Within the article, “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People,” Southern Illinois University Professor Jack Shaheen (2003) emphasizes that similar to how children use repetition to memorize letters of the alphabet, algebraic formulas, as well as historical dates, Hollywood too uses reiteration as a teaching tool in which it educates movie audiences over and over again by perpetuating certain stereotypes and clichés (p. 172). In particular, Shaheen (2003) not only underscores that Hollywood deliberately projects slandered images of the Arab people so as to get moviegoers to believe that they are unusual and constitute a threat to the West, but more importantly, that Hollywood strives to demonstrate that because of their religious fanaticism, …show more content…
215). Contending that universally all Arabs are in fact endowed with a national character which is marked by a repressed tendency to resort to violence - and that this inclination is reinforced by the Islamic religion which promises Arabs paradise as a reward for spreading Islam by force - Patai accentuates that the West does not conjure up unfavorable attributes but merely amplifies what already exists (“Violence, Irrationality, Barbarian, Savage,” 2010). With the West merely deriving personality traits from ordinary Arab norms and customs such as the severity of punishment, the importance of honor, the disproportionate treatment of women, and an obsessive preoccupation with sex, Patai maintains that while it may be true that typical stereotypes in Western films may be exaggerated at times, it is significant to comprehend that they are not formed out of nowhere, and that for the most part are fairly truthful (Coupal, & Hutchinson, 2006, p.