CMS. 790. Media Theories and Methods I - Comparative Media Studies - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Ayah Bdeir - Fall 04

That's all Sheikh: Arab representation in U.S. cartoons

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1 Introduction
2 Cartoons and stereotypes

2.1 Ethnic humor, ethnic stereotypes
2.2 Ethnic humor in twentieth century cartoons
2.3 Black images: 1900-1960
2.4 War propaganda
2.5 Cartoons about Arabs

3 Ethnic cartoons / Social relations

3.1 Cartoons: a witness of their time
3.2 Well if the public likes it…

4 To censor or not to censor

4.1 Why censor?
4.2 Censored 11
4.3 Subtle censorship
4.4 June Bugs 2001

5 The "Arab" in caricatures

5.1 The Arab Woman
5.2 The Arab Man
5.3 Contemporary Arab images

6 Conclusions

Bibliography

1 Introduction
Through the course of my research, I have encountered multiple representations of minority groups in the media. I found that discriminatory references used to be a fairly common practice, particularly in American cartoons of the early twentieth century. Cartoons of the thirties and forties reflected the social tensions of their time. As Marita Stuken and Lisa Cartwright note in Spectatorship, Power and Knowledge: "just as images are both representations and producers of the ideologies of their time, they are also factors of relations of power" [1]. In the forties, the "evil guys" were Nazis, during the Cold War, they were "Commies", Soviets, Korean, and Vietnamese. At other times, they had less to do with direct political events, more with social issues: African Americans, Jews, Asians, Arabs were either "the bad guy" or were simply gratuitously made fun of, ridiculed, or misrepresented.
Subsequently, many groups and lobbies have made efforts to put an end to such portrayal of racist attitudes. Many cartoons were taken off the air (like Warner Brothers' Speedy Gonzales), some characters were altered (the housekeeper's voice in Tom and Jerry has been changed to seem less stereotypical). In general, there has been considerable sensitivity in the redefinition of cartoons. This, however, didn't always apply to the portrayal of Arabs.

During the reevaluation regarding animated cartoons, many stereotypical images of Arabs were overlooked, and cartoons which contained them remained in circulation. While censorship is an unfortunate practice in all its forms, examining the motives and reactions of censorship can provide us with valuable insight as to racist attitudes in society. I argue that there was, and still is, a discrepancy in the way producers and distributors dealt with discriminatory images of Arabs versus those of other ethnic groups, and that this discrepancy is a diagnosis of a deeper issue in Arab-American relations.
This paper is not an exhaustive survey of all misrepresentations of minority groups and Arabs in American cartoons or their status on the market. Rather I attempt to raise questions as to why these representations occur, what the effect of stereotypes is on contemporary Western society, and how they reflect social relations between the East and West. These are big questions that I may not have the answers for, but that I believe have become increasingly important since 2001.

2 Cartoons and stereotypes
Some of my most beautiful memories as a child were those long hours watching cartoons on television. Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry… just a few cartoon characters I used to cherish and laugh hysterically at. Sometimes, there were stereotypical images, but I used to laugh nonetheless. Now that I look back at some of the animated shorts that were a big part of my childhood, I still laugh, but, many of these images make me feel uncomfortable.

2.1 Ethnic humor, ethnic stereotypes
Up to the mid twentieth century, most, if not all, of popular art and media forms –radio, theater, music, comics and movies—contained a “great deal of what is today called “ethnic” or “racial” humor”, say Friedwald and Beck in The Warner Brothers Cartoons [2]. Early twentieth century stereotypes focused on women, African-Americans, Asians, Jews, Europeans. Pretty much every minority group or ethnic group was a target of ethnic humor.
In their book, Friedwald and Beck quote Leonard Martin: “According to the popular stereotypes of the twenties and thirties, every Hebrew ran a store, every Irishman was a cop, every Indian sat in front of a teepee and chanted monosyllables, every Italian was either a street vendor or an organ grinder, every Chinaman worked in a laundry and every Black man had an overwhelming passion for watermelon” [2].
It is true that stereotypes can pretty much be considered the same everywhere: simplified, reductive generalizations of an individual or group of individuals. However, the way a stereotype is experienced varies within media. Stereotypes in cartoons operate in a manner different than most other forms of portrayals due to the images being exaggerated. Friedwald and Beck state that “certainly every form of motion picture, from epic drama to two-reel comedy, presented racial stereotypes, but because the animated cartoon so strongly relies on caricature and exaggeration, it has received a special amount of criticism” [2]. Cartoons can be considered to represent the peak of generalizations. Because most cartoons are often short, there is not enough time to build a character or engage in a meaningful dialogue. Thus, symbols become very important. Artifacts and accents are used to represent a character, often by its nationality. Sideburns represent a Jewish person, Blackface represents African Americans, a beard and gellabya represent an Arab. In cartoons, we can see stereotypes and discrimination in their most extreme form, much more extreme than in drama motion pictures. During a conversation I had with Henry Jenkins, he noted that "the two forms operate at very different levels of representation. The consumer of a cartoon starts from the assumption that what she is watching is stylized, exaggerated, abstracted, not real, where-as drama often promises us some degree of fidelity to the real world". In contrast to good drama , which attempts to give accurate portrayals and individualized characters, cartoons generally caricaturize.
One argument states that stereotypes in a cartoon don't have the impact as that in motion pictures. After all, most movie producers spend a lot of time and money to make sure script, scenery, costumes, accents and other aspects of the movie are accurate and believable. The public is aware of the extensive research that is behind every detail in a movie and so is more prone to deem descriptions and images truthful, even when they may be generic or prejudiced images. Whereas when we are watching a cartoon, we expect stretching arms and flying elephants. We therefore read the stereotypes differently. Just as we look skeptically at eye balls rolling on the ground, we tend to be skeptical of the depictions of minority groups in cartoons.
The claim that the negative effect of racism in cartoons is less alarming than that of movies is to a certain extent an understandable one. I, however, argue that the nature and audience of cartoons suggests the opposite.

