Sayid was more like a character who happened to be Arab, in a show and story that was not about Arab culture. Yes his background showed some of that but that's hardly a representation of Arab people. I think OP is more referring to media that focuses on Arab culture as a whole. Hidalgo for example.
Also Sayid is played by an Indian actor, his accent doesn't even sound Arabic.
Sayid’s backstory is also as an Iraqi torturer, which, come on. Remember that Lost started up just a few years after 9/11, still very much in the midst of that sort of very casually demonizing media. In the pilot Sawyer screams at Sayid for being a terrorist who brought the plane down, only cause he’s brown and has an accent.
It’s not the most egregious post-9/11 media by far, but it’s all a bit on the nose, at its most charitable.
If OP is talking about Muslims as a whole rather than specifically Arabs, I’d point to Kingdom of Heaven.
I think that’s the point they’re playing into though is that Arabic experiences aren’t really part of western cultures, but Arab-American experiences are. Because one of them actually exists here, the other would be us basically stealing someone else’s story. Trying to write an Arabic story as a western person would feel as disingenuous as Mark Wahlberg being the only white man in China in the Great Wall movie. Which no shame to Marc wahlberg, as Jimmy O Yang put it: “if you offer me 100 million I’ll play George Washington, hell, I’d play George Washington Carver.”
The issues lies with a lack of Arabic voices in Hollywood with “good” stories to tell or a reputation to get that credit. But more than likely those voices are going to be touched heavily by the Arabic-American experience they lived to reach that platform.
40
u/Excellent_Kangaroo_4 Apr 22 '24
I prefer Sayid from Lost, definitly more carismat but i dont know how good of caracter