Collective Identity

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Collective Identity
2
Team America

• Team America is a film by Trey Parker, regarding
  the ethos of American life after 9/11.
• The film is constructed as a parody and comedy,
  although it is highly controversial due to the
  contentious nature of the topic.
• The film deploys stereotypes (archetypes) to set
  its point and also uses the British puppet-string
  technique to avoid trouble. This allows the
  auteur to demonstrate whatever views and opinions
  he may have due to the characters being pseudo.

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Representation of Muslims in Team America

• Throughout the film the Muslims are represented
  as negative and people who do wrong.
• They are seen at the start attempting to detonate
  a bomb before America intervenes. (Somewhat
  destructively)

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Representation of Muslims in Team America

• They lose further status and audience acceptance
  when they kill one of the protagonists within the
  opening ten minutes.
• They are represented as controlled and evil, this
  is in binary opposition to America who are
  destructive and very heavy handed.

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Representation of Muslims in Team America

• Parker positions the audience so that they have a
  negative reading towards the Muslims. This
  happens throughout and we see them as nasty
  individuals so there is a dominant-preferred
  reading.
• Their war with America is seen as pointless
  however, due to the intensity of the destruction.
  For example the Eiffel Tower, The Pyramids and
  Mount Rushmore all fall victims to the war,
  ripping the cultural idents away from the
  country.

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Muslim History Pre 2004

• 2000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza
  Strip begin the Al-Aqsa Intifada, prompted by
  Ariel Sharon's visit to a disputed religious site
  holy to both Jews and Muslims. President Hafez
  al-Assad of Syria dies of a heart attack. His son
  Bashar al-Assad is elected President by Syria's
  Majlis Al Shaa'b (Parliament). Earthquake in
  Gujarat, India at Richter scale of 7.8, 25,000
  people died
• 2001 Members of Al Qaeda, a Jihadi organization,
  attack the United States. Hijacked commercial
  airliners are flown into the World Trade Center
  and the Pentagon building on September 11, 2001,
  killing upwards of three thousand. The United
  States subsequently declares a War on terror and
  invades Afghanistan, whose Taliban regime had
  given refuge to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
  The Taliban are ousted from power, though the
  fate of bin Laden is unknown as of 2008.
• 2002 The riots between Hindus and Muslims in
  Gujarat, India. More than 5000 reported killed,
  most of them Muslims.
• 2003 The United States leads the invasion of
  Iraq, searching for "weapons of mass
  destruction", starting the second Iraq War.
  Shirin Ebadi becomes the first Muslim woman to
  win the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in
  promoting human rights.

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Muslim History Post 2004

• 2004 A Jihadi group claims responsibility for
  bombings in Madrid's commuter railway and several
  trains. The Jihad attack killed 191, and wounded
  1,460 others. Nevertheless the Islamists' claim,
  latest unveilings suggest that perhaps the role
  of Islamic extremists was less capital than it
  has been officially presented. The second largest
  earthquake ever recorded occurs in the Indian
  Ocean triggering the Asian Tsunami. Indonesia
  suffers the heaviest damage with 167,736 dead,
  37,063 missing and 500,000 displaced.
• 2005 A radical Muslim group claims
  responsibility for bombings in the London
  Underground. The attack kills 52, and wounds over
  700 others. Bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
  kill at least 83 and wound hundreds. Saudi
  Arabia's King Fahd dies. Fahd's brother Crown
  Prince Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, who had assumed
  de facto leadership of the country after King
  Fahd suffered a debilitating stroke in 1994, is
  declared king. A powerful, 7.6-magnitude
  earthquake hits Pakistan administered Kashmir,
  killing upwards of 73,000 people. Israel removed
  Jewish settlers and military personnel from the
  Gaza Strip in August 2005.