Even though large numbers of adults enjoy cartoons, the primary audience is children and teenagers. Kids are to a certain extent impressionable and television does play a role in shaping their opinions and feelings. In his book, Reel Bad Arabs, Jack Shaheen mentions an Arabic proverb that says "repetition teaches the donkey". This proverb suggests that when you keep seeing something or hearing it, you end up learning it and believing it [3]. This is particularly relevant in regards to children. The repetitious caricature of minority groups portrayed in cartoons become rooted in a child's mind. And while in their early years, kids may not be aware of the concept of race, these hidden images rise up to the surface and operate in a very real manner when they do become exposed to differences in cultures and ethnicities. And so, because children tend to watch cartoons much more than they do seemingly accurate movies, generalized depictions of ethnic groups can have a rather considerable impact on children. Even though children do accept the hyper reality of cartoons, the images end up having an impact on how they view the world.
Also, negative representations are self perpetuating [3]. A child who grew up only seeing an African American as being inarticulate and lazy, might resort to these images when he/she becomes a media producer, be it a movie director, a news journalist or a cartoon illustrator, thus restarting the cycle of creating ethnic images and shaping the minds of the producers of tomorrow.

The influence of stereotypes in cartoons becomes more pronounced in cultures where the society is homogeneous and undiversified. When children and adults have exposure to a range of personalities and cultures, they are less likely to be affected by the stereotypes than in contexts where there were no people of a different social/ethnic class. Martin continues, “if someone lived in a country town where there were no, say Irishmen, and the only Irishmen he was familiar with were those in the movies, he might grow up thinking that every Irishman was a drunk [2]”. I argue that stereotypes about Arabs in American animated cartoons have had a lot of impact because a lot of people have not had any exposure to Arabs in every day life, especially that, like many recent immigrant communities, the Arab community can -from my experience- tend to be somewhat insulated, and less integrated with other communities.

2.2 Ethnic humor in twentieth century cartoons
Nearly all groups have been targets at one point or another of negative portrayal in American cartoons. In That’s Enough Folks, Henry Sampson talks about black images in cartoons and mentions other targets of animators’ humor, including “Jews, Irish, Italians, Native Americans and Asians” [4]. A little after the second World War, you could see images of Blacks as lazy, Germans as Nazis, Jews as serpents, Japanese as guerillas and Arabs as evil criminals. The short movie below is a montage of a few Warner Brother clips Bugs Bunny's Herr Meets Hare (1945) and All This and Rabbit Stew (1941), Popeye and Ali Baba's Forty Thieves (1937), Donald Duck in Commando Duck (1944) and Porky Pig in Ali Baba Bound (1940) [18].

Montage of a few politically incorrect early twentieth century cartoons [18]

For any film experts watching, I apologize about the amateur editing or directing. In fact, I did not prepare this montage bearing in mind a professional clip; rather I attempt to show how some of the very popular cartoons in the nineteen hundreds are very similar in their negative depictions of non-Americans.
These cartoons start by showing the main character, peaceful, happy, and minding his (note the absence of a female main character) own business. Then comes in the "bad guy", a foreigner or member of a minority group intent on hurting or killing the protagonist Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig or others.

The accent, clothing, emblems indicate to the audience that a person is part of some ethnic group. It is this idea that I believe to be very problematic. Invariably, the "bad guy" is an ethnic minority stereotype often indicating racial scapegoating. Why does a bad guy have to be of a certain nationality or other? Are there not evil people in all countries and continents? The cartoon producers seem to think that they need to provide their audience with an evil guy that embodies the political/social enemy of that time, as a shortcut, and to make use of the fact that the audience will immediately identify and understand the character and his motives.
In the above shown cartoons, the main character proceeds to trick, ridicule and manipulate his enemy, in order to save himself and the community from the greater evil. All this may sound much too familiar in contemporary diplomatic international relations.

The nature, nationality and ethnic group of the “evil” person changed over time, depending on the historical and political events occurring. Some practices were particularly common in twentieth century animations, those of mocking African Americans and individuals from countries the U.S. was in conflict with. I introduce these practices below and compare them to satirical cartoons against Arabs around that time. At the general level, the racist depictions are similar, but their goal and impact are in fact different.

2.3 Black images: 1900-1960
Many have written about the portrayal of African Americans in cartoon shorts. Henry Sampson looks exclusively at these portrayals in Black Images in Animated Cartoons from 1900 to 1960. He starts his exhaustive survey of such images by saying that “depicting black characters as derogatory stereotypes was the universal practice at all cartoon companies before 1960. ” It was not only the physical appearance of Blacks that was targeted, rather “almost every facet of the political, social, cultural, and religious activity of African Americans” [4]. He proceeds to name and describe hundreds of cartoons by the most popular producers like MGM and Warner Brothers where this satire and discrimination are apparent. Black characters were not only shown as lazy and unintelligent like in All This and Rabbit Stew, but also engaged in antisocial and illegal activities. Moreover, religious customs of Blacks were ridiculed in cartoons such as Going to Heaven on a Mule (1933) and Sunday Go to Meetin’ Time (1936), to name just a few.
Below is Bugs Bunny episode, All This and Rabit Stew (I edited the cartoon in order to shorten it). In this cartoon, Little Black Sambo is an inarticulate, unintelligent character. He is a danger to cute Bugs Bunny who tricks him time after time, until he lures him out of his clothes and weapon with a pair of dice.

