How Hollywood Distorts the Image of Arabs and Muslims

If soft power is the power of culture, then culture, in its anthropological sense, possesses a force that can rival that of weaponry. Human history bears witness to the triumph of cultural strength in building civilizations more than the power of arms, which has often led to the decline of civilizations and the destruction of human achievements.

The power of culture is the power of the word. From the word came creation and existence; through the word, revolutions and major transformations occurred, paving the way for civilizations such as the Babylonian, Assyrian, Confucian, and Pharaonic. The word is the foundation of Arab-Islamic culture and the cornerstone of Arab-Islamic civilization.

However, the concept of soft power emerged within the philosophy and thought of postmodernism, attempting to transcend the limitations of modernity by focusing on the power of culture and thought as a cognitive alternative to the material and military power in resolving conflicts and avoiding wars.

Despite numerous researchers from various fields highlighting the manifestations of soft power—from Michel Foucault, who considers it an implicit coercion and a value-based, ethical, and intellectual debate aimed at influencing public opinion, to Gramsci, who views it as cultural hegemony through various social and cultural institutions, including the media, and Pierre Bourdieu, who sees it as a manifestation of mind-shaping through media and television—the concept only took its final form and practical applications in international relations with Joseph Nye.

Nye posits that the foundation of the concept lies in a non-material basis of power, deriving its authority from a state’s culture, values, credibility, and transparency, which manifest in its daily life and champion universal human values. This naturally inclines people towards these values, thus inherently possessing the ability to influence others.

Therefore, this non-material basis of power should not be ignored to exclude the manifestations of material power in economics, politics, and military strength. Nye argues that American power has not declined but has entered a phase of strategic change in the foundations of global power and authority, attempting to highlight the non-material elements of this power, granting it legal, diplomatic, and intellectual legitimacy to lead the world.

This soft power is based on three cultural resources, inseparable from their political dimension:

1. 1. Culture as a means of attracting and influencing others.

1. 1. Political values that frame the actions of political actors domestically and internationally.

1. 1. The legitimacy and ethical diplomacy of foreign policies.

The essence of soft power lies in its ability to reshape the perceptions of other societies, guiding their culture, enabling the formulation of their political, economic, cultural, and social programs and visions.

Thus, the United States and the broader West, representing modernity and enlightenment, possess all the means to make the Western model the epitome of Western centrality. They have the ability to attract and mobilize others to emulate Western values and policies and adopt the strategies imposed by this soft power without military intervention or material coercion. Cultural industries, through book production, translation, cinema, theater, visual arts, literature, criticism, television, and media, work to build an exemplary image worthy of emulation and imitation.

Hillary Clinton refers to this power as “smart power,” rooted in culture, diplomacy, and the arts, ensuring the achievement of what military power can accomplish without losses and through peaceful means.

While book production has flourished in the West and the United States in the past three decades, proclaiming the end of history and the victory of Western values, modernity, and humanity—supporting the centrality of the Western individual as the representative of humanity and championing individualism and freedom (Western modern values)—by declaring the death of all references, manifested in the death of the author, the writer, authority, methodology, model, etc., postmodernism has found in the arts, including theater, cinema, visual arts, and literature, a means to entrench its thought.

Therefore, the West has bet on adapting other societies, especially those still adhering to models, methodologies, and authors, and resisting their culture against the Oedipal killing of the father, through postmodern cultural industries, primarily cinema, which, thanks to massive production, technology, and media, has managed to brainwash and shape tastes and orientations, aiming for symbolic conformity and emulation of postmodern thought.

While Chinese civilization resists through its educational model, living on example and role models, and maintaining its historical roots, making its identity resistant to taming, despite Western cinema and media’s ability to invade China, as with other Eastern societies, albeit a relative victory in the context of soft power, the Arab and Islamic world has become a prime subject for Orientalist writing and Western, especially American, cinema. This cinema has managed to promote the American model in culture and arts and dismantle Arab-Islamic culture, particularly among younger generations, who now live in cultural alienation, with Hollywood cinema being a fundamental pillar.

This cinema has promoted the image of America as a symbol of freedom, progress, prosperity, and human rights, embodying all values of modernity and enlightenment. It portrays the American soldier as a divine savior for oppressed peoples and minorities in the Arab and Islamic world, intervening only to support and protect human values. Here, cinema attempts to promote and evangelize the Judeo-Christian belief as the religious representative of the West.

Alongside books, magazines, newspapers, and television, American films and series in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s played a significant role in reinforcing the Western model and American power through soft means, by marketing its civilizational and cultural image and lifestyle as a form of cultural invasion, especially through Hollywood cinema, a tool of American soft power, not to mention the support it has provided since the 1980s to the Global South for joint production.

This support’s ideological objectives are no longer hidden, nor are its strategic goals, as it is largely conditional on filming parts of the movies in France or America, alongside support funds from the European Union or countries like Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, etc. These countries form the arms of the American strategy to lead the world.

It’s no longer limited to Hollywood or French and European cinema in general but has extended to another soft strategy manifested in cinematic support strategies in America and Europe as an American annex, whether through NATO or through the geostrategic and economic unity formed by the American-European commercial and civilizational interdependence, as agreed upon by Judeo-Christian lobby plans as a unilateral reading of the new civilizational alliance, resulting in a rich and powerful North and a poor and weak South.

Despite attempts and efforts by European funds and the French fund to support Southern cinema in dominating cinematic production and directing it to serve these countries’ interests, they have not matched American support and its mechanisms in marketing American products and directing Southern cinema, especially given the substantial support the United States provides to all types of films, including documentaries, prepared in American studios and supervised by influential bodies and institutions.

This support has not even excluded animated films and series, with results contrary to the claims of these funds, as evidenced by studying and analyzing projects completed under this support concerning the cultural and civilizational identity of Southern countries.

Thus, this cinema, focusing heavily on the Middle East, aims to polish and enhance the image of the West as the protector of values and Israel as a strategic partner for peace and modernity. In contrast, the image of Arabs, Muslims, and the Global South is portrayed

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