Planet of The Arabs
Planet of the Arabs is a very powerful 9 minute collage of racist stereotyping of Arabs in movies. What’s not at issue for me is the idea that an Arab volunteer from non-Arab Afghanistan might be portrayed (by an Indian) as Kalashnikov wielding, guerrilla fighter, opium trader, rather than a lefty apologist’s flower-growing, freedom fighter. What’s unnerving is the tone and the pattern of racist tradition, i.e. the number of appearances of unattractive, gormless, hook-nosed, brown people with twisted, toothy grins and bar-joke accents. All ominously reminiscent of historic, racist depictions, such as Dickens’ Fagin.
The utterly depressing thing about this film, however, is the context in which it has been received, as a conduit for those who foster both anti-semitism and anti-arabism.
The easiest way to recognize the veracity of a racist claim is to imagine the purported victim belonging to any other group of people and to not confuse equality with similarity or differentiation with prejudice. That thought experiment leads me to think the claim of racism against Arabs may have merit.
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