All this and Rabbit Stew, 1941 [18]- Edited

It is difficult to estimate how harmful these images were to youngsters of all cultures in that day and age, but it is clear that people and experts at the time did not think they were. The reviews for this cartoon, as taken from Sampson’s book, praise the humor of the short, and its attention to detail. The Boxoffice, on September 14th 1941, says of All This and Rabbit Stew: “one big long hand […] It shows unmistakable signs of extra effort, preparation and ingenuity in all departments”. On September 17th, The Motion Picture Exhibitor calls Sambo, “a little negro boy” and pays tribute to the cartoon, “a very funny reel in every respect –characters, situations, and story” [4].
These quotes shows us that the derogatory images were so customary in that period’s cartoons that reviewers did not even notice them and focused on the technical details of the animation.

However, the fact that animators were not aware of their racism does not justify their use of these images. In fact, Sampson asserts that while cartoons did derive a large measure of their humor from ethnic, political and racial stereotypes, those representing most ethnic groups were been subject to constraints that “amounted to a type of censorship that was officially enforced by distributors, exhibitors, and the general public”. Sampson’s research claims that for black characters, animators had few such constraints [4]. This idea suggests that restraint did exist but was applied with less rigor to African Americans. In the next section, we will examine censorship and how it operated in more detail. The lack of consideration was not only true of cartoon producers, but Sampson argues that instead of discouraging discriminatory images, some white-owned movie theaters used separate shows for Blacks and Whites. They showed black cartoons to white audiences but not to their black audiences. It seems they did realize the pictures would be offensive and decided to avoid confrontation with the African American community rather than discontinue the showings.

2.4 War propaganda
Another type of image took over the screens in the twentieth century: war cartoons. During World War II, specifically from 1941 to 1945, Hollywood animators produced many cartoons that had both entertainment and propaganda objectives. Cartoons such as The Japoteurs (1942), The Ducktator (1942), Tokio Jokio (1943), Herr Meets Hare (1945), Bugs Nips the Nips (1942), Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943), You’re a Sap Mr. Jap (1942) "caricatured Germans, Japanese and Italians, using some of the most vicious racial and national stereotypes ever seen” [4] . The "bad guys" were often representative of the countries that were in conflict with the United States. Demonstrating this practice are the full episodes of Herr Meets Hare and Commando Duck, both produced towards the end of the second World War.

Herr meets Hare, featuring Bugs Bunny, 1945 [18]- Edited

Commando Duck, 1944 [18]- Edited

The first cartoon takes on the task of ridiculing a German, and of course, many insinuations, some subtle, some less so, appear about Nazis. The second cartoon shows Donald Duck on a mission to rid the world of the Japanese. Here again, stereotypes and symbols are very apparent. The practice of using war enemies in cartoons was acceptable to most of the film-going public because thousands of American men and women of all races were losing their lives in a life-and-death struggle against these nations [4]. The cartoons simply reinforced the audience’s existing feelings about these groups of people, which is partly the reason they were so popular.

2.5 Cartoons about Arabs
The images of Blacks and war enemies are discussed above in order to compare them to those of Arabs in cartoons. In fact, Karl Cohen, in Forbidden Animation mentions that “it appears that Arab Americans are in a position somewhat similar to that of African Americans” when it comes to images in cartoons [5]. Discriminatory images of Arabs appeared around the same time as those of other groups. Cartoons such as Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor (1936), Popeye and Ali Baba's Forty Thieves (1937), Porky Pig in Ali Baba Bound (1940), and others all portrayed Arabs as criminals, illiterates, or both. A more detailed examination of stereotypical images of Arabs will be provided below, but it is worth mentioning that the depictions have a correlation with Arab-American relations and with the coverage of the Arab world in other media.
In the next section, we will examine the variation in cartoon images and topics. The motives behind their production and their enjoyment by the public can be explained by the historical context in which they were born.

3 Ethnic cartoons / Social relations
“I have always been a fan of animation", starts Cohen in the preface of Forbidden Animation, "but while I was growing up, I simply saw it as a form of entertainment that I loved. It was not something anybody bothered to discuss […] in the 1960s” [5]. Indeed, cartoon animation was not always a topic thought to be worth analyzing. Today, of course, many texts and studies have taken on the task of scrutinizing and exploring animated cartoons in their different aspects. From their context, and audiences to their repercussions and censorship, there is much to say about cartoons as a rich, informative medium.

3.1 Cartoons: a witness of their time
Cartoons of the early twentieth century cannot be analyzed in a vacuum. They come from a specific time and place. To understand them, we need to look at them in context, as reflections of the time in which they were created.
As most media theorists have shown, and as Marita Stuken and Lisa Cartwright write, we interact everyday with images, caught up in "the power relations of societies in which we live. Images do a lot more than act as esthetics, they are investments that are meant to incite emotions within us, by individuals and institutions" [1].
Cartoons are in fact part of this interplay of images, interpretation, and social relations, because they act as a form of knowledge. We can better understand this interplay by looking at Foucault's relating of knowledge and power. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault states that there is a bidirectional relationship between images and society's values and prejudices: "Power relations establish the criteria for what gets to count as knowledge in a given society and knowledge systems in turn produce power relations" [6]. Hence cartoons not only reflect the social status, tensions, and discriminatory practices of their time, but they also help shape them through powerful institutions.
In addition, these social and political issues are most often the time internalized in people’s minds and everyday lives, which is partly why they are enjoyed by the masses, as we will see below.

3.2 Well if the public likes it…
Of course we cannot hold animators solely responsible for all racism in the world. As with contemporary economics, the question of producing certain animation images in the early twentieth century is a question of supply and demand. Sampson, talking about offensive black images, raises the point that “not only were they created, but they were enjoyed by a vast majority of the movie-going audiences in the United States and abroad”. Without attempting to give a psychological or sociological analysis of “this mass behavior” as he calls it, Sampson states that “results from studies by qualified scholars have shown that, in general, stereotyping of another race serves as effective vehicle for others to enhance their own self-esteem and to acquire a sense of personal power and perhaps to reinforce their own feeling of inherent superiority”. In a multicultural society like that of twentieth century America, Sampson argues that “cartoons can offer a convenient opportunity for the dominant majority to legitimately express many of their prejudices towards a less powerful minority” [4]. This claim suggests that the majority in power intentionally victimizes and ridicules minority groups in an effort to maintain power and self worth. Whether or not the creation of stereotypes was an intentional practice is debatable, but it is certain that cartoons, like other media, were merely another outlet for people to express their opinions.

