Furious 7…How Hollywood is being Unfair to Arabs, Again!
Again, and once more, Hollywood fails to present the right image of Arabs in one of its most recent films. Furious 7, the seventh edition of the Fast and Furious series, opened last weekend. As of April 6, it grossed $161.2 million in North America, and $245.1 million worldwide, against a total budget of $250 million, according to Box Office Mojo.
Furious 7, which features a number of Hollywood’s biggest names, such as Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel, and Michelle Rodriguez, paid tribute to its late star Paul Walker, who was killed in a car accident in late 2013. At that time, Walker was not finished with shooting a few scenes of the film. The crew had to use the technology of CGI, or computer generated imagery, to shoot the rest of the scenes using his brother’s body.
The film was shot in a number of cities around the world, including the United Arab Emirates capital, Abu Dhabi, which was a location for a large portion of the film. But, how was this film, like many others, unsuccessful in portraying an Arab city in the right way?
In the Abu Dhabi scenes, the Arab city was presented in two ways; people with camels in the middle of the desert, and very rich people, who don’t look like Arabs, partying in the middle of the day.
Let’s not focus on the first point related to the camels, as it is obviously part of our heritage that makes us proud, and it’s also part of the whole scene in the Middle East, which is mostly desert. Instead, let’s focus on the second point, which has to do with images or Arabs practicing their daily routine in such a vibrant city.
To summarize the mission of the Furious team in Abdu Dhabi; a hacker sends a device that has important information to a friend in the Emirates capital, and the team has to bring it back. Upon arrival, they discover that the device was sold to a “Jordanian Prince”, and that he is hiding it in his very luxurious apartment, in which he is also throwing a party on the next day.
In their efforts to retrieve the device, the team goes to the party, which is attended by many people. None of the girls look Middle Eastern; physique-wise, and fashion-wise. Men at the party are wearing suits, and covering their heads with black and white keffiyehs; a scene you will never see anywhere in the Arab world. When attending such parties and gatherings, Emirati men usually wear their long white dresses, and cover their heads with the hatta & eqal. Besides that, the black and white Keffiyeh is exclusive in some way to Palestinians and partially Iraqis, not to other Gulf countries.
If the late Libyan president Muammar Ghadafi used to take female body guards to escort him the whole time, it does not mean that everyone does that. The film showed the Jordanian Prince surrounded by female bodyguards wearing hijab, and that just looked very odd, especially when they started doing some “Karate moves.”
It is important for such Arab cities to put their names on the Hollywood map in one way or the other, but that should not be at the expense of their culture and identity. Abu Dhabi’s identity looked lost in the film, with the focus on rich people and the gigantic buildings. While such mentions in blockbuster films is important, Arab cities thriving for such an “honor” should at least help in enlightening script writers and directors so that they don’t make such mistakes when it comes to clothes and looks.
At the end of the day, such films depend mostly on the action factor, special effects dazzling, and sexual insinuations. This means that as viewers who come from Arabic backgrounds, we should not expect much from such films when it comes to serving our culture and identity. But we should always remember that such films will one day become a part of history, and for future generations, they will act as references on how the Middle East looked like in the past. We would never want people in the future to ever see such an image of a city portrayed like this.
Samya Ayish Contributing Writer Arab America
