Has everyone seen Thomas McCarthy’s universally praised film The Visitor? Or at least read the reviews about it? Having no idea what the film was about, I slipped in yesterday expecting to see a “romantic comic drama” which is how the snapshot review described it.
What I saw instead was a poignant, touching film about illegal immigration in post 9/11 America which, I now understand, has been embraced by almost every film critic.
Now, guess where the illegal immigrants are from. Which country or countries with terrifyingly surreal human rights records and almost permanent civil wars do our sympathetic heroes hail from? Congo or Sudan perhaps–or is it Rwanda or Somalia? How about Algeria, the former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Chile, even Mexico since Mexican immigration is such a hot-button issue for us?
Of course, the illegal immigrants Tareq, Zainab, and Mouna (played movingly, brilliantly, by Haaz Sleiman, Dana Jekesai Gurira, and Hiam Abbass), are all Muslims from Syria and Senegal. They encounter a heartless, Orwellian American Immigration Department which detains, transfers, and deports charming and innocent Arab Muslims. We, the viewer, share the hero’s growing involvement in their plight. Richard Jenkins plays the professor-hero, Walter Vale, who is inevitably drawn into their plight.
And, by the way, Mouna is Tareq’s mother and she is an utterly charming and beautiful character. Mouna lives in Michigan where there is a large, radically Muslim population. Mouna’s getting into bed with Walter her last night in America is not something that someone who lives in Dearborn, Michigan is going to do. This highly Westernized portrayal caters to Western sensibilities at the expense of reality. This is similar to what the film Paradise Now also did in terms of having a West Bank heroine who lives alone and lives quite an independent life. This kind of freedom is familiar to the West but forbidden and dangerous on the West Bank.
The Visitor presents a familiar story line which I have previously written about. For example, I have written about two British films: One, envisions the assassination of President George Bush and the other is a fictional feature titled The Children of Men. Both films show innocent, highly sympathetic Arab Muslims who are wrongly accused, on the run, living in hiding. I have also written about a movie in which a Arab Saudi-like Prince is seen as the potential liberator of his people, especially women, but of course, he is assassinated by CIA operatives.
While I personally know and love many sympathetic Muslim and ex-Muslim immigrants and totally understand that post 9/11 policy has led to tragic consequences for those Arab and non-Arab Muslims in flight from tyranny–I am equally concerned with the single-mindedness of the pro-Arab propaganda. Hollywood has not been making many films (and certainly no good films) about Arab Muslim terrorists. (There is The Kingdom, which I have also reviewed, but it received almost universal negative reviews. I thought it was an important film). They exist and the threat they pose is real but Hollywood is too politically correct to dramatize it. Their villains are still mainly white neo-Nazis, Nazi-era Nazis, and CIA agents.
Mind you: I am not saying that such villains do not exist; they do. But c’mon, Hollywood, the media, and the university world are afraid to describe anyone as “Arab” or “Muslim” lest the mere description of reality be seen as “racist.” Thus, countless mainstream media articles refer to the ethnic Arab Muslims who are gang-raping and genocidally slaughtering black African Muslims and Christians in Sudan as “insurgents,” “rebels,” “men on horseback,” “government sanctioned troops,” and sometimes as “Arabs” but rarely as Arab Muslims.
I have an Israeli friend who covers Culture for a variety of Israeli newspapers. She told me that many of the best Israeli filmmakers are focused on portraying Israel’s (small) role in Palestinian suffering. No Israeli filmmaker has depicted the (much larger) role that Arab and Palestinian leaders have played in Palestinian suffering. No Arab filmmaker has dared do so either. The Israeli films that are critical of Israeli policy are celebrated both in Israel and abroad. It speaks well for Israel that its artists and thinkers are free to criticize Israeli policy; if they are Jews, whether they are religious or not, they are actually fulfilling a Jewish religious commandment.
The problem: No Arab country allows its thinkers to publicly criticize its policies and thus, the Muslim world as well as Europe and America have come to believe that only Israel commits terrible human rights abuses. This belief is out of proportion to reality.
Who is funding what amounts to a perpetual propaganda machine against Israel and America? Inch by inch, film by film, people are becoming dangerously brainwashed. Thus, psychologically: All Arab Muslims are innocent victims; all Americans and Israelis are evil. Where will this end? What will become of us in the West?
I realize that most Westerners who are critical of their government’s policies do not really want to live in Afghanistan or Iran–but they fail to understand that if they don’t temper and balance their righteous criticism of western democracies, we might just end up living under even more repressive regimes.
I’m sorry to say this, but maybe we have to take a lief from pro-moslem propagandists, especially the foreign-born element; i.e., perhaps we need to take to the streets with hysterical chanting of slogans, semi-rioting, and burning pictures of Brad Pitt — or whoever is starring in this carefuly-constructed trash –in effegy, while calling for a holy war of our own against the infidel moslem horde. Declare a fatwah against the writer and director; Give ‘em a taste of how the society they’re trying to glamorize deals with those who disagree.
Of course, we’ll do no such thing. We’re much too devoted to allowing for the expression of all points of view, and much too careful to avoid even the idea of offending someone to “take up arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.”
No; what we’ll do instead is “build bridges” by holding meetings, teach-ins (do they still use that word?) and pot lucks, during which we’ll do mea culpa to our moslem “brethren,” begging them to forgive us for…for what? For not embracing Islam and helping them overrun Israel? For not aiding in their attempt to thorw every last Jew into the ocean, before beginning on the Christians, Bhuddists, Hindus, etc.? Yes, we’ll apologize for all these things (but not to the Native Americans, right?): “Our fault, forgive us, punish us as you see fit.” Either that, or we’ll take the Neville Chaimberlin approach. Remember Chamberlin? “Oh, that Hitler’s not such a bad bloke. All we need to do is appease him a bit, and we’ll have peace in our time.” Anyone remember how well that idea worked out?