In Doing Their Bit: Wartime Animated Short Films 1939-1945, Michael Shull and David Wilt justify the existence of ethnic images in cartoons by saying: “Contrary to what some may believe, there has never been a conscious effort on the part of the American film industry to stigmatize a particular racial or ethnic group. The adverse portrayals of Blacks, Asians, Mexicans, Jews and the like result more from the industry’s adoption of cultural stereotypes present in many other media than from actual dislike for a particular race or religion. Unpleasant as some movie stereotypes may be, they seem to have been included out of ignorance or laziness, rather than as part of a master plan to malign a certain group” [7]. It may actually be going too far to say that the stereotypes of racial groups were included because of ignorance or laziness. There must have been a degree of awareness on the part of cartoon producers to incorporate generalized images. This likelihood is especially true of the war cartoons mentioned above. However, one must not take that awareness as far as to believe in a conspiracy theory. In addition, later in the twentieth century, a degree of good faith could be seen in greater control of the cartoons that were produced. This control came in internalized, subtle forms, such as respect on the part of the animators, as well as unhealthy forms such as censorship and banning. Here is where appears the discrepancy in the way animated cartoons of Arabs and other groups were received and distributed. Cartoons depicting different racial groups were dealt with in a dissimilar fashion by both producers and censors.

4 To censor or not to censor
Theatrical cartoons did not always target children. It was not until the fifties that they were labeled “children’s programming”. Heather Hendershot explains in Saturday Morning Censors that “cartoons were not deemed truly dangerous and therefore censorable until the fifties […]. Up until that point, theatrical cartoons were considered more for children than for adults, but with their double-entendres, references to contemporary politics, and parodies of adult-oriented genres, cartoons were clearly also intended to be enjoyed as part of a film bill for adults” [8]. In fact, the Production Code Administration, Hollywood’s self-censoring agency did not formally control cartoons like it did motion pictures. Cartoons were not considered censorable, or worthy of censoring. This changed ,however, during the second half of the twentieth century. Now cartoons were subject to rigorous monitoring by control agencies as well as by the cartoon producers themselves.
It is precisely the criticism of censorship that made the examination of derogatory practices in cartoons interesting to me. Hendershot states that “censorship does not hide […] fears, it reveals them”. By examining the techniques used and the decisions made in the prohibition of certain images, we can better understand the state of mind and motives of cartoon producers and censors. Which cartoons were being banned? Which images were being cut out? Answering these questions can provide insight as to the context in which they were distributed, and to the nature of racism at that point in time. Furthermore, we need to explore censorship not just at the obvious level, but also in its insidious form. “Censorship is not just cutting out images, sounds or texts whose politics censors object to”, Hendershot says, “the act of censorship is a social progress through which the politics of class, race, gender, violence and other potentially problematic issues are deconstructed and reconstructed, articulated and scotomized”. She looks at censorship as a building force rather than just a destructive force. Censorship “both prohibits and produces meanings” [8]. In the context of racism, censorship shapes the way we view ethnicity and racism in general. It embodies the way we deal with racism and what we view as racist. If certain racist and sexist representations are absent from the studio’s final cartoon product, it is not because racism no longer exists in the media, and in the animation industry. These images become absent because of extensive interaction between censors and producers. “In the course of this industrial exchange, the censor repeatedly submits material objectionable to the network, and the censor repeatedly censors that material” [8]. Whether or not censorship is a harmful practice will not be the issue here. I will rather focus on the motive behind censorship, and raise questions as to why these motives, while they applied to many racial groups, did not apply as strictly to the Arab representations.

4.1 Why censor?
We cannot talk about cartoon censorship without mentioning the 1939 Look magazine article “Hollywood Censors its Animated Cartoons”. The article asserts that the 1930s were a period of passionate discussion about censorship. Only cartoons were not one of the media under debate. Hence, when Hollywood started subjecting cartoons to close monitoring, it was headline news. In the article, Leon Schlesinger, producer of “Merrie Melodies” and “Looney Toons” (for Warner Brothers) makes a statement about the motive behind cartoon censorship: "We cannot forget", he says, "that while the cartoon today is excellent entertainment for young and old, it is primarily the favorite motion picture fare of children. Hence we always must keep their best interest at heart by mistaking our product proper for their impressionable minds” [9]. The idea is that the main audience of cartoons is children, and they are easily influenced by the images they see. Cartoon producers, creators, and distributors began to make the interest of children a priority. The article was part of an effort by Warner Brothers to rival Disney and its reputation as the producer of wholesome family entertainment. Schlesinger spoke of “no cruelty, no monsters, no taking of the Lord’s name in vain, no sex”. What is cruelty? What is monsters? These are a few questions that were defined by subsequent events in the censorship wave.

