A “Community” of Misrepresentation
“Community” a new half hour sitcom (do they still make those anymore?) about a de-barred attorney returning to school via community college airing on NBC just launched this Fall. Besides being a novelty in the era of celebreality and competition-themed programing, this show has created a buzz of sorts for incorporating an Arab-American character as a permanent member of a motley crew of interesting characters, the ones that tend to compose community college settings.
I do applaud NBC for their new show’s depiction of an Arab American character, a dramatic shift from terrorist and religious contextualizing of Arabness which seems to be the image du jour on the big and silver screens, there is still much amiss with the effort.
As such, let me start by highlighting the positive part, which I earlier describe as a dramatic shit (and it is one!). The character is whole, which is a strong departure from one-dimensional characterizations Arabs and Arab Americans are so use to seeing their ethno-national namesakes take on. In one of the show’s early episodes, Palestinian-American Abed Nasir, played by Danny Pudi, expresses his secret interest in filmmaking. This poses a problem as it goes against his father’s wishes of ultimately taking over the family business-falafeel cart-standing in Denver, Colorado of all places. Stereotypes aside, which I don’t seem to mind, there is a subtlety of misrepresentation that operates below the surface, almost undetectable to the common viewer, which bothers me much more. When Abed’s father gets wind of his son’s controversial career shift, he storms onto campus with an air of lividness and “V”s in places where “W”s would have otherwise lived. As most Arab American children are used to, Nasir senior fulfills the obligatory angry Arab parent role by launching linguistic lacerations to his Palestinian American son in Modern standard Arabic. For those who didn’t catch my facetiousness, you have a Pakistani actor playing the role of a Palestinian father who uses a dialect of Arabic only reserved for newspapers and professional TV news programs. Don’t be mistaken, casting non-Arabs for Arab roles (as Danny Pudi is also not of Arab origin) is not my contestation here. It is the laziness apparent in the media representation of Arabs.
Why is it so hard to fact check? Southern California is not only replete with Arab Americans, it has one of the highest concentration of Arabs in the nation. You think a show producer might ask him or herself, “I want my Palestinian character to speak Arabic, perhaps I should contact a couple of Palestinians to ask for translations of a phrase and compare notes.” Is it that producers and studio heads just don’t know Arabs? If so, why are there no substantial outreach methods used to double check content that will air to national mainstream audience of a couple million??? You telling no one at Krasnoff Foster Entertainment, Harmonious Claptrap, Russo Brothers production, Universal Media Studios production in association with Sony Pictures Television (the producers of the series) had access to an Arab or an Arabic expert?
Once again, I do recognize the remarkable stride made in the representation of Arabs on the small screen-especially Arab characters limited to the terrorist roles written up by such hour long dramas as “24″ and “The Sleeper Cell.” Funny enough, when considering the only other show to portray a whole Arab character, I think of the Iraqi character Sayyid Jarrah on ABC’s “Lost,” one who is played by an Indian-descent Brit Naveen Andrews. But, as this last example also demonstrates, when will Arabs and Arab Americans be given the space or access to be a part of the process of their depiction?
