Hollywood’s Racial Order and the Re-throning of White Supremacist Identity

Abstract

Released during a period of heightened racial tension over the impact of racism in the United States and Europe, the 2021 films Stillwater and Dune Part One reveal the pervasiveness of Arab Muslim misrepresentations in Hollywood and the subtilty of white supremacist ideology as it re-emerges in new cinematic productions. With many symbolic and pronounced references to the delusions of the “great replacement” theory, the foundational blueprint of white supremacist identity in both stories