Halloween's Michael Myers: prototype of the Islamist terrorist?!?

[Domitan]

You're thinking WTF??? Juan Cole offers a very insightful look into Producer Moustapha Akkad and his Halloween series. There was perhaps a very good reason for Akkad's focus on Michael Myers. He had tried to produce thoughtful Islam movies to teach the Western world about his heritage...only to be slammed by ignorant bigots and intolerant Muslim fundamentalists (think of our Xtian fundies attacking The Last Temptation of Christ). Ahh, could Akkad have made Michael Myers & Halloween an allegory into the dark underbelly of his culture (as well as the Western culture)? Read Juan Cole's fascinating article:



http://www.juancole.com/2005/11/strange-death-of-moustapha-akkad.html




The anxieties around the Halloween films are, whether it is by coincidence or deliberate, very Middle Eastern. Michael Myers's killing of his sister echoed the problem of honor killings in the Arab world, where lack of chastity in teenaged girls so dishonors the men of the family that they are sometimes driven to restore their honor by doing away with the girl. (The practice is coded as rural and hotheaded in Arab culture, but its insanity is underlined in the American context.) Myers's stalking of teenaged girls reproduces that free-floating anxiety about their sexuality and freedom of movement, and the dangers these hold for the masculinity of men. Myers the horror monster is produced through an exaggeration of these anxieties to the point of homicidal rage. Of course, even without any Middle Eastern context, the films are about alienation and the isolation of the individual, a distillation of the neuroses of American suburbia.
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The Iraq conflict has become a bad horror film. It has killed the grandfather of the "Halloween" movies. And it has snuffed out the man who wanted to bring real Muslim heroes such as the Prophet Muhammad, Omar Mukhtar and Saladin to American film-going audiences. Now, his last project will remain unachieved. Saladin was a Kurd from what is now northern Iraq, and he defeated the Crusaders with a legendary chivalry that inspired their respect.

Zarqawi's henchmen inspire only horror, not respect. They have no chivalry, only bloodthirstiness. They are Michael Myers, not Saladin.

[Domitan]

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