iron manI have seen the recent trailer for the upcoming Iron Man Movie and while admittedly my guilty pleasures include superhero movies, I am hesitant to watch this one.

For anyone who was paying attention, a few prominent and familiar Hollywood bad guys appear in the trailer. Apparently, the generic, one dimensional Middle Eastern terrorist returns in this movie. Furthermore, as I discovered after some cursory research, the main antagonist in this movie is not a Muslim, though there is another ominous looking character who sports a Palestinian style keffiyeh, speaks with an accent and is bent on world domination.

What I can gather from all this is that Iron Man’s rival intends to sell really dangerous technology to really dangerous Middle Eastern terrorists, presumably including said really dangerous Middle Eastern megalomaniac. This sort of cheap pot shot at demonizing Muslims, a la True Lies, is disappointing to say the least. The opportunity to watch a cool superhero blow things up is spoiled by a nefarious political agenda that affirms Bush administration propaganda. To be honest, Hollywood as a propaganda arm of the US is not new but must they sully the good name of Iron Man?

Ok, I have to be honest. Iron Man’s alter ego, Tony Stark got rich off of developing weapons to massacre Vietnamese peasants for the US government. So in essence he is providing weapons to evil terrorists while his antagonist happens to be doing the same albeit to a different breed of terrorists. Unfortunately, this movie doesn’t seem to be taking that sort of interpretive direction and so America of course represents all that is good while beards and turbans represent the kind of evil that cannot be allowed to play with expensive toys.

Avi Arad, the head of Marvel Studios, was born and raised in Israel and so perhaps the sophisticated characterization (caricatures) of Muslims has roots in his own origins.

In all fairness, without more information I can’t encourage Muslims to start a ruckus and boycott this film while complaining loudly. I would have to wait for critical reviews in order to make a sound judgment but I would like to let people know that this is an issue and warn them not to be seduced by two heavily armed automatons tossing exploding vehicles at one another. Racism, bigotry and stereotypical movie making should not be supported no matter how potentially cool the special effects are.

I’ll update you the more I learn.

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