4.2 Censored 11
Another important event in the history of censorship is the 1968 cartoon ban. As a result of pressure by parents, sponsors, and minority group organizations, a lot of racist content was taken off the air or banned.
In 1968 United Artists created the "Censored 11" list of shorts it refused to air or sell because they were racially discriminatory, mainly against African Americans. As listed in the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board, the Censored 11 list is constituted of the following[10]:

"Hittin' the Trail to Hallelujah Land" (1931)
"Sunday Go to Meetin' Time" (1936)
"Clean Pastures" (1937)
"Uncle Tom's Bungalow" (1937)
"Jungle Jitters" (1938)
"The Isle Of Pingo Pongo" (1938)
"All This and Rabbit Stew" (1941)
"Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs" (1943)
"Tin Pan Alley Cats" (1943)
"Angel Puss" (1944)
"Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears" (1944)

While previous instances of censorship had to do with references to alcohol, sex, tobacco, cross-dressing, gambling, marijuana, pornography, profanity etc, the "Censored 11" had racial discrimination as its main theme. Almost all the cartoons depicted African Americans. This was a moment when the awareness of racism toward Blacks was concretizing itself. Few other events of racial cartoons censorship were as publicized for a long time. Other minority groups did not receive so much attention. Some of the cartoons that referenced Arabs, Germans, or Japanese were taken off the air gradually, while some stayed in circulation.

Around that time, as we will see below, the practice of censorship in cartoons became very controversial. This controversy affected the way censorship operated. It moved from explicit censorship to more subtle forms of monitoring. In 2001 however, another instance of blatant restriction of cartoons occurred: The Cartoon Network's leaving out of some shorts during the June Bugs Marathon. This selective censorship revived the idea of banning cartoon racism, but only specific forms and groups targeted of racism were deemed worthy of attention.

4.3 Subtle censorship
The “direct” way of banning and censoring of theatrical films pretty much ended in 1968. It was replaced with a rating system and a self censorship from the part of the animators and cartoon producers. The rating system advises people “whether a feature is wholesome, slightly offensive, or very sexual or violent”. The parents can decide if they want their children to see a cartoon or movie with a particular rating. Sometimes the rating is reinforced and children are not allowed to view the picture. This system allows directors of theatrical films more artistic freedom. In the television broadcast industry on the other hand, policies have been put in place that decide what can and cannot be broadcast. “Pressure groups concerned with violence, morality, racism and other issues have considerable input when it comes to censoring the content of the medium” [5]. The exchange is usually a diplomatic one, television executives try to do their best to avoid offending the public “as local stations and networks are vulnerable to economic boycotts and to letter-writing campaigns to sponsors and to the Federal Communications Commission” [5]. Hence, it is a combination of concern of losing an audience as well as getting their reputation tarnished that gets television and theater executives to avoid “objectionable” material. The censorship comes sometimes in the form self-censorship in the animation companies. Shorts are edited before they are shown. Disney had a problem with Three Little Pigs (1933) when they decided to show the film theatrically in the late 1940s. “They removed an anti-Semitic image and replaced it with newly animated footage. The sequence showed the wolf as a Jewish peddler with a thick Yiddish accent, a large crooked nose, and a black hat” [5]. This self-censorship was also done for other Disney cartoons, they were edited and sometimes shred to minutes. An impressive and fairly comprehensive list of modified cartoons because of "objectionable" content entitled Compilation of Lopped, Cropped or Chopped Cartoons from the Disney studios appeared in Persistence of Vision [11]. Fans complained about the censorship and still do. Commando Duck for example is included in this list. This cartoon is rarely shown, and when it is, all references to Japanese are deleted. The "enemy" is kept secret. Another example, Der Fuehrer's Face, is never shown on The Disney Channel, because Disney considers it to be too insulting to Germans. If we look at the whole list, we fail to find all the cartoons that were offensive to Arabs. Mickey In Arabia (1932) for instance is one of many discriminatory cartoons toward Arabs that wasn't edited. It is in fact still distributed as part of the DVD: Walt Disney Treasures - Mickey Mouse in Black and White, Volume Two. In this cartoon, Sultan Pete kidnaps Minnie for his harem while her and Mickey are on vacation in Arabia. Within the Disney list, we do find Goofy and Donlad’s Crazy With The Heat, but the censorship that is exercised in this cartoon is not as extensive as the abovementioned cartoons. In this last cartoon, Goofy and Donald get stuck in the Arabian desert and start experiencing some illusions and mirages. Goofy imagines a soda bar where an Arab man serves fresh cold beverages. The man starts off by being very nice, polite and articulate. When Goofy gets upset for not being able to enjoy the beverages, he leaves without paying the bartender. This is when the image of the sword-bearing criminal comes into play. He follows Donald and Goofy and starts beating them cruelly, until they run away on a camel.

Crazy with the Heat, 1947- Edited

This cartoon was not completely censored by the folks at Disney. The scene where the two heroes are attacked by the sword is removed. The part where the Arab beats them and scares them remains in the cartoon. This selective censorship suggests that the part with the sword might have been edited out because dangerous weapons were often deemed unacceptable. However, the general image of the ruthless Arab in the gellabya mortifying the innocent remains. This is an image I will look into more below, and tie to the sociopolitical relationships and conceptions between the West and East.

4.4 June Bugs 2001
Even Bugs Bunny did not escape being included in equally or more "politically incorrect" cartoons censorship. In 2001, during a "June Bugs" marathon, Cartoon Network aired every single Bugs Bunny episode except a few considered unacceptable. These episodes are even extremely difficult to find in the market or on the internet [10]:

"Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt"
"All This & Rabbit Stew"
"Any Bonds Today"
"What's Cookin' Doc"
"Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips"
"Herr Meets Hare"
"A Feather in his Hare"
"Mississippi Hare"
"Frigid Hare"
"Which is Witch?"
"Bushy Hare"
"Horse Hare"

These twelve cartoons all handle the issue of racist stereotypes. They were excluded from the marathon because of their images of Blacks, Eskimos, Native Americans, Native Australians, Japanese, Germans, etc.
Surprisingly, Cartoon Network did not exclude any of the cartoons that appeared discriminatory towards Arabs. For instance, on Saturday, June 2nd 2001 at 7am, A-Lad-In His Lamp (1948) was aired, followed by Ali Baba Bunny (1957) at 7 am and at 9pm, Hareabian Nights (1959). These are just a few Bugs Bunny cartoons that portray Arabs in a very negative way that were not part of the twelve excluded for racist content. In Hareabian Nights, for example, Bugs lures an overweight evil Arab sheik by slipping into black lingerie, sidling up to him and batting his false eye-lashes and giggling; and of course, the sheikh starts to drool. This scene does not look different than any other Bugs versus "evil guy" scene we spoke about in previous cartoons. The question remains. Why did the Cartoon Network deem cartoons that were offensive to other ethnic groups unfit to be aired, whereas those that show Arabs in a very unconstructive light are acceptable? Let us look at one of these cartoons here, Ali Baba Bunny.

