Hollywood's Representation of Arab Muslims

Abstract

Nowadays, cinema is considered as one of the most famous entertainment tools in the world. When talking about cinema, one must shed light on Hollywood, which is the most popular film industry in the world, and it transmits hidden ideologies within its movies and can influence people’s perceptions and change their opinions about a specific group of people depending on how they are being represented in those movies. This dissertation aims to investigates how Hollywood depicts Arab Muslims using the movie “Body of Lies” as a case study. Based on the qualitative descriptive method, the researchers analyzed eight scenes employing Barthes’ theory of visual semiotics which consists of three levels of signification: denotation, connotation, and myth, to examine the different signs and unveil the ideologies embedded in each scene. The study's findings revealed that three main ideologies in regard to the representation of Arab Muslims are transmitted through Hollywood movie “Body of Lies”