Stellar

But while the timing of his film is questionable, it’s even more difficult to accept his ugly caricature of Arab politics when Cohen’s shtick seems to hinge on little more than offensive, bigoted stereotypes of Arab men. Despite the very thin veneer of political satire, Cohen’s performance is a collection of generic, ill-conceived stereotypes borne of post-9/11 fear-mongering that ventures only to say, “Arab men are hairy and violent and they hate women and Jews.” His depiction is couched in nothing more than a dubiously funny accent and eccentric costume. Ultimately, it’s a White Israeli guy putting on brownface to make fun of Arabs. And if you don’t see something instinctively discomforting in that reality, I’m not sure anything I say will change your mind.

In the context of contemporary politics, it’s easy to see why such a bigoted portrayal of a racialized group of people has become so commonplace and normalized in our entertainment and media industries. After all, Arabs — and brown people around the world — are being murdered every day, often by American drones, American policemen, and Israeli gunfire sponsored by American taxes. This reality would be a lot more difficult to contend with had we — Western media and its consumers — not constructed Arabs and people of color as inherently violent, one-dimensional barbarians already killing themselves. Americans sleep better at night thinking their tanks and missiles and soldiers only kill people like “The Dictator” and not like the children they send safely off to school every day. They feel better about themselves thinking “black-on-black” crime is a fundamental inevitability, a social fact, and not a symptom of structural racism.

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Hollywood’s Race Problem: On Ashton Kutcher and “The Dictator”

This is the piece I was working on this morning.

(via abudaii)

(via mohandasgandhi)