Ali Baba Bunny, 1957

In this cartoon, Bugs is trying to get rid of Hassan, the keeper of Ali Baba’s cave of wonders. The Arab character is shown in much the same way as other Arab stereotypes, an evil, mumbling, brainless subhuman. Images like these were not considered racist enough to be put in the same pile as the twelve cartoons listed above. It is perhaps because the people in decision making positions thought the images to be accurate portrayals of Arabs that would not be considered distasteful. This idea is illustrated in Forbidden Animation, in a quote of Paul Mular, San Francisco censor. In 1972, Variety magazine asked Mular about Arab images, he answered “it never occurred to me that some people might find them objectionable”. Censors in the seventies were supposed to be more attuned to offensive depictions in terms of race and ethnicity with respect to other people. His alleged assessment that the material is not censorable shows an unawareness that they showed an inaccurate stereotype of Arabs.
To understand the view of censors and producers about these Arab images, we must look at the nature of these images. How are Arabs portrayed? And how do these generalizations spring from social relations between the West and the East? For this, I shall examine work by some social scientists and cultural theorists work about this and attempt to show that in fact the images displayed in cartoons can be comprehended by understanding the sociopolitical relations between the two parties.

5 The "Arab" in caricatures
Much about the nature and origins of Arab images in cartoons can be explained by thinking of the binary opposition between East and West. As a matter of fact, some of the works of Edward Said can be relevant to my research and be used to understand motives and intentions when it comes to cartoon conception.

In Orientalism and Covering Islam, Said speaks of "Orientalism" as a concept that explains the relationship between the West and the Middle East, and considering of the latter as "the other". "Photographs and other forms of representation, Said says in Covering Islam, can be seen as central elements in the production of Orientalism, or the ways in which Western cultures attribute to Eastern and Middle-Eastern cultures qualities of exoticism and barbarism, and hence establish those cultures as Other" [12]. Along with others forms of media: photographs, news, etc, cartoons contribute to create the concept of Orientalism and vice versa. The Orient is viewed as “exotic” with the ideas of belly dancing, the harem and exotic music, but also “barbaric”, high on crime and corruption. These two ideas will be seen below in the stereotypes of both Arab men and women. Said writes:

"Orientalism is about the Orient's special place in European Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other".

The concept of the Orient defines in turn Europe and the West. Orientalism is thus used to set up a binary opposition between the West (the Occident) and the East (the Orient) in which negative qualities are attributed to the latter".

The concept of Other is very important when we look at cartoons. Indeed, the enemy in cartoons is mostly always an "other”. But this is not only present in cartoons, and can be seen in the political arena as well as other types of media. In [1], Sturken & Cartwright analyze Said's words and explains that Orientalism can be found not only in political policy, but also in cultural representations, "such as contemporary popular culture in which, for instance, films depict all Arab men as terrorists and Asian women as highly sexualized". When reading this article, this sentence was what triggered my interest in this subject. I decided to investigate that claim and attempt to understand the depictions, first with respect to the Arab woman, then that of the Arab man.

5.1 The Arab Woman
I start by looking at the image of women. Almost all portrayals of Arab women in American, and other, western cartoons can be summarized into these two notions: veiled, oppressed and/or sensual belly dancer.
Here the concept of the harem becomes very relevant. Said mentions the idea of exoticism and draws as an example the image of the harem as being a property of the Orient, or of Oriental women. In Animating culture, Eric Smooden states that the harem “functioned as the signifier of hyper-heterosexuality that masked both racism and ethnocentrism” in American cartoons of the twentieth century [13]. He illustrate Said’s idea of the Other as being exotic and barbaric: “Along with animated Africa, the Hollywood version of the Orient worked as one of the great sites of otherness not only in cartoons but also in live-action feature films. During eras of colonization as well as decolonization, a variety of cartoons insisted on the irrationality and exoticism of the region”. Examples of this include Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (1934), Sinbad the Sailor (1935), and Ali Baba (1936) all produced by Ub Iwerks for Celebrity Pictures, or the Warner Brothers/US government training cartoon coproduction, Payday (1944) or Popeye the Sailor meets Sinbad the sailor (Paramount, 1936) or Superman in The Mummy Strikes (Paramount, 1943), Bugs Bunny in Sahara Hare (Warner Brothers, 1955) or Woody Woodpecker in A Lad in Bagdad (Universal , 1962) [13]. In these cartoons, the images of women were frequently associated with colonial adventures, concubines, opium pipes, and the general decadence [13]. Let us examine a specific example of an Arab woman as a sexualized, erotic dancer. Donald Duck’s A Good Time for a Dime, 1941, demonstrates how objectified female sexuality can be represented to children because and through the “accepted standards of racism and misogyny” [13]. Below is a clip from this cartoon, “The Dance of the Seven Veils”. The scene represents all of the Western stereotypes about the harem, and shows a generic obliging woman happily catering to male sexual fantasies [13].

A Good Time for A Dime, 1941- Edited

In the cartoon, Donald goes into an amusement park and puts a coin in a kinetoscope showing a dance of the seven veils. For a few moments the spectator looks through Donald’s point of view and we see Daisy Duck dressed in stereotypical Arab dancer clothes put on a show. We become a voyeuristic, dominating male in a spectatorial position, much like that of the West on the sexualized Arab woman.

