Arab Stereotypes

I watched you don't mess with the Zohan. I feel like the whole movie could go under all of the categories. I thought this movie was really dumb the first time I saw it, and the second time I saw it, found it to be very offensive and ignorant. 


dehumanization: The film made arab women (like the women in the fast food place with the rapper looking guy) look like they were subservient slaves to their men. This movie seemed to dehumanize mostly the women of the culture. I feel like although this did dehumanize arabs, it could have been a lot worse. I feel as though it was trying to be a comedy above all else.


villain: Phantom is the villain in this movie. Arabs weren't vilified as much as I thought there would have been. Of course there were still slight themes of this throughout the movie, this was not the main one.


terrorist: This being Zohan's first job you get to see him in action with guns, and fighting and everything like that but you never really get a real sense of the terrorist in Zohan because he is trying to start a new life. I feel like they were very light-hearted in the way they portrayed him in the film because he was seen as the good guy (even though he was a counter terrorist back in his homeland).


eroticized women: That was basically throughout the movie. Just in the opening scene alone showed women who were so turned on by the Zohan and his hak-i-sack skills. Everyone on the beach loved him, even the bird. He had a girl on his shoulders while playing tug of war, and the women spectators were in awe of him. Pouring soda on their chests, touching themselves as he played a game of hak-i-sack. When he did the women in the shop's hair, they also lusted after him, and you saw many times of them getting the special treatment behind doors, the wall shaking to the point of collapsing shelves. This was spread throughout the movie. I did not feel that it was in an offensive way, more funny than anything, but then again I could just be desensitized to what is really going on.


ignorant: The workers in the fast food restaurant had hats on and scarves under the hats to make it look like a present day turban. The taxi driver (Rob Schneider) being arab. That is a job that ignorant people associate with arabs. They put a lot of little jokes in the movie about common arab stereotypes such as the one about the cutting off the ear (was in one of the articles we had to read as well).