IDENTITY OBFUSCATION AND CREATION OF THE SIMULACRUM FOR DEPICTIONS OF MUSLIMS IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE

Abstract

The present study develops a premise of simulated identities and characterizations of Muslims in mainstream American Popular Culture. The study has developed this idea on the basis of Jean Baudrillard’s work Simulacra and Simulation while also utilizing elements of studies regarding the Orient and its resultant impact on perceptions regarding Muslims. The study has endeavoured to engage the idea of how, rather than being truth adjacent, American cinema specifically has utilized the engaging parameters of oriental understanding to create a representative set of characteristics for both the characters depicted as Muslim, and the spaces held by them. This representative set moves beyond the simple stereotype, as it simply does not engage with the exaggerated, but rather with the mundane, the everyday, and everything that is alien and oppositional to the Western audience. In doing so it creates an imagery of self, in the third order of simulacra, which then leaves behind the real, and begins to replicate itself. This self-replicating imagery then assumes the banner of the real, and in doing so erases the real. This study has noted that this particular erasure and creation of simulacra is rampant in how assumptive parameters are selected and reutilized due to being easier to replicate and palatable in relation to the American myth. The study utilizes samples from seven decades of Hollywood films (1962 to 2017) to build an understanding of this premise. It is noted that there is definitely a simulacral precession for depictions of Muslims, and this simulacrum is determining the real through obfuscating the identity parameters of Muslims in popular cinema. The study also posits that since it is the simulation and not the real that is being perpetuated, any resistant and rehabilitative discourse is also getting absorbed in the self perpetuating mobius-strip of meaning, and thus the simulation needs to be understood completely if any future discourse or representation is to break away from these iii obfuscating and damaging parameters. Keywords: Simulation, Simulacrum, Orient, American Popular Culture, Muslims, Clash of Civilizations, Obfuscating Identities, American Myth