tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
You’re talking about negative portrayals of Arabs, which is its own problematic topic.
What mainstream movie has “Islam is an evil religion” as its subject? I can’t name one.
Regardless, I’m not sure what exactly you’re trying to prove here. Of course stereotyping Arabs is ridiculous and they shouldn’t do that.
Take the plot of Iron Man as an example. In the original conception, the Afghanistan cell of the Ten Rings who captured Tony Stark were supposed to be a Middle Eastern terrorist group similar to Al Qaeda. That depiction did not require casting Islam itself as the source of some sort of global terrorist evil, nor did it imply that Islamic mystics are out there doing magic to give people superpowers. It was simply a reference to real-world sociopolitical dynamics in a time and place. Do you see that distinction?
Incidentally, the Ten Rings imagery included Mongolian script as a reference to the Mandarin’s comic book plot line. The inexplicable connection of Mongolians with Middle Eastern terrorism led to a formal protest by the government of Mongolia, which in turn led to an apology by Marvel and a re-write of the Ten Rings concept. Those are the dynamics under which these movies are produced. It’s not 1964, the whole world is watching these movies.
I’m absolutely not here to produce a defense of religion or specific religions. I’m saying that it’s not acceptable to make scary caricatures of people on the basis of their culture and religion.
To understand why, please refer to the exact same historic incidents you describe in the paragraphs above.
And I’m sure they can tell the story of these characters respectfully and without making them outlandish caricatures, no different than they did for T’Challa or Shang-Chi.
