Arabic speech is coded as indecipherable babble in Western film

Evidence

The language of normative humanity is English; the language of the Other, the foreigner, and the monster is babble. This is especially true of Arabic, which when included in a film is presented as “an indecipherable murmur.” This is a “hallmark of the Orientalist project,” seen in the numerous Oriental and Muslim characters that grunt, cannot speak at all, or have an obvious physical deformity. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 636

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism and the broader manufactured-image thesis; also ties to the reader’s own project on the Muslim monster as projection.
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘indecipherable murmur’ convention as a hallmark of Orientalist filmmaking.