FILMS: Yemenis, Arabs Find ‘Rules of Engagement’ Anything But Engaging

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Khaled Almahdi

SANA'A, May 2 2000 (IPS) - Yemenis and Arabs are furious about a new Hollywood movie which they say portrays them as “bloodthirsty” and “terrorists.”

In ‘Rules of Engagement’, actor Samuel. L Jackson in his role as Col. Terry Childers, leads a platoon of US Marines in an operation to evacuate a besieged US Embassy in Yemen. Some of his men are killed by demonstrators surrounding the Embassy and Jackson’s character orders his soldiers to fire on the crowd, killing 83 men, women and children. He is then brought up on charges of violating his army’s rules of engagement by killing civilians.

There are plenty of crowd shots showing Yemeni, women, boys and girls firing guns at the US Marines. The images have left Yemenis and Arabs, both in the United States and in the Middle East, stunned and angry.

“A little girl shooting at Marines! Can you believe it?” says Yemen’s ambassador to the United States Abdulwahhab Alhajri. “This movie reaches millions of people. It’s ruining our image.”

Yemenis say they are particularly enraged that the first Hollywood movie to have ever been made using the country as a backdrop portrays them and Arab children as American-hating terrorists and rabid killers. They say it also attempts to justify the slaughter of Yemenis.

The government wants to take action, but, says Ambassador Alhajri, there is very little one can do in such a case in a country like the United States where freedom of expression is so valued.

But last week the Yemeni government called on member states of the Arab League to boycott the film.

The movie has drawn condemnation from Arab-American and Muslim- American groups in the United States. Arab Americans call it the most blatantly anti-Arab film in history and compare it with “Birth of a Nation,” a 1915 film that depicted blacks as violent threats to American civilisation.

In a letter to US Secretary of Defence William Cohen, the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) urged him to amend the Department of Defence’s policies in respect to co-operation with producers who make anti-Muslim films.

“Mr. Secretary, the average moviegoer who sees this film could come away with the impression that Muslims are a dirty and barbaric people who have a ‘duty’ to kill Americans whenever possible. This is offensive in the extreme and will inevitably have a negative impact on the lives of ordinary American Muslims who are an integral part of this society,” reads CAIR’s letter.

CAIR, jointly with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), organised demonstrations against the film in several cities, including Washington D.C, Chicago and Los Angeles in which Yemeni Embassy staffers took part.

But it is not only the Yemenis and Arabs who find the movie distasteful. Several US movie critics have panned the film for its poor script and blatant racism.

“At its worst, it’s blatantly racist, using Arabs as cartoon cut- out bad guys, and unrealistic in its depiction of a conflict in the Middle East,” says CNN movie critic Paul Clinton.

“Why is the embassy in danger? What has happened? Who are the people rioting? We never know, but we do know this: Those pesky, dark-eyed people in Arab dress, holding protest signs, have become international shorthand for ‘terrorist bad guys’,” he adds.

Even the US Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodin has joined the critics. She called the film “embarrassing”.

“The movie actually worked very hard to insult as many people as it could, and it certainly insulted the Yemeni people,” she told reporters in a Sana’a press conference. “It is a very bad idea. It is a very offensive idea. And it is very stupid,” she adds.

Paramount Pictures which made the movie issued as statement defending the film. ” ‘Rules of Engagement’ is a dramatisation and a fictional account of the consequences of extremism in all its forms. The film is not an indictment of any government, culture or people,” it said.