BONUS: How American Media Distorts Perceptions of the Middle East

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of a history podcast recorded straight after our recently published episode, what is America's relationship to the Middle East? I'm joined now by my guest from that episode, Melanie McAllister, to discuss this a little bit more. Melanie, thank you so much for hanging on.

Melani McAlister: 00:00:17

It's great to be here. Let's keep going.

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:19

Yeah, thank you so much. It was a really great chat and one that I'm sure will be super, super insightful to a lot of people listening to this.

I just wanted to just expand a little bit on something we didn't have time to chat about, which is US perceptions of the Middle east, because we've covered a lot about the US's involvement there and even a political level, some of the lines of thought that might drive the decisions there. But in terms of public perception of the Middle east, what do people think happens there and what do people think the people are there?

Melani McAlister: 00:00:58

, or even after the: 1979

But I think that American perceptions are really shaped by a kind of solipsism that the us, everybody knows the US is guilty of, but is really true, where students are required in high school to study the history of their state for a semester or a year, most places, but not necessarily to learn anything more than the most basic things about the rest of the world.

But the other thing is that we have a lot of media that tells us a couple of things, not that everybody believes everything they see, because I don't want to act as if somebody goes to the movies and just comes out and thinks just what it said.

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And the, the, the American speaking sounding characters are the ones who are in favor of independence and decolonization against the empire. The empire usually being Rome or sometimes Egypt.

And so there's a whole story that Americans tell themselves about being on the side of the little guy on the side of democracy and independence that shapes then what other stories have to be told.

So when the United States gets interested, when Americans get interested, I'm not talking about policymakers, but Americans get interested in the Middle east, it's often through these kind of narratives of, like, salvation through the biblical epics, or more commonly these days, is the terrorism story.

ism in the Middle east in the: 1970

And terrorism remains a major way that people are seeing the Middle east the way that it's narrated.

And so even though often the terrorists are almost secondary characters, the Americans doing the right thing or solving the problem or going in there and being tough military guys is the major part. But you got to have a bad guy.

And the bad guys are most appealing if they seem resonant with, like, something that might be going on in the real world.

And so over and over and over again with 24, famously, in the early part of the 21st century, television series that had a ticking bomb every season and was always putting out, you know, bad Arabs and dangerous Muslims and all of that to the most recent series that I've been watching is actually a French one that's about to be made into an American one, the Bureau. So it's a French spy movie about the dangers of terrorism, although the terrorists are not presented so fully as, you know, the. As the.

As the French spies are, I'm sure it'll change when it becomes to the United States.

So I think that that sense that people in the Middle east are dangerous, that they're violent, that they are somehow against American interest and against Americans is so ubiquitous that even if people kind of know that, you know, obviously everybody knows a terrorism television show or a movie is not real life. The sense is just sort of carried through and there are not a lot of alternatives.

Now, my colleague and friend Evelyn El Sultani wrote a really fine book about television coverage after 9 11, or television, you know, popular culture after 9 11, and argued that there was a strategic, consistent move to build in the good Muslim character after 9 11, or good Arab or good Muslim character. I think that's true.

There's a kind of awareness, like we don't want to seem like we're totally anti Muslim, so we're going to always have a good Muslim. But to be a good Muslim, you have to have no resentments against the United States. Right.

The good Muslims are the ones who just love America, who go to their mosque and pray or they work for the FBI, whatever.

And so there is some awareness of that and built into Americans almost like an inoculation, we can say anything as long as there's one good Muslim character. So I think it's. Popular culture is huge in that way. And it's not, it doesn't work in a simple way, but I think it does have a major impact.

Liam Heffernan: 00:06:01

Yeah.

And do you think part of the problem as well is as you've, as you touched on, it's not just about how popular culture represents all, you know, Muslims as, you know, possible terrorists. You gotta watch out for them. But I feel like American pop culture represents itself as the saviors of the world.

And this might be just me talking as a Brit here, so I don't mean to offend you, but there is, I think very much a sense that Americans feel like they have to save everyone else.

And I think when you combine that with this trope of everyone in the Middle east, you know, needs saving, they live a worse life and they're potentially all terrorists, you know, it creates this fairly damaging context that creates bad stereotypes, right?

Melani McAlister: 00:06:47

Yes, indeed. And in fact, I think we might say that the most dangerous stereotype in American media is the one of Americans, right?

As the, you know, inevitably the person who wants to do the right thing, who, who can come in and even though they're obviously a range of different Americans, that sense of American goodwill or well intentionedness and moral turpitude and therefore there's some movies that are quite critical the damage Americans create, it's not that that's uniform, but that salvationism and that sense that good intentions or being a good person is the kind of criteria by which you judge what somebody does as opposed to whether they know what they're doing and what its impact is. So yes, I think that's absolutely right.

I also say when you say salvation, it also reminds me of the other crucial image in popular culture, which is of the Muslim women who need saving. Right.

And the idea that the US goes to war in Afghanistan because of Osama Bin Laden, but one of the war aims becomes freeing Afghan women from their oppression. And this is very consistent.

Even people who will say, well, I understand that the US isn't the be all and the end all and we don't always have to control everything, but look at how women are treated. Don't we need to respond to that. And the answer is that actually there are women responding to that. They're in the Middle East.

You could support them if you wanted to. But coming in and sort of saying we're going to like free you from the Taliban. Well, first place, as we know, that did not happen.

We had a 20 year war. It was horrible. And then what happens at the end? The Taliban come back to rule.

So another case of where you think the war is going to fix something and it doesn't. But also the idea, it's not helpful if you're a Muslim or Arab woman or Armenian woman or whatever and you're trying to argue for rights.

It's actually not helpful for the US government to be saying they're the ones we support. Often that really is not what you want, you know, so maybe you do, but sometimes that just, that just makes you delegitimizes you in your own public.

Liam Heffernan: 00:08:57

So yeah, yeah, it's an interesting point. I feel like sometimes America doesn't consider too much how the other countries might not love them and, and that can be a problem sometimes.

But that's maybe a conversation for another day. Melanie, thank you so much for joining me, not just for this, but for the main podcast episode as well.

And I urge everyone who hasn't yet listened to go and listen to that. Thanks, Melanie. Do remind people where they can connect with you directly if they want to.

Melani McAlister: 00:09:28

Yes, I am on Bluesky at Melanie M E L A N I M C A at BlueSky and I'm just getting started, so it'd be great to hear from people.

Liam Heffernan: 00:09:38

Wonderful. And thank you all for listening to this.

There are useful links in the show notes as well if you do want to find out more about all the stuff that Melanie has been talking to us about. And if you like what you hear, support the show as well.

From as little as one simple dollar, it just helps us keep the lights on, keep making the show and that makes us very happy indeed. Thank you so much for listening and goodbye.