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Muslim History Post 2004

• 2006 Israel attempts to invade Lebanon in
  pursuit of Hezbollah paramilitary forces, but
  fails. Death of former Iraqi dictator Saddam
  Hussein by hanging for crimes against humanity.
  Muhammad Yunus wins Nobel Peace Prize for
  successful application of microcredit schemes to
  poor entrepreneurs in Bangladesh.
• 2007Ethiopian forces invade Somalia and routed
  Islamic Courts from Mogadishu.
• 2008 Kosovo becomes independent and immediately
  recognised by the USA and the EU.

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Application of History to Film

• 9/11 Attacks
• See films, Team America, Yasmin, World Trade
  Centre and United 93
• Arab Representation
• See films, East is East, House of Sand and
  Fog, House of Saddam and Aladdin
• Diverse Society
• See films, My Beautiful Laundrette, East is
  East, This is England and Somers Town

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2004, In film.

• As well as Team America being released, the
  following films also came out in this year.
• Fahrenheit 9/11 A Michael Moore Documentary
  looking at the politics of America.
• Million Dollar Baby Dominated the awards for
  2004.
• Voices of Iraq A Documentary regarding the
  chaos in the country was also unveiled this year.
  
• Eternal Sunshine, The Notebook, Collateral and
  Shaun of the Dead also screened this year.
• Ironically, the Thunderbirds Movie also screened
  this year, however the same puppet technique as
  used in Team America was dropped.

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2004, In Politics.

• George Bush was re-elected for the final time,
  his tenure would end in 2008.
• Iraqs governing council changes hands several
  times throughout the year.
• British Government cleared of falsifying
  information on weapons of mass destruction
• Kim Jong-il is still recovering from admitting to
  creating Nuclear weaponry even though he signed
  an agreed framework saying he would not do so.
• Tense relations between America and North Korea
  continues to be negative.
• New presidents of Germany, Austria, Romania,
  Luxembourg, Serbia, Georgia, Singapore and
  Lebanon are elected.

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Political and Social Conditions in Saudi Arabia

• Saudi Arabia is a monarchy with royal power
  vested in the descendants of King Abdal-Aziz Al
  Saud (known more commonly as Ibn Saud), the
  founder of the modern Saudi state.
• For over two centuries, Saudi Arabias ruling
  family has relied upon religious leaders to help
  bolster its legitimacy among Saudis, and leading
  conservative Muslim clerics have gained extensive
  influence over Saudi social policy.
• As a result of this tacit alliance between the
  ruling family and the religious hierarchy,
  clerics practicing a puritanical version of
  Islam, known as Wahhabism, have been able to
  institute a number of social restrictions, such
  as the segregation of the sexes, the prohibition
  of the sale and consumption of alcohol, and a ban
  on women driving.2 Some analysts believe that
  such social restrictions have fostered a climate
  of extremism in Saudi Arabia.
• Saudi officials have issued statements insisting
  there is no association between Islam and
  terrorism. For many years, Saudi officials and
  some outside observers did not place Islamic
  militancy at the top of their policy agendas,
  believing that the Kingdoms Islamic roots
  immunized it from extremist elements.

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Saudi Arabia links to 9/11

• In its findings on the connection between the
  September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the
  phenomenon of growing Islamic extremism in Saudi
  Arabia, the 9/11 Commission Report states that
  the United States and Saudi Arabia must
  determine if they can build a relationship that
  political leaders on both sides are prepared to
  publicly defend a relationship about more than
  oil. It should include a shared commitment to
  political and economic reform, as Saudis make
  common cause with the outside world.
• This recommendation is based largely on the
  notion that after the 9/11 attacks, in which 15
  of the 19 airline hijackers were Saudi citizens,
  Saudi Arabias domestic political environment is
  of great concern to U.S. national security.
  Traditionally, the United States has tread
  lightly on the issue the U.S.-Saudi relationship
  has long been based on a tacit understanding that
  the United States would refrain from interfering
  in Saudi domestic affairs in return for Saudi
  cooperation on energy and security issues in the
  Persian Gulf.
• The Commissions report recognizes that Saudi
  Arabia itself faces unrest and terrorist activity
  by Islamic radicals and that Saudi Arabia must
  address the extensive influence of its religious
  establishment and stagnant socio-economic
  conditions, which some believe are fostering
  religious extremism.14 The 9/11 Commission Report
  insists that the U.S.-Saudi relationship must
  evolve from its current state and that leaders on
  both sides must agree on a common framework for
  addressing reform in Saudi Arabia without
  unintentionally causing an extremist backlash
  against either government.