The other popular image of the Arab woman is that of the veiled, oppressed woman. She is often nameless and has no identity. This image is related to that of the Arab man, who is highly dominating and repressive, and an example of it can be seen below. In this clip from Popeye and Ali Baba's forty thieves, the tyrannical aspect of the Arab man appears when Olive is made to do the chores of forty thieves, and typically, she is not allowed to talk.

Popeye meets Ali Baba and his 40 Thieves, 1937

The two above examples can help illustrate the two images mentioned by Edward Said. Because these images of exoticism and barbarism are so rooted in people’s minds, they were perhaps not perceived as stereotypical. If in fact, the West’s view of the East, expressed and influenced by the Occident-Orient relationship, is based on these stereotypes; it would be understandable that censors did not deem the images censorable. This would explain why the above mentioned cartoons were kept in circulation at a time where other racist cartoons were being scrutinized, edited and banned.

5.2 The Arab Man
As with the images of the Arab women, we find two equally generalized, reductive images of the Arab man. The first one is that of the overweight, rich, oily sheikh, and the second of the fundamentalist fanatic. As we see below, both these representations are related to sociopolitical relationships between the East and the West.
The sheikh is not only ridiculed and looked down upon with respect to his relationship with women and money. But he is representative of the oil suppliers in the Middle East. Many thinkers, including Said, state that the East is viewed primarily as a threat to the West because of its oil supply. This fear is translated into Western vocabulary as well as the cartoons showed above. Said notes that there is in fact a double standard when talking about Eastern oil suppliers and American oil suppliers: "words like 'monopoly', 'cartel' and 'block' thereafter achieved a remarkably sudden if selective currency, although very rarely did anyone speak of the small group of American multinationals as a cartel, a designation reserved for the OPEC members". This double standard appears in the virtual absence of any reference to oil companies in American cartoons. Images like these, which exist in the news coverage of the Middle East, make their way into cartoons through the stereotypes of the wealthy sheikh as seen in cartoons like Hareabian Nights, mentioned above.
The second image of the Arab man, that of the criminal is very much dominating in cartoons. When we list the names of the Arab characters that appeared in the twentieth century media, the names Ali Baba, Sinbad, Aladdin, all come to mind. These three characters were used and reused by different cartoon producers at the time, Warner Brothers, MGM, Disney, and others. Few other Arab characters made appearance at that time, and hence Arab presence was restricted to these crooks, animal hating subhumans that are out to persecute women and children. The fact that there were very few “positive” images of Arabs make the impact of the stereotypes significant.
The two leading depictions of the Arab man do still exist in contemporary cartoons. Some of the contemporary instances include the depictions a little differently, but mostly, the stereotypes operate in pretty much the same manner. The very popular Aladdin by Disney, released in 1992 is a good example. In Aladdin there are both good guys and bad guys that are Arab. And yet, we seem to leave the movie with the stereotypes of Arabs unaltered.
Aladdin portrays the "bad" Arabs with thick, foreign accents, while the anglicized Jasmine and Aladdin speak in standard Americanized English. This makes the audience forget that Aladdin, Jasmine and the Sultan, the "good guys", are Arabs. Instead we think of the Arabs being those with the long dark faces, the heavy accents and the long black moustaches, like Jaafar and his crew. Also, Peter Schneider, president of feature animation at Disney, says that Aladdin was modeled after Tom Cruise. Aladdin doesn’t “look” very Arabic, and his charm and wit do not get associated with the Arab character. These simple details make that the contrasting portrayal of good and bad Arabs doesn’t really come through as a contrast of stereotypes. The good Arab doesn’t become an alternative image to that of the evil Arab.
Furthermore, even if we do associate the good guys, Aladdin, Jasmine, the Sultan, with Arabs, the “positive” depiction does have the opposite effect. This is similar to the Cosby show and the relationship of the image of the upper class, smart, healthy African American with the idea of ethnic racism, or Enlightened racism. Henry Louis Gates’ argues that it doesn’t matter if The Cosby show is “realistic”, but the show has an effect on its enormous viewing audience. The “positive images” are actually counterproductive “because they reinforce the myth of the American dream, a just world where anyone can make it and racial barriers no longer exist. For the longest time, Blacks were represented in demeaning roles, which made viewers believe that American racism was, as it were, indiscriminate. The role of Clifford Huckstable, the vision of Blacks into the upper middle class, throws the blame for Black poverty onto the impoverished" [14]. The audience starts believing an illusion that racism in America doesn’t exist and that Blacks have good opportunities to reach high paying jobs and lifestyles. Hence, poor, uneducated African Americans are not victims of racism, they are just not working hard enough. A similar phenomena can be seen when you look at Aladdin. The good characters are the ones that renounced their Arabic traditions, customs and accents in favor of American ones. The “evil” characters are the way they are because they hold onto their culture, and their poverty, lack of education and cruelty can only be blamed on themselves.
To bring back the issue of censorship, we look at Aladdin again. When the film came out, the opening song had the following lyrics:

“Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels roam, where they cut off your ear If they don’t like your face, it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.”

Many Arab Americans complained and the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC) challenged Disney and persuaded the studio to change a phrase in the lyrics. The change was only made to the video version of the movie, and the lyrics became:

“It’s flat and immense, and the heat is intense. It’s barbaric, but hey’ it’s home.”

This is an instance where censorship of Arab discrimination did occur. It may be a small change, but the ADC speaks publicly of this event as a success for Arabs. Other discriminatory elements in the movie were not successfully altered or omitted. References to the “cruel” Islamic law and the uncivilized Arab mass is made several times and was not changed even though it provoked criticism. As the Economist reported in April 1980, "Islamic law to most Westerners means Islamic punishment", and this association is clear in Aladdin.

