How do media create stereotypes?
I use something called “accumulation theory.” One ad, one movie, one cartoon is not going to create or encourage stereotypes. But take an entire collection of media portrayals over time, and that can fuel a particular point of view about a group of people. The Arab stereotypes were ready to be accessed right after Sept. 11th, but they had been prepared by decades of film stereotypes and cartoons. After the Cold War, America needed a new global bad guy, so the terrorist became this monolithic Arab. You can see that in film, from the days of the James Bond communist plot to the Bruce Willis Die-Hard. The “other” became Arab. So that group was ripe for targeting. I think of it as the revolving door of racism. The seeds have been planted a long time ago for thinking about a group of people in a certain way, and circumstances are just so that it triggers something, and that group becomes a target. You don’t necessarily ask why, because the portrayals don’t seem unusual to you. The idea of “
