamra Street is a cosmopolitan, expat-filled area near the American University, where Western chains like Starbucks and Gloria Jean's compete for customers and no one would look twice at a blonde, blue-eyed white woman with uncovered hair. Islam itself is presented as sinister and suspicious: Brody secretly prays in his garage to foreboding music, and an imam who's outraged that worshippers were shot during a police operation at his mosque turns out to be hiding information about Brody's fellow POW-turned-terrorist Tom Walker.

These errors all add up to something important: The entire structure of "Homeland" is built on mashing together every manifestation of political Islam, Arabs, Muslims and the whole Middle East into a Frankenstein-monster global terrorist threat that simply doesn't exist.

The arch villain of season one is Abu Nazir, a member of al-Qaeda (and obvious bin Laden stand-in) who's plotting an attack on the United States with the possible help of Marine-turned-terrorist Nicholas Brody. At the beginning of season two, we see Abu Nazir meeting with a Hezbollah leader (who's also a wife-beater, naturally) in Beirut. And in season three we learn that a deadly bomb attack on CIA headquarters was in fact financed by the Iranian government, and that terrorism suspect Brody is being hidden in rogue state Venezuela.

In just a few steps, the show has neatly stitched together all the current bogeymen of U.S. foreign policy. (The ISIS tie-in is presumably coming in season five.)

There's just one small problem: Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah don't actually like each other. Hezbollah is currently fighting the al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. Iran and al-Qaeda were on opposite side of the sectarian war in Iraq in the mid-2000s. And at the moment, the United States  is de facto cooperating with Iran to prop up the Shia central government of Iraq against the Sunni forces of ISIS.

But all of this is way too nuanced for "Homeland," in which Muslims can play one of exactly two roles: terrorists or willing collaborators with U.S. intelligence forces. (This latter role is repeatedly filled by women on the show, who of course need the CIA's protection from their violent Muslim husbands, epitomized by the murderous Majid Javadi in season three.) When Brody's wife discovers he's a Secret Muslim and waves the Koran at him, shouting, "These are the people who tortured you!" she's not just being melodramatic. She's expressing the show's core philosophy. Muslims — be they Arab, Iranian or Pakistani — are brutal terrorists who can't be trusted, and they're all out to get us.

It's easy to argue that "Homeland" is just a TV show, a thriller that naturally demands diabolical villains and high stakes. But these same stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims are used politically to justify actions in the real world — U.S. wars, covert operations and drone strikes; CIA detention and torture; racist policing, domestic surveillance and militarized borders. In this context, "Homeland" is not just mindless entertainment, but a device that perpetuates racist ideas that have real consequences for ordinary people's lives.

There's probably an argument to made against Homeland but this isn't it.
Issa's name isn't pronounced correctly?  NOOOOO!
Muslims are shown *egad* burying a Koran (BTW a common method of disposing of a old Koran - Jews do the same thing with Torah scrolls)? 
A guy who wears a business suit is a bad guy?  Should they make all bad guys wear traditional garb - what's the point there?
A Hezbollah terrorist beats his wife?  Gee so sorry we are stereotyping Hezbollah guys.  I'm sure most of them are really sweet to their wives when not blowing up buses and Marines.
The fictional version of al-Qaeda that is not actually al-Qaeda has different alliances then the real al-Qaeda.  OUTRAGEOUS!

Agreed that it is not the best argument - literally was first thing that popped up that wasn't some pseudo blog like medium. I do think, though not clearly stated, that if making such an argument it is key to see how Muslims are presented in media - particular in a context where there is a lot of bigotry against them in a society.

[garbon]

Regarding Homeland, the show always tries to put sympathetic muslim characters (who are often fucked with by the "good guys") so to me it definitely tries to create a non-manichean narrative. It's certainly not very flattering to the CIA. In a way it reminds me a lot of Le Carré's books (quality of the writing nothwithstanding) and how the Cold War spionage game ended up morally destroying those who took part in it, no matter which side they were on.

See, I think that's the issue. They are either evil crazy plotters or sympathetic characters who are dupes of the CIA (presenting them as then childlike incompetents).  Closest truly positive might have been the Muslim CIA agent but I believe she gets killed off, can't really recall.

[Berkut]

There's probably an argument to made against Homeland but this isn't it.
Issa's name isn't pronounced correctly?  NOOOOO!
Muslims are shown *egad* burying a Koran (BTW a common method of disposing of a old Koran - Jews do the same thing with Torah scrolls)? 
A guy who wears a business suit is a bad guy?  Should they make all bad guys wear traditional garb - what's the point there?
A Hezbollah terrorist beats his wife?  Gee so sorry we are stereotyping Hezbollah guys.  I'm sure most of them are really sweet to their wives when not blowing up buses and Marines.
The fictional version of al-Qaeda that is not actually al-Qaeda has different alliances then the real al-Qaeda.  OUTRAGEOUS!

If there was not a generalized anti-Muslim sentiment in the US and this particular administration your sarcasm would make more sense.

Psst. Homeland pre-dates this administration.