Hence the recent Aladdin does present a few differences to the previous cartoons we were talking about, but the effects of discrimination and racism are far from inexistent. Moving further in time, depictions of Arabs in cartoons and the way they were handled by cartoon producers kept changing with historical events. One of the biggest historical events has been the tragedy of September 11. The events affected the relationships between the East and the West considerably, which influenced the image, or lack images seen in commercial cartoons.

5.3 Contemporary Arab images
The concept of the cruel Arab man in cartoons improved little since September 11. In some instances the image still appeared, but mostly, the presence of the Arab disappeared completely from cartoons. People have been avoiding the image of Arabs because the association between Arabs and terrorism is a sensitive issue. It is more difficult to prove the disappearance of the Arab in cartoons than it is to prove its presence. But in some instances, the erasure of Arabs in cartoons has little foundation and can tell us a lot about racial relations today.
To investigate the motives of this representation, I draw an analogy to the depiction of black males as discussed by John Fiske in Prologue: the juice is loose: "In the culture and politics of contemporary white America, the problem of the black male/ black America is conventionally viewed through the lense of the "drug problem" to the extent that the "drug problem" has become code for "the Black problem" and the war on drugs of the Reagan- Bush administration was widely decoded by African-Americans, at least, as a war on Blacks" [15]. This notion can be adapted today, after September 11, to view the fear White America has of the Arab World. Today, the term "the terrorism problem" is considered by some people to be code for "the Arab problem" and Arabs view Bush's "war on terror" as a war on Arabs.
As a result, there has been a trend of avoidance of talking about either, he issue of terrorism, or the Arab characters. This trend is similar to that of erasure of talking about racial differences between African Americans and White Americans in nineties movies. In Hop on Pop, Tara McPherson talks of this strategy in the movie Scarlett as compared to its predecessor Gone with The Wind. She talks of these two movies as being an example of "the different economies of visibility that were prevalent in the 1930s and 1990s structuring different representations of the relation of white and black femininity in the novel Gone with the Wind and in its sequel, Scarlett". McPherson refers to the two modes of representing racial difference, as overt versus covert. The first mode "brings together figurations of racial difference in order to fix the categories" while the second one, or covert racism, "enacts a separation that nonetheless achieves a similar end" [16]. The avoidance of Arab images in recent cartoons can be considered a form of covert representation of ethnic differences. An example of this avoidance strategy after September 11 can be seen in Sinbad, the Legend of the Seven Seas.

In 2003, DreamWorks released an animated movie in a whole new form. In the original story, Sinbad began life as an Arab sailor operating out of the port town of Basra. In the new version, he's a Sicilian embarked on Greek adventures. This was classified in the Guardian article Printing the Legend: Sinbad and the Legend of the Seven Seas as a classic case of "Hollywood airbrushing". Facts such as Sinbad’s origin from Baghdad, his becoming a trusted lieutenant of the renowned Caliph Harun al-Rashid, the temporal and spiritual leader of all Muslims have been altered in this new movie. Here, “Sinbad is from Syracuse (in Sicily, as opposed to New York State), the love of his life, Marina, is a noblewoman of Thebes, his estranged best friend is Proteus, the son of King Daimas, and his most dangerous enemy is Eris, the goddess of chaos” [17]. Every Arab reference has been removed, and replaced with something vaguely Greek. The film's producer Mireille Soria asserts: "We started with the Sinbad legend and then brought in different elements of mythology that we felt worked with the story. There is action and romance, but at its core is a tale of friendship based on the Greek fable of Damon and Pythius, about one friend who is willing to sacrifice his life for the other”. Jack Shaheen explains this act of erasure: "When I spoke to Jeffrey Katzenberg - a visionary producer - I asked him to include some reference to Arabs or Arab culture. He didn't seem surprised that I mentioned it, which presumably means that it was discussed early on in the development of the film". Shaheen’s take is that the studio decided to play it safe, not to stir people by including Arab heroes, and risk a blow in the box office, nor Arab villains, and face the allegations of racism. Indeed, in a day and age where race is a still a very important concept, it retains an "opacity, a now-we-see-it, now-we-don’t quality that makes adequate explanations of its workings in today’s society difficult to produce" [16]. In some aspects of the media, racial differences is very present, in other cases, race "disappears" and raises questions as to whether race and discrimination has really disappeared or whether our avoiding of representing it means it is evermore present.

6 Conclusions
In my research, I have attempted to look at how Arabs are depicted in U.S. cartoons. In the twentieth century, many ethnic groups were victim of discriminatory stereotypes in animated cartoons. However, the way the industry dealt with racism with respect to each of these groups varied. Censorship, banning, editing and self censorship took place with most ethnic portrayals and war propaganda films. There has however been a double standard when it comes to the images of Arabs.
I have tried to look at the reasons behind this double standard, and its relationship with the way stereotypes operate in culture. For this, I examined the nature of the Arab images in cartoons and the media. Basically, the images fall into two categories for each women and men. Arab women are seen by the West as either a highly sexualized member of a harem, or an oppressed, religious woman. The Arab man on the other hand is usually seen as a rich barbaric Sheikh or a ruthless criminal. These images relate to the concepts of exoticism and barbarism associated with Orientalism. And part of the reason they spring into popular media like cartoons is that the coverage of the Orient in Western media is limited to terrorism events and romantic Arabian nights.
Also, since September 11, people have been dealing with images of Arabs in different ways. There is a general trend of avoidance when it comes to such a sensitive subject. Unfortunately, Arabs have been very closely tied with terrorism since, and this has motivated companies such as DreamWorks to avoid the inclusion of any Arab references in a remake of a movie based on a Arabic myth, Sinbad of Baghdad.
The issue of misrepresentation of Arabs in cartoons in particular and in the media in general is an issue that can be assimilated to other racism phenomena, such as that of African Americans. A lot can be learnt from that still existing phenomena, just as long as a problem is acknowledged and solutions studied.