Well before wars and political agendas skewed the landscape, the American film industry has been fraught with Islamophobia since the Golden Age of Hollywood. As early as the 1920s, Muslims on screen were portrayed as villainous and threatening on the rare occasions they weren’t exoticized tremendously. Islamophobia in films and TV has since led to a larger, more negative, or stereotypical tone, further dividing communities. Post 9/11, this became even more common with the stereotypical image of “terrorist” and “extremist” definitions formulated through Western values, reinforcing harmful prejudices to negatively affect the self-esteem and perception of Muslims.
While shows like 24 and Homeland capitalized on this wave of distrust against the marginalized community, Islamophobia has also been rampant in Bollywood films and often, is equally dangerous. As two recent Indian films, Pathaan and Mission Majnu prove, as the latter hit Netflix charts with audiences, these primitive stereotypes are alive and well, and destructive to civilized conversations.
Although Bollywood — the Hindi film industry in India — has been known to be more inclusive than Hollywood in terms of the representation of Muslim characters, there have been hardened instances where the dialogue has metastasized Islamophobia through a more frightening depiction of Muslim characters. India is home to more than 200 million Muslims, yet Bollywood is still complicit in the depiction of its own communities through characters that are terrorists or extremists in a lot of their projects. This depiction reinforces the stereotype that all Muslims are violent or dangerous and contributes to the demonization of one of the religion’s largest populations.
This has been seen in several Bollywood movies such as Kabul Express (2006), New York (2009), and Baby (2015), which have each been criticized for their stereotypical picture of Muslim characters. Additionally, Muslim women in these films were also shown as oppressed or as victims of forced marriages. This in turn continues to fuel the narrative that all Muslim women are oppressed and that they are unable to make their own choices and decisions. Movies such as Veer-Zara (2004) and Fanaa (2006) have also been criticized for their degrading portrayal of Muslim women through the romanticization of Hindu characters often saving them as they are subservient and oppressed, often losing agency of their identity because of religion.
This story was originally published in collider.com. Read the full story here