News media but not TV dramas circulated the oppressed Muslim woman rescue narrative

Evidence

It is not possible to write about representations of Arabs and Muslims since 9/11 without addressing the quandary of Arab and Muslim women. In innumerable ways, and from both ends of the ideological spectrum, these women have been represented as veiled, oppressed, and in need of rescue. The government and commercial news media have been central to the circulation of stories about the “oppressed Muslim woman” and the imperative to “save brown women from brown men.” Yet the figure of the oppressed Muslim woman has not been prominent in post-9/11 TV dramas, which tend to focus on Arab/Muslim American patriots, victims of hate crimes, and Arab/Muslim terrorists. When Arab/Muslim women were represented in TV dramas, like their male counterparts, they tended to fall within these three categories. … Perhaps the effort by TV dramas to create more complex characters led to complex terrorists but not complex victims. While “the oppressed Muslim woman” did not make compelling prime-time dramas, it did make for compelling news. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 513

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s research on women’s dress moral panics and the ‘save brown women from brown men’ rescue narrative (Spivak’s classic phrase, which the author is invoking).
• QUESTION: Why did complex characterization produce complex terrorists but not complex victims — what structural incentives in TV drama reward one and not the other?