US Media Darlings: Arab and Muslim Women Activists, Exceptionalism and the “Rescue Narrative”

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.42.1-2.0007
• Pages: 7-24
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Author: Ahlam Muhtaseb
• Subject Matter: Arab/Muslim women,media darling,exceptionalism,rescue narrative,victimhood,Orientalism,postcolonialism

ASQ 42.1 & 2 Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals

Ahlam Muhtaseb is Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Center for Islamic and

Middle Eastern Studies, California State University, San Bernardino.

US MEDIA DARLINGS: ARAB AND MUSLIM

WOMEN ACTIVISTS, EXCEPTIONALISM AND

THE “RESCUE NARRATIVE”

Ahlam Muhtaseb

Abstract: Using critical textual analysis based on the postcolonial school of thought, this

essay analyzed a ten-minute segment, called “Women of the Revolution,” on the ABC

news program This Week, anchored at that time by Christiane Amanpour, for its portray-

als of Arab and Muslim women. The analysis showed that Arab and Muslim women were

portrayed positively only when they fit a “media-darling” trope of Western-educated Arab

or Muslim women, or those who looked and acted similar to Western women, especially if

they ascribed to a Western view of feminism. Those women also were seen as the excep-

tion to the “repressive” culture that characterizes the Arab and Muslim worlds, according

to the Orientalist stereotype. The implications of this analysis indicate that, in spite of the

visibility and progress of many Arab and Muslim women in their countries and indigenous

cultures, they are still framed within old recycled molds in US mainstream media, even if

these seem positive at face value.

Keywords: Arab/Muslim women, media darling, exceptionalism, rescue narrative,

victimhood, Orientalism, postcolonialism

•This paper would not have been possible without the meticulous copy editing of Dr.

Lawrence Frey, Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder.

This essay is inspired by a short conversation that I had with an administrative

assistant I had known and worked with closely since 2003. The conversation

took place during the peak of the January 25, 2011 Egyptian protests, during

what became known as the “Arab Spring.” I asked her if she had been watching

unfolding events in the Arab world, and she said, “Yes,” expressing strongly how

shocked she was to see that there were so many “strong” women involved. This

comment was surprising, because I assumed that she already had seen a strong

Arab woman, with whom she had worked for approximately eight years at that

time. That short conversation made me think about what an Arab Muslim woman,

who wears the hijab, as I do, represented to the Americans whom she worked

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with. As a media studies scholar, I started thinking beyond what I embodied to

what other scarfed, educated and strong Arab and Muslim women represented

to people in Western societies, and I started to pay very close attention to media

coverage of the role of Arab and Muslim women in the revolutions that were tak-

ing place in the Arab world, and, in particular, the visibility of female activists

in those regions.

There has been a long line of research on representations of Arabs and Muslims,

including Arab and Muslim women, in Western, especially US, media, from

Said’s (1978) original work on Orientalism to Shaheen’s (1984, 1994, 2001) semi-

nal studies on representations of Arab and Muslim women in Hollywood films and

comic books, and many others (e.g., Bullock, 2015; Powell, 2011; Sadar, 2014;

Said, 2004). Both descriptive and critical studies have found that Arab and Muslim

women suffer from static, highly negative media images that are limited to only

two or three media tropes that revolve around silence and oppression (Macdonald,

2006; Stabile and Kumar, 2005), sexualization (Bullock, 2015; Macdonald, 2006)

and violent aid to terrorists (Magnet and Mason, 2014; Sadar, 2014). In all three

negative tropes or stereotypes, Arab and Muslim women are agentless, even when

they are producers of terror (Hirji, 2011). Moreover, Bullock (2015), employing

textual analysis, found that audience members’ perceptions of Muslim and Arab

women were affected negatively by watching Orientalist television shows, such as

I Dream of Jeannie. Bullock’s conclusion comes as a surprise in 2015, since one

hoped that the visibility of Arab women during the “Arab Spring” might have

challenged such Orientalist depictions.

The purpose of this essay is to deconstruct US mainstream media’s representa-

tions of Muslim and Arab women during the Egyptian revolution in 2011 to exam-

ine if there was a paradigm shift towards a more realistic impression of their role

in the revolutions at that time. The essay starts with a historical overview of tradi-

tional Western media representations of Arab and Muslim women, focusing on the

“rescue narrative” of Arab and Muslims women. I also provide a short survey of

some major emerging representational issues during and after the Arab Spring,

focusing on what I term Arab and Muslim “media darlings.” A postcolonial tex-

tual analysis of a ten-minute roundtable television segment of the ABC news pro-

gram This Week, when Christiane Amanpour was the main anchor, discussing

with four female guests “women of the revolution” follows. I end the essay with a

discussion of the implications of the analysis.

Media Darlings and Oriental Exceptionalism

Hoping for a new media trope of representing Arab and Muslim women seemed

possible during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions or uprisings, because the