Like it or not — and I don’t pretend to like it, what with the stiff knees and bad back and all — it’s time to take to the streets again. “Over a little thing like a movie?” you ask. Yes, over a movie, over an article, over some terrorist dictator’s appearance at a prestigeous university. NOTHING is a “little thing” anymore, as many of us are going to learn in the very near future. Dammit, people; haven’t we learned it already? Don’t you remember 9/11? Now, get to work!
Are any readers of this blog film makers? Do any of you have friends who are film makers? What we need is a movie about honor murders.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 06/17/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
Well, Phyllis and friends, we are up against a massive apparatus of denial, obfuscation, and lying. But on the one hand, for the first time in a generation at least there are friendly governments in France, Italy, Britain and Italy, friendly that is, more or less, to the USA and Israel. On the other hand, the media and the media-led popularity polls rank the USA, Bush, Israel and anything with traditional morality down at the very bottom of the heap in terms of danger, untrustworthiness, and bad for the environment. We just have to hang in there, help one another, and do what we can when we can.
Norman
Whoever Louis Santacroce is, he knows the truth. I say that as a professional writer who has spent the last 25 years studying the mideast. Americans are generally good and decent people and we’ve evolved from the slaughter of native Americans and the sin of slavery to the present day, where we accept neighbors, even new in-laws, based on the content of their charater. So should it be.
The next step in our evolution must be the common sense to stand up against a global malignancy that couches itself as a religion.
Currently, we are so untutored, so limited in knowledge and so fearful of being labeled bigots, that we stand impotent as radical Islam seeps into every nook of society, and, with steady patience, moves toward its goal: Islamicizing the world.
We can’t say we were not warned. They have no problem shouting their hatred of us, and their intentions,from the rooftops of their mosques.
The Koran is loaded with horrendous incitemtents to terror and barbarism: cutting off people’s heads ((cuttng at the neck), calling Christians and Jews infidels, animals, etc, that must be destroyed. Given this catechism, coupled with the hatred taught to their children from birth, each of them becomes an adult IED.
I applaud Phyllis Chesler for her eloquent advocacy for for Israel, the only democracy in the mideast, and for women’s rights, the lack of which illuminates radical Islam’s darkest side. We need mmore like her. An army more.
The civilized world faces an enemy of untold strength and uncanny deceit.
With their hands on the world’s oil spigot, the Arabs have the West running scared. The Archbishop of Canterbury opined that Britain shoud adopt Shari’a law! Immediately following the bombings in Spain, the leftist government was elected. The entire West kisses the Arabs’ asses because of oil and demonizes Israel in an attempt to show the Arabs we’re on “their side.”
What a side! Fathers and brothers who slit their daughters’ throats because the the poor girls have been raped. Hypocritical Arabs who murder outed homosexuals, at the same time that the murderers practice homosexuality in secret. (Many gays go to Israel, where they are safe.)
They, who can throw a wheelchair-bound man into the sea, who burn Israeli soldiers and fling their corpses onto railings for public view, who can invade an Israeli kibbutz and murder all the babies in their cribs, who laughed and applauded 9-11 while Israelis wept openly in the streets.
An enemy unfathomable, so devoid of basic sense of decency that it is incomprehensible to us–and therefore dismissed. What we can’t understand, we put aside.
We will not be able to do so for much longer.
Unless we remove this enemy of civilization from our midst, we will witness the rise of a monstrosity which no army nor antidote can contain.
I applaud the sentiments of June and George. Eveyone I suppose has a theory as to why the West is so timid and intimidated by the savage race (i.e. radical muslims). My own theory is that the West hasn’t yet steeled itself to the notion that mass killing is a very likely solution to this problem – and the West will have to do the killing. I view radical islam in the microbial sense of a virus having infected a host. There is no talking cure for such diseases. They simply must be eradicated.
The Reality Show: The cheap Arabist film: “The Visitor”
http://lightonthings.blogspot.com/2009/06/cheap-arabist-film-visitor.html
This is the most ridiculous article I have read for some time. First of all I think this movie does a good job of showing how Muslims have been treated while in detainment in the US. How would I know that? I have a friend who works for immigration and has been appalled at the way they have been treated. Secondly, the author of this article has not a clue about the reality of the Muslim world. She makes broad generalizations that have no truth in reality. Many Muslim nations allow for public criticism of their policies. I can easily name three for you: Egypt, U.A.E., and Bahrain, though there are others. Yes some Arab nations do not allow for criticisms and this movie shows that when talking about Syria. The whole reason they came to the US in the movie was because of Syria’s policies which caused the incarceration of Tarek’s father. Another point: Israel plays no “small” role in Palestinian suffering. Has anybody seen the number of innocent Palestinian’s murdered by the Israelis? Obviously this author hasn’t. Israel also uses internationally illegal weapons. Yes it is true that some Muslim nations have terrible human rights problems, though that is not by and large the majority of them. This author seems to forget that the Muslim world stretches from Morocco to Indonesia and even further. Many of these nations have human rights comparable to the US. I highly recommend this film. It shows the truth about how generalizing an entire culture is wrong and how we cannot treat an entire group of humans as terrorists simply because a very small portion of them have committed such acts. The author of this article need assess her own bias.