Fictionalized Middle Eastern settings erase context and make real wars feel unreal

Evidence

These complex characters and story lines fall short of subverting stereotypes. Fictionalizing Arab and Muslim countries, for example, tends to add to the conflation and generalization of Arab and Muslim identities by implying that terrorism originates from a fictional country that could be any of a number of Arab/Muslim countries. The specificity of the context becomes irrelevant. Furthermore, viewers are well aware that the fictionalized country is supposed to be Arab or Muslim. These fictionalized countries operate as allegories—standing in as doubles for the “real”—and in turn illustrate how the real sites where the United States is waging its War on Terror (Iraq and Afghanistan) often feel like abstract or even fictional locations to viewers. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 165

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how fictionalizing real war zones (Agrabah-izing the Middle East) inverts the documentary impulse and makes the real feel unreal — a representational double-bind.