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revolting paramount



This campaign against the film "rules of engagement" is ludicrous. For
every Arab-American who deplores the portrayal of Arab children as
deceitful yankie-phobes, there will be two more who are thrilled to see
kids with a political conscience, filled with hatred of the oppressor.
Audiences with no knowledge of the Arab world will get a similar
impression.  Celluloid is not a subtle medium; you either get cute long-
suffering nature-loving spiritual Arabs (tibetans, indians, mexicans), or
you get them filled with a sense of grievance that can spill over into
revenge. Myself, I think the latter makes better viewing - do I really
want to watch a sympathetic movie about vietnamese collaborators? - though
professional lobbyists might be uncomfortable with what they see as
negative images. 





he first thing that strikes me about the professor's question is that
it's damn silly. Is it the media's job to portray anybody as a hero? Apart
from jingoistic war journalism, and law-and-order films, heroes are a
dying breed.  Here's a question; when did you see a heroic portrayal of
Finnish people? 

On Wed, 12 Apr 2000, Hamre, Drew wrote:

> Jack Shaheen has a question for you.  Can you think of an instance where
> Arabs were portrayed humanely or heroically in the Western media?  Some
> years ago, Professor Emeritus Shaheen (Southern Illinois University) asked
> this question of more than 200 American secondary school teachers.  Only a
> handful could respond ... and these were secondary school teachers!  Think
> how dismal the results would be among the general population.
> 
> In America, anti-Arab sentiment has been called the 'last accepted racism'.
> Commentators as diverse as Denis Halliday and Scott Ritter have cited this,
> the ugliest of racial politics, as an ennabling factor in the calamitous
> sanctions against Iraq.  The portrayal of Arabs by the American media has
> drawn the criticism of the UN's Commission on Human Rights
> <http://www.unhcr.ch/refworld/un/chr/chr95/country/78add1.htm>.
> 
> So against the silent backdrop of an excess 500,000 deaths of Iraqi children
> since sanctions began, we have two revolting new films from Paramount:
> >> "Rules of Engagement" was released last weekend and is the top-grossing
> picture in the U.S.  The trailers for this film are appalling; the film, if
> possible, is worse.  The ADC's letter, below, says it all.
> >> "Deterrence" sets up a cheery scenario: in 2008, Saddam Hussein's
> successor invades Kuwait, slaughtering a U.N. force under American
> leadership.  In response, the U.S. president threatens a retaliatory nuclear
> attack on Baghdad, giving the residents exactly one hour and 20 minutes to
> vacate the city.  Unlike "Rules", "Deterrence" had a limited release and
> appears to be on the fast-track to video.  A Washington Post review is
> attached.
> 
> Nearly as frightful as the movies are critics' blindness to the insidious
> message.  Not one review of "Rules" (I've read five) mentioned the racial
> subtext ... an omission as worrisome as the film itself.
> 
> Regards,
> Drew Hamre
> Golden Valley, MN USA
> P.S. -- In a bit of real-world political irony, "Rules" co-star Tommy Lee
> Jones was VP Al Gore's roommate at Harvard.
>  
> ===
> ADC Press Release/Action Alert: Protest Paramount's Racist Film "Rules of
> Engagement"
> 
> ACTION REQUESTED: Please contact Paramount Pictures and let them know that
> such blatant anti-Arab racism is unacceptable.  
> 
> Write to:
> Ms. Sherry Lansing
> Chair
> Paramount Motion Pictures Group
> 5555 Melrose Avenue
> Hollywood, CA 90038-3197
> Or fax to: (323) 862-8456
> Or email: 5555@paramount.com
> 
> Please use the letter and/or press release below as talking points, and
> please cc any correspondence to <adc@adc.org>.
> 
> ADC is also encouraging its members and chapters to consider organizing
> protests and pickets at cinemas showing "Rules of Engagement."  If ever a
> film deserved to be protested, this is it.  Please contact ADC for advice or
> assistance.
