p. 150

Both of the stills represent something foreign. When I step outside onto the street, the majority of the people I see are not wearing turbans and robes and keffiyehs and etc. The biggest difference I notice between the stills is that the Arab world in the still from Lawrence of Arabia appears more formal and regal with the intricate detail on the wall in the background and on the chair and the various fabrics and patterns draping the Arab men. In the still from Raiders of the Lost Ark, the variation in dress is replaced by a sea of white, the palace is instead outside in the bare desert, with a plain boring building in the background. In 20 years, the representations of "Arabia" went from being fancy and respectable, an (almost) equal to the western world, to being dirty and "primitive," ultimately much inferior.

In Hollywood today, the representations of the Arab world aren't palaces. They are bare, villages in deserts disconnected from the rest of the country and other villages. The western world only connects with the Arab world for tourism, and war. The people are portrayed as if they were so different that they are not even from the same species. This representation plays perfectly to justify the right wing's (though sort of wobbly) stance on war, despite always hearing that the entertainment industry is run by "liberal nutjobs" (the quotation marks indicate that that phrase is a quote, and even though I do not know who to accredit this to, I am sure it has been spoken at some point by Bill O'Reilly or my father, or someone similar).