Comments on: A “Community” of Misrepresentation

By: duh

duh — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:22:47 +0000

Maybe that's why it's called "acting". Hello? You don't have to be exactly what you are portraying.

And it's produced for entertainment, that is the ultimate goal – so if you don't like it, don't watch!

By: maytha

maytha — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:03:26 +0000

Jillian-who said I disputed that? I'm riding this whole post-9/11 James Dean-renegade rebel ethos wave as far as it goes. because by the end, we'll go back to being doctors and engineers with butchered american aphorisms and really bad jokes.

By: JillianKF

JillianKF — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:18:57 +0000

But May, Arabs ARE the new cool!

By: Kamilia

Kamilia — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:02:16 +0000

LOL!! That era of film making was a bad time for Arabic accents. That Swiss or German actress playing the Palestinian terrorist in Black Sunday had a pretty thick gargle, too. To the creator's credit, though, they actually tried to explain the Le Pew by saying she had gone to a Swiss boarding school or something.

I guess it's not limited to Israeli actors, but I think they deserve the most credit.

By: maytha

maytha — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:41:08 +0000

so on point Kamilia-all you have to do is watch the whole Delta Force series to see the Arab Pepe Le Pew-ness in action!

By: Kamilia

Kamilia — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:59:42 +0000

I agree there is a long way to go for Arab representation in entertainment. However, I think the industry is on the right track (linguistically) if the father was speaking *almost* the right language. What did that sound like? "2nta 7maroun kabiroun!" I don't think we'll get dialect specific for a while. It only works with movies we make in Morocco, most likely because of their filming resources.

I don't think using actors from other ethnicities is so egregious, but it gets obvious when it affects the project linguistically. That reminds me: can someone tell the Israeli actors that play Arabs to stop gargling their r's ? It's annoying that they insist on portraying Arabs as Pepé Le Pew.

By: Femme

Femme — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:26:51 +0000

I agree. I don't care that the actor is not Arab so much as the fact that I honestly didn't even know it was supposed to be an Arab character. If you're going to make only a halfhearted attempt at representing a culture, why bother at all?

By: maytha

maytha — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:14:42 +0000

I actually am not too perturbed about the actor’s ethnic authenticity. Although I recognize the frustration over the misrepresentation, at the end of the day, we end riding a slippery slope when we make it all about “ethno-racial street cred.” my main point was, why, why even create an Arab character if you know next to nothing about Arabs and are unwilling to do simple research or outreach to find out? Is this just further testament to the claim that Heeb magazine made a couple of years back, that Arabs are “the new cool”?

By: JillianKF

JillianKF — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:21:59 +0000

I don't know…I think the language issue is way less of a big deal than the fact that they have a Polish-Indian person playing a Palestinian. I realize that people of one race frequently play people of another race, but where do we draw that line, exactly? Why is it okay for Angelina Jolie to play a Black woman (Mariane Pearl) or for a Japanese person to play a Chinese person etc? There are plenty of actors (or aspiring actors) to fill each role, I just don't get why ethnicities can't be represented at least semi-accurately (I say semi because I think there's fair exception when it comes to people of mixed ethnicity playing one of their two or many ethnicities, e.g. Alia Shawkat).

By: yaman

yaman — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:55:15 +0000

There might be issues about who producers are allowed to hire, aren't there union rules about this type of stuff? I don't really know, but I always thought there was.