After reading "Muslims protest reprised role as terrorists in '24'" by Wayne Parry in the Lansing State Journal I found myself having mixed feelings about the issue. I can understand the Muslims concern about the outlook it may have on them being represented as terrorists in the series 24, and how they may feel uncomfortable going out in public based on all that has occured here in the United States dealing with terrorist attacks. But my main issue with that is that it's pretty clear to the audience that this television show is fictional. Some people I feel do take some shows literally and to heart, but for the most part society knows reality from fiction. If these Muslims are afraid to go out in public I don't feel that it is because of the story line of 24 but in fact the incidents that has occurred in the United States. For example, Sireen Sawaf from the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council says that she is a big fan of 24 and she replies"It's a great show, and I do realize it's a multiimensional show that portrays extreme situations." She continues to support the fact that 24 has used other ethnicities besides Muslim when she states "They have gone out of their way to have non-Muslim terror cells." So in no way do I feel that 24 was trying to represent Muslims as evil and being very dangerous. Also, 24 has incorporated many different ethnicities and religions throughout their series such as Baltic Europeans, Germans, Russians, Islamic fundamentalists, and Anglo-American citizens. If their purpose was to portray this hidden messages to Americans about all these different kinds of ethnicities and religious groups as being dangerous then why has there not been more controversy about this television show. There are many movies and television shows that portray certain cultures in a negative way just for entertainment, most people don't take it seriously. If that were true then we wouldn't be able to have most of our movies or television shows out there because we would be generalizing every group out there. Some movies have black african american boys murdering people, and caucasian boys robbing banks. This isn't to say that all the boys from both ethnicities are going to follow in those footsteps and be criminals but it is a fact that crimes like that have occurred. Bad things happen in all areas of the world, no matter what the culture or ethnicity is and it's in the hands of the audience to be able to say that the way the people in particular movies or television shows are shown is not a clear depiction of all the people within that group. Overall, I believe that people are taking things shown on television way to seriously and aren't seeing it as entertainment anymore.
Information from "Muslims protest reprised role as terrorists in '24'" by Wayne Parry.
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Thinking back to the Cortes article, one way that stereotypes get formed is by repetition of homogeneous images. I worry about the fact that there are so few images of Muslims in the media and that they are predominantly negative. I don't have the same concern about a representation of a German terrorist because people encounter alternative images of white Europeans all the time. I do think that networks have a responsibility to be conscious of the images they create. I may be cynical in this respect, but I also think that shows like 24 are designed to tap into people's fears. Unfortunately, fear isn't always rationale...
As we mentioned in a previous class, a lot of these issues surfaced post-9/11 and have been a major concern within our country ever since. When we see or hear about Muslims carrying out suicide bombings, fictional or not, it is easy to see why the Anglo-American world associates Muslims with something as negative as terrorism. I think the Fox network should be the bigger person and do something about the sort of attention given to Muslims in our media today. Although the show is fiction, viewers of "24" may indeed associate the portrayal of Muslims as something accurate because the media does so little to ensure a truthful representation of the culture. Like what Sohail Mohammed says, "Somewhere, some lunatic out there watching this will do something to an innocent American Muslim because he believes what he saw on TV."
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