14
Strained Relations, Attempt to Repair.

• Relations between the US and Saudi Arabia were
  strained after the September 11 attacks, when
  nineteen men affiliated with al-Qaeda, including
  15 Saudi nationals, hijacked four commercial
  passenger jet airliners, crashing two of the
  planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade
  Center in New York City, killing 3,000. Saudi
  Arabia issued a statement on the day of the
  terrorist attacks on America's World Trade Center
  and Pentagon, calling them "regrettable and
  inhuman." Saudi recognition to the Taliban
  stopped and as of mid-November 2001, the Bush
  administration continued to publicly praise Saudi
  support for the war on terrorism. However,
  published media reports have indicated U.S.
  frustration with Saudi inaction. Although 15 of
  the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, publicly
  the Saudis were not cooperating with Americans
  wanting to look at background files of the
  hijackers or interview the hijackers' families.
• In his first formal television interview as U.S.
  President, Barack Obama addressed the Muslim
  world through an Arabic-language satellite TV
  network Al-Arabiya. He expressed interest and a
  commitment to repair relations that have
  continued to deteriorate under the previous
  administration.

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Theories of Identity

• Social identity is a theory expounded by Henri
  Tajfel and to understand the psychological basis
  of intergroup discrimination. It is composed of
  four elements
• Categorization people often put others (and
  ourselves) into categories. Labeling someone a
  Muslim, a Turk, a Gimp or a Socca playa mate are
  ways of saying other things about these people.
• Identification people also associate with
  certain groups (ingroups and outgroups), which
  serves to bolster our self-esteem.
• Comparison people compare our groups with other
  groups, seeing a favorable bias toward the group
  to which we belong. In modern day times younger
  people stereotypically divide themselves into
  social groups like jocks, goths and hoodies.
• Psychological Distinctiveness people desire our
  identity to be both distinct from and positively
  compared with other groups.

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Theories of Society

• Cultural dissonance is an uncomfortable sense of
  discord, disharmony, confusion, or conflict
  experienced by people in the midst of change in
  their cultural environment. The changes are often
  unexpected, unexplained or not understandable due
  to various types of cultural dynamics.
• Studies into cultural dissonance take on a wide
  socio-cultural scope of analysis that inquire
  into economics, politics, values, learning
  styles, cultural factors, such as language,
  tradition, ethnicity, cultural heritage, cultural
  history, educational formats, classroom design,
  and even socio-cultural issues such as
  ethnocentricism, racism and their respective
  historical legacies in the cultures.

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Theories of Society

• Minimal group paradigm (MGP) is a concept used in
  social psychology (e.g. Tajfel, 1970) to identify
  the minimal requirements needed for intergroup
  discrimination. In these experiments it was
  discovered that arbitrary and virtually
  meaningless allocation into groups would result
  in individuals favouring of their in-group.
• This is done via mechanism explained in social
  identity theory and self-categorization theory,
  where in-group members seek for collective-esteem
  building social comparisons with other groups.
• For example, in-group members may attribute the
  achievements of out-groups to luck, or contextual
  circumstances additionally, in-group members
  will attribute their own achievements to the
  success of the group and the benefits of their
  aims and ethos. In-group members will also make
  biased comparisons with less-fortunate out-groups
  to support the validity and legitimacy of their
  beliefs, values and behaviours. This fact of
  attributing your own group's achievements to
  internal causes, and the out-group's achievements
  to external causes, is known as the fundamental
  attribution error.
• By doing such, in-group members are able to
  enhance the boundaries between groups, allowing
  their group to be distinct from others. Threat to
  distinction in minimal groups is often overcome
  by making more biased social comparison, by
  expelling black sheep (anti-norm deviants), and
  re-categorizing the in-group to exclude members
  that share out-group values.