> 
> TEXT OF ADC PRESS RELEASE:
> 
> Arab Americans Denounce Paramount's Racist Film "Rules of Engagement" 
> 
> Washington D.C., April 11 - The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
> (ADC), the nation's largest grassroots Arab-American organization, in an
> open letter to Paramount Pictures Chair Shelly Lansing denounced the new
> Paramount film "Rules of Engagement."  Released on Friday, "Rules of
> Engagement" was the number one grossing film over the weekend earning $15
> million.  ADC writes that "'Rules of Engagement can only be considered in
> the same light as other films whose raison d'etre is to deliberately and
> systematically vilify an entire people, such as 'Birth of a Nation' and 'The
> Eternal Jew.'"
> 
> The letter from ADC's Communications Director Hussein Ibish to Paramount
> says that while the film contains countless negative portrayals of Arabs,
> "sympathetic or positive images of Arabs are easy to list: there are none."
> Offensive material includes:
> 
> - Repeated portrayals of Arab children as hateful, vicious and murderous.
> These children are shown several times shooting guns at the film's US Marine
> protagonists and shouting curses.
> 
> - The portrayal of Yemeni society as an anti-American mob just waiting to
> erupt at any second.  The images of Arabs in the film are solely
> stereotypical - veiled women, men in headscarfs and all shouting fanatical,
> angry slogans and firing automatic weapons at a peaceful US embassy.
> 
> - Everyone in Yemen is complicit in the anti-American violence.  Witnesses
> lie.  The police lie.  Doctors lie.  Everyone in Yemen lies.  Meanwhile, the
> streets are literally strewn with cassette tapes calling, again without any
> apparent reason, for "all good Muslims" to kill any and all Americans they
> can find.  Yemen, we are assured, is a "breeding ground" for terrorists.
> 
> ADC first contacted Paramount with concerns about "Rules of Engagement" in
> January, but received no cooperation.  ADC wrote that "In spite of this
> almost total lack of cooperation from Paramount, we continued to hope
> against hope that 'Rules of Engagement' would not be defamatory against
> Arabs, and showing the utmost restraint, withheld judgment until viewing the
> movie in a commercial cinema after its general release."
> 
> The letter continues: "In retrospect, it is easy to understand why Paramount
> stonewalled all our attempts at dialogue and refused even the elementary
> courtesy of a pre-release screening ... [since] these are the images that
> define the Arab as the quintessential 'other,' and depict all Arabs, men,
> women and children, as the inherent, irrational and implacable terrorist
> enemy of the United States.  They make the everyday lives of Arab-Americans
> and Arabs in the United States that much more difficult and dangerous."
> 
> FULL TEXT OF ADC COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR HUSSEIN IBISH'S LETTER TO PARAMOUNT
> PICTURES:
> 
> April 11, 2000
> Ms. Sherry Lansing
> Chair
> Paramount Motion Pictures Group
> By Fax: 323-862-8456
> 
> Dear Ms. Lansing:
> 
> On January 27, 2000, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC),
> the nation's largest Arab-American membership organization, approached
> Paramount Pictures with serious concerns about "Rules of Engagement," which
> were raised by images included in trailers for the film which were then
> available.  We reiterated these concerns during numerous telephone
> conversations with Paramount Executive Vice-President  Blaise Noto.  Our
> concerns were never directly addressed, and our repeated requests to view
> the film were ignored.  In spite of this almost total lack of cooperation
> from Paramount, we continued to hope against hope that "Rules of Engagement"
> would not be defamatory against Arabs, and showing the utmost restraint,
> withheld judgment until viewing the movie in a commercial cinema after its
> general release.
> 
> I have just returned from that viewing.  Nothing in my 36 years as an
> Arab-American, and my years as a graduate student studying literature and
> popular culture at the University of Massachusetts, and my one and a half
> years as Communications Director of ADC, during which I thought I had seen
> it all, prepared me for the explosion of hatred that burst through the
> screen during "Rules of Engagement."  The incessant torrent of negative,
> hateful and harmful images of Arabs, Arab culture and the Arab world in
> "Rules of Engagement" is unequaled by anything I have previously
> encountered.  I tell you frankly that, as an Arab-American, and a fairly
> thick-skinned one at that, the experience of watching "Rules of Engagement"
> was like being physically beaten.
