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alwart James Cameron, was genuine blockbuster, starring two of American cinema’s most marketable stars in Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. The story concerns the double life of the married secret agents played by the lead actors and the comedy engendered in their attempts at concealing their day today activities from one another. Indeed, for the first ninety minutes, the film is primarily concerned with this precept before it turns its attention to the “wacko” terrorist intent on destroying the world. If the film would have been made ten years earlier, the perennial ‘baddie' would almost certainly have been cast as a Russian rogue but, by 1994,Cameron chose actor Art Malik to play Salem Abu Abuzz, the Islamic representation of evil.

There can be no question that True Lies sticks to typical film stereotypes with the Muslim terrorist refusing to listen to reason or accept the inevitability of his ultimate defeat. Yet the producer and the director escaped serious questioning due to the essentially comic nature of the film, relying on unrealistic characters and a fantasy plot in the same style as Into the Night ten years beforehand. Made shortly after the 1993 World Trade Centre bombings, the selection of an Islamic man to play the bad guy is also easily understood, especially within the context of a movie that is so clearly intent solely upon entertainment.

Yet, as the Nazis understood, flippant symbolism and the overriding concept of film as entertainment bonded superbly well in terms of propaganda, which suggests that seemingly disposable films such as True Lies retain the power to influence and offend. It is worth pointing out that the James Cameron went onto face stern criticism in the UK for his stereotypical depiction of the British naval officers aboard the Titanic, which he made into a Hollywood blockbuster in 1997.Titanic made a mockery of the long standing antagonism between the British and the Irish, showing one Scottish officer shooting women and children, which sparked outrage amongst the man’s real life family. This instance merely proves that Hollywood is somewhat simplistic in its portrayal of a wide range of ethnicities and nationalities and that prejudice in film is not reserved for the followers of Islam.

William Friskin’s 2000 courtroom drama, Rules of Engagement, cannot be analysed in the same context as True Lies. Rules of Engagement defines itself as a serious movie, one that attempts to portray the political reality of terrorism in the Middle East, as opposed to Cameron’s film where the action remains on American soil throughout the duration of the narrative. Rules of Engagement, which starred influential actors Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson, is set in Yemen and concerns the action of the US military in the region, finding itself at odds with stereotypically outlawed Islamic men, operating beyond the fringes of decent society.

Ben Kingsley (not for the first time playing a South Asian ethnic character) provides the gravitas of the central scene, the scene that provoked stern reaction amongst Westerners and Muslims alike who wish to see an end to culturally damaging type casting. Indeed, Paul Findley (2003:80), a former member of Congress who is outraged at the contemporary media, film an本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。