www.vulture.com: This week, we observe the 17th anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11, as well as the beginning of a new fall TV season. As unconnected as those are for most Americans, they are totally intertwined for me, and many other MENA (Middle Eastern and North African) actors. I moved to Hollywood a few months after 9/11. One of my first TV roles was on a TV pilot called Homeland Security, where I actually played one of the 9/11 hijackers in flight school. I had a handful of lines, including, “Is okay, I don’t need to land.” At the time, I was happy to be working, and I didn’t mind playing such a one-dimensional character because I hoped and expected I would eventually play more complex non-terrorist roles. But in the last 17 years, nearly every MENA role I’ve played or auditioned for was in some way informed by 9/11.
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Actors are often typecast in the roles they play. A cute boy is always cast as the boy-next-door; a strong girl is always cast as ambitious. These stereotypes are not as bad though to work with as are others. And the one most dangerous is being typecast to play characters based on race. This article clearly tackles with that issue.
A middle eastern man is cast as a terrorist in his first ever show because he resembles the race of the terrorists. Years after 9/11, nothing as yet changed for the person. He is still a person of color, a terrorist for the casting directors who cast him to play roles that are suitable for him based on race which is not correct and socially derogatory.
Art forms are created without bias. Yes, theater has some requirements that must be met as a role but I dont think that race should be on of those because it reduces the capability of an actor to his skin color. He can only perform what his race might allow him to. That is not fair.
This article is something I can sort of relate to in some ways. Although asians are not portrayed as terrorrists, there are offensive stereotypes in all of media. I thought that all of Talai's points are valid, that there should be more proper representation and that more chances should be given. I thought it was shocking that seventy eight percent of MENA people are portrayed as terrorists, soldiers, special agents and tyrants. The way that society portrays these people is sad because they are real people. All of the MENAs I have met are amazing and normal people that I am glad to call and aquantince or a friend, and most are not named 'Richard'. I hope that the media changes their portrayal and offensive steretypes of people of color because they give people incorrect assumptions about a race when it is really only a specific subset of that group.
This article addresses two very prevalent problems in our industry, which is typecasting, and whitewashing. Because this actor is of Middle Eastern and Northern African descent, they are casted in roles that either require this, include it for no reason, or completely ignore their race. Again, a similar example to this but the opposite problem, would be Matt Damon in the movie The Great Wall. There obvious problems with Matt Damon being cast as a Chinese warrior. However, this article is largely about the effect of 9/11 on the Middle Eastern and Northern African actor population. Again, this is problematic for many reasons, the most obvious of which is clearly racial profiling. The fact that many members of this racial group are profiled based off of one horrendous act committed by a radical minority, is a tragedy. While not often a problem we run into as Design and Production majors, it is something that we should be conscious about and willing to commit to change.
This article was pretty eye opening. I am not a MENA person, and sometimes it’s difficult to notice trends when they don’t apply to you. But it was interesting to see how connected public opinion and the arts are and disappointing to see that the entertainment business isn’t using their massive public influence to positively shift opinion of MENA people.
It all goes back to our core issue of lack of representation and misrepresentation of minorities. Depicting MENA actors as one of two types of character is unrealistic. Particularly when you think of the wide variety of multilayered (and often principle) roles granted to white actors. Imagine a world where white men would either play the “blue collar husband and father” or “police officer.” That would be absurd, and we would all notice. So why is the issue not being treated the same with MENA actors? The fact is that racial discrimination can take many forms. Not only a lack of casting, but stereotype casting as well.
We’ve done better in recent years in at least recognizing the problems in our industry, but we cannot pick and choose which ones are important or not. When we say we’re going to tackle the issue of representation, that means for everyone.
It's a sad article to read about, to me, the most hard feeling is that we sometimes view people which are different from us regionally, culturally and even racily as totally foreigners. We can't even imagine their daily lives. It almost look lie we are not all same kind of species anyway. This actor stood out and spoke for himself and other MENA(middle-east and north-africa) people in the entertainment industry, tried to correct the way they are being perceived. It's a atmosphere hovering the international society continuously after the 9/11 happened. The mainstream media takes advantage of the mutual fear between nations and regions, turns the misunderstandings and misinterpretations into their boost of clicking rate. Made profit by publishing games, novels and even magazines that fill hatred into people's life. This needs to stop, the gap between different people should be filled by understanding and forgiving, also by compensations and aids to the mistreated ones.
I think one interesting point this article makes is that it isn’t just about the lack of characters being played by MENA actors, but the lack of storylines that discuss being MENA without just being a terrorist. I can think of some exceptions to that off the top of my head, Dr. Arastoo Vaziri in Bones is an Iranian-American immigrant and Muslim, and things related to those facts come up in the show (as side plots to the crime solving that is the primary plot of each episode). He is played by Pej Vahdat, who is also Iranian-American. I wouldn’t say his character is perfect, but I think more characters like him is what Talai is wanting. They even at one point address specifically Vaziri’s issues with the way he is perceived in America post 9/11. What it really boils down to is that it is problematic to keep portraying a group of people as just one thing, but it is also important to actually portray what it is like to be part of a particular group and have a particular life experience rather than just having actors from diverse backgrounds without the stories related to those backgrounds actually being told.
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