> 
> "Rules of Engagement" contains so many negative portrayals of Arabs that it
> would be quite impossible to list and analyze all of them.  On the other
> hand, sympathetic or positive images of Arabs are easy to list: there are
> none.  Among the objectionable images are:
> 
> - Perhaps, the most offensive of all, the repeated portrayals of Arab
> children as hateful, vicious and murderous.  These children are shown
> several times shooting guns at the film's US Marine protagonists, pretending
> to shoot guns at them, and shouting hateful curses at them as well.  This
> deliberate defaming of children is truly inexcusable.
> 
> - The portrayal of Yemeni society as an anti-American mob just waiting to
> erupt at any second.  The mere presence of an unidentified American (played
> by Tommy Lee Jones) in the streets of what is supposed to be Sana'a is
> enough to set off a fanatical anti-American mob. We are told that
> anti-American protests are held outside the US embassy every week.  The mob
> which besieges the US embassy is driven by an undefined hatred of the United
> States - one can only imagine what they are angry about.  Nonetheless, they
> attack the American embassy with a murderous rage, apparently intent on
> killing everyone inside.  The images of Arabs in the film are only and
> solely stereotypical - veiled women, men in headscarfs and all shouting
> fanatical, angry slogans and firing automatic weapons at a peaceful US
> embassy.  Needless to say, such a thing has never happened in Yemen.  It is
> a grotesque defamation and complete distortion of Yemeni society.
> 
> - Everyone in Yemen seems to be complicit in the anti-American violence.
> The film make it clear that the mob and the snipers are working
> hand-in-glove.  The government provides no security, and then, in a blatant
> cover-up, moves in and clears away all the weapons that the demonstrators
> were using against the American embassy.  Witnesses lie.  The police lie.
> Doctors lie.  Everyone in Yemen lies.  Meanwhile, the streets are literally
> strewn with cassette tapes calling, again without any apparent reason, for
> "all good Muslims" to kill any and all Americans they can find.  Yemen, we
> are assured, is a "breeding ground" for terrorists.
> 
> These images are repeated time and again throughout the movie.  For most
> Americans who see it, "Rules of Engagement" will contain the most
> "information" about Yemen that they will ever receive in an hour and a half,
> and possibly in an entire lifetime.  Why Paramount chose Yemen for this
> outrageous exercise in national character assassination and slander, we may
> never know.  But the fact remains that you have done so.
> 
> In all honesty, I never thought that a film produced in the present day
> United States could be this unabashedly racist.  Mr. Noto's letter of March
> 30, the only formal communication ADC has received from Paramount during our
> long months of fruitless effort to engage in a constructive dialogue, claims
> "'Rules of Engagement' is not anti-Arabic, anti-Moroccan or anti-Yemenite
> but rather anti-extremist."  "This film is not a negative portrayal of any
> government or people," Mr. Noto writes.  In fact, "Rules of Engagement" does
> not really belong in the same category with most films that include negative
> or racist portrayals of Arabs.  The film does not focus on a terrorist group
> or band of fanatics, but casts its aspersions far wider by explicitly and
> directly defaming a whole culture and society.  "Rules of Engagement can
> only be considered in the same light as other films whose raison d'etre is
> to deliberately and systematically vilify an entire people.  The spirit of
> raw hatred that animated films such as "Birth of a Nation" and "The Eternal
> Jew" once again dances across the screen in "Rules of Engagement."
> 
> In retrospect, it is easy to understand why Paramount stonewalled all our
> attempts at dialogue and refused even the elementary courtesy of a
> pre-release screening.  It is because this movie is absolutely indefensible
> in its portrayal of Arabs and Arab culture.  These are the images that
> define the Arab as the quintessential "other" in contemporary American
> culture, that depict all Arabs, men, women and children, as the inherent,
> irrational and implacable terrorist enemy of the United States.  As "Rules
> of Engagement" so charmingly puts it, these are "motherfuckers" who should
> be "wasted."   These are indeed the images that lead to the high incidence
> of hate crimes against Arab Americans, that produce airport profiling, that
> have led to the use of secret evidence in American courts, that make the
> everyday lives of Arabs in the United States that much more difficult and
> dangerous.
> 
> No apology can undo the damage done by "Rules of Engagement."  Sadly
> Paramount's name will be forever associated with this truly appalling film.