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Theories of Society

• Cultivation theory is a social theory designed in
  the 1960s and '70s to examine the role of
  television on Americans.
• Developed by George Gerbner and of the
  University of Pennsylvania, cultivation theory
  derived from several large-scale projects
  "concerned with the effects of television
  programming (particularly violent programming) on
  the attitudes and behaviors of the American
  public" (Miller, 2005, p. 281) Miller (2005)
  says, "The widespread influence of television ...
  was a concern for many scholars and policy
  makers. In the late 1960s, civil unrest, the
  assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin
  Luther King, Jr., and other events convinced many
  that we had to know more about how television
  affects us" (p. 282).
• Gerbner and his colleagues took a large role in
  the research projects, which included the
  National Commission on the Causes and Prevention
  of Violence in 1967 and 1968 and the Surgeon
  General's Scientific Advisory Committee on
  Television and Social Behavior in 1972.

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Theories of Media/Society

• Mean World Syndrome is a phenomenon where the
  violence-related content of mass media convinces
  viewers that the world is more dangerous than it
  actually is, and prompts a desire for more
  protection than is warranted by any actual
  threat.
• Mean World Syndrome is one of the main
  conclusions of cultivation theory. The term was
  coined by George Gerbner, a pioneer researcher on
  the effects of television on society, when he
  noted that people who watched a large amount of
  television tended to think of the world as an
  intimidating and unforgiving place.
• Individuals who watch television infrequently and
  adolescents who talk to their parents about
  reality are said to have a more accurate view of
  the real world than those who do not, and they
  are able to more accurately assess their
  vulnerability to violence. They also tend to have
  a wider variety of beliefs and attitudes.
• Political strategists can take advantage of
  voters suffering from this syndrome to sway them.
  For example, critics and some supporters of
  George W. Bush accused Bush's supporters, most
  notably the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, of
  using a FUD-based campaign in the 2004 U.S.
  presidential election.
• Perhaps the most famous example is Anita Bryant's
  successful 1977 Save Our Children campaign to
  repeal a Florida ordinance which outlawed
  discrimination on the basis of sexual
  orientation.

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Theories of Culture

• Culture shock refers to the anxiety and feelings
  (of surprise, disorientation, uncertainty,
  confusion, etc.) felt when people have to operate
  within a different and unknown cultural or social
  environment after leaving everything familiar
  behind and they have to find their way in a new
  culture that has a different way of life and a
  different mindset such as in a foreign country.
  It grows out of the difficulties in assimilating
  the new culture, causing difficulty in knowing
  what is appropriate and what is not. This is
  often combined with a dislike for or even disgust
  (moral or aesthetical) with certain aspects of
  the new or different culture.

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Theories of Religion

• Monism is any philosophical view which holds that
  there is unity in a given field of inquiry, where
  this is not to be expected. Thus, some
  philosophers may hold that the universe is really
  just one thing, despite its many appearances and
  diversities or theology may support the view
  that there is one God, with many manifestations
  in different religions.
• Islam - Many followers of Sufism advocated
  monism. Most notably the 13th-century Persian
  poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi-Rumi (1207 -73)
  in his didactic poem Masnavi espoused
  monism.34 Rumi says in the Masnavi, "in the
  shop for Unity (wahdat) anything that you see
  there except the One is an idol.
• According to Vincent J. Cornall, the Qur'an also
  provides a monist image of God by describing the
  reality as a unified whole, with God being a
  single concept that would describe or ascribe all
  existing things"He is the First and the Last,
  the Outward and the Inward He is the Knower of
  everything (Sura 573)
• Another verse in the Quran is "To God belongs the
  East and the West, Wheresoever you look is the
  face of God.(Sura 2115)".
• There are many other verses such as Quran 1529,
  3872 etc which say that God blew his breath in
  man, which are interpreted to mean that an
  imprint of God is present inside man.