I’m a sucker for a story. Are you? Novels, Twitter threads, old dudes saying, “When I was a kid. . . .” And movies. I love movies. A lot.
Most stories have a good guy and a bad guy. The more the good guy looks like me and the bad guy looks different from me, the happier I am. I must not be alone in that because a lot of movie bad guys look like non-human creatures, Nazis, fleshy-faced Russians and, of course, Muslims.
This being Muslim Connect, let’s think about that for a sec. Can you, off the top of your head, name a movie with a Muslim good guy? If you can, please tell me about it. My first thought is The Visitor, which I heartily recommend. If you can’t, there’s a reason for that: Most Muslims in movies are bad guys.
In fact a couple film buffs in Britain developed a way to measure this reality called The Riz Test. Based on the originally tongue-in-cheek Bechdel Test that evaluates the representation of women in movies, The Riz Test asks five questions of films in which at least one character is identifiably Muslim. If any are answered yes, the movie fails the test.
Is the character:
1. Talking about, the victim of, or the perpetrator of terrorism?
2. Presented as irrationally angry?
3. Presented as superstitious, culturally backwards or anti-modern?
4. Presented as a threat to a Western way of life?
5. If the character is male, is he presented as misogynistic? Or if female, is she presented as oppressed by her male counterparts?
Maybe we could be a little more mindful. Representation does matter.
If you see a movie that passes the test, talk it up! Let’s amplify the laudable in culture. And if you have a movie I should watch this weekend I’d love to hear about it.