> 
> Yours,
> Hussein Ibish
> Communications Director, ADC
> 
> cc:
> Sumner M. Redstone, Chair and CEO, Viacom Inc.;
> Adam Schroeder, Executive Producer, Paramount Pictures;
> William Friedkin, Director;
> Blaise Noto, Executive Vice-President, Worldwide Publicity, Marketing
> Division, Paramount Pictures;
> 
>  ========================================================================
>  ADC is the largest Arab-American grassroots organization in the United
> States. It was founded in 1980 by former Senator James Abourezk. To  receive
> membership information, please send us your name and mailing  address or
> visit our website.  To receive or stop receiving ADC's email updates, send a
> message to  <majordomo@adc.org> with the following in the body:  to
> subscribe type "subscribe updates"  to unscubscribe type "unsubscribe
> updates"
>  ========================================================================
> 
> ===
> 
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/17/027l-031700-idx.html
> 'Deterrence': A Fascinating Blast
> By Desson Howe
> 
> Friday, March 17, 2000; Page N46 
> 
> A NUCLEAR war movie is, almost by definition, a grabber.
> 
> It's hard not to become caught up in the possibility of the entire human
> race turning into radioactive charcoal. Secondly, these movies--from "Seven
> Days in May" to "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
> the Bomb"--are virtually always structured by a nail-biting,
> minute-to-minute timeline.
> 
> The end of the world is ticking away. So you watch the game of global
> chicken with bated breath: Is the president bluffing or will he go through
> with those airborne missiles of death? Is the inscrutable, defiant enemy
> going to fold or stand firm?
> 
> "Deterrence," starring Kevin Pollak, is a surprisingly gripping experience
> for a movie of such modest means. Writer-director Rod Lurie has created a
> well-mounted sequence of tension, which transcends the need for glossy
> production and special effects. This thing starts small but grows on you,
> moment by moment.
> 
> Thanks to a blizzard, President Walter Emerson (Pollak) finds himself stuck
> in a Colorado diner with his Chief of Staff Marshall Thompson (Timothy
> Hutton), National Security Adviser Gayle Redford (Sheryl Lee Ralph), his
> security detail, a video cameraman and a scattering of staff and patrons.
> 
> The year is 2008. President Emerson, a handpicked vice president who became
> commander in chief when the president died, is in the middle of the
> presidential primaries. He is celebrating victory in Colorado when the IBS
> network reports breaking news. Saddam Hussein's successor in Iraq has
> invaded the Emirate of Kuwait, slaughtering a U.N. force under American
> leadership on the way. But the majority of U.S. forces are in position for a
> breaking crisis in North Korea. An unelected president battling for his
> party's leadership is facing a two-front war. He must react immediately and
> decisively.
> 
> At the risk of spoiling things, let's say the president strongly considers
> all the possibilities: Let Hussein's successor take over Kuwait or take
> military action? Conventional or nuclear? The road to the president's final
> decision is a tortuous (torturous) one. It is the dramatic meat of the
> movie.
> 
> Emerson hears from every conceivable corner: advisers Thompson and Redford,
> who are anything but in agreement, his Cabinet, and the Iraqi U.N.
> ambassador, to name a few. He also gets a mouthful from the humble taxpayers
> sitting in Morty's Roadside Diner, including proprietor Harvey (Bajda
> Djola), a Canadian waitress (Clotilde Courau), two wealthy New Yorkers
> (Kathryn Morris and Michael Mantell) and a redneck regular (Sean Astin), who
> hates every foreign nation in existence.
> 
> Using the IBS cameraman as a hookup, Emerson sits down on a rickety vinyl
> chair to inform the nation of his decision.
> 
> The most enjoyable thing about this movie is the modulation of information.
> Lurie gives us strategic revelations--from the president's religious beliefs
> to the movie's ultimate punch line--that completely redefine things--and
> just when you thought you had it all figured. The atmosphere is just right.
> With its black-and-white opening sequence, followed by color the moment we
> first encounter the president, Lurie evokes a classic B-movie atmosphere.
> And in President Emerson, Lurie has created a memorably inscrutable
> character. As the movie progresses, your interest from the external wartime
> situation moves inward--to Emerson's moral makeup. What is really going on
> inside that head? The fate of the world hinges on the question. And that's
> more than enough to keep you watching until the very end.
> 
> DETERRENCE (R, 103 minutes) -- Contains emotionally intense material and
> obscenity. 
> -- 
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