The American Sniper Film Analysis

1.5 RESEARCH QUESTION

This research intends to answer the following questions:

1. How are Iraq and the Iraqi society represented in the film?

2. What is the nature of the representation of the Iraqis as villains in the movie?

3. What is the impact of the representation of the Iraqis as villains in the movie?

4. What is the ideology behind the depiction of the Iraqis as Villains in the film?

1.6 THE REVIEW OF SELECTED TEXT

The American Sniper is a drama and action American movie released in 2014. It is directed by Clint Eastwood and written by Jason Hall. It is adapted from the memoir of Chris Kyle, one of the most deadly snipers in the history of the United States military. The movie stars Bradley Cooper and Sina Miller. Chris Kyle is the most

Among the wide criticisms for the film that it depicts the Iraqis as "a group of traitors and murderers", "terrorists", "evil creatures" and "savage people", threaten the safety of Americans and the whole world, to the point that the Iraqi people by their "shameful and bloody" actions, pushed the American soldiers to take their revenge for their fellow soldiers who were killed on the battlefield in not less barbaric way, those American soldiers who cut thousands of miles, to start a holy mission, on the land of the "bad guys", to eliminate the "Muslim terrorists" before they reach America. Furthermore, the film has been criticised for portraying the Iraq society in a falsified way, where the film depicted all Iraqis as Muslim militants, including women and children, who were also involved in the fighting, where there are no Iraqi civilians in this film, with the exception of one family, which were killed by the hands of Iraqi Muslims. The film is full of racist messages, where the killing scenes of children and women that look like is inevitable matter, and part of the soldier duty in "protection", while the absence of moral dilemma about these issues in the film, where the sniper shoots to kill, not to disarmament, even when the targets were women and

Chapter two of this thesis is the literature review of Iraq 's history in the 20th century as well as the early 21th century, Hollywood history and the Jews, Iraq war movies and past research on Arab representation in Hollywood. In chapter three, I will discuss the theoretical framework within methodology of Orientalism and Islamophobia, by describing the selected tropes chosen from Edward Said’s book entitled Orientalism, and selected tropes chosen from Runnymede Trust Report (1997) to guide the analysis of the movie. In chapter four I will introduce the analysis of the film, which is American Sniper, according to the chosen theories. In the last chapter I will present the overview of this thesis and present the answers of the research questions to validate the statement of problem.

1.9 CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have introduced my thesis entitled "New villains: a critical analysis of Hollywood representation of the Iraqis in the film American Sniper". In addition, I have also introduced the selected movie for the purpose of this study, which is the American Sniper. Additionally, I presented the framework that I am using as the tool for the analysis to answer the research questions and validate the statement of the problem in this thesis. The outline of this chapter would help to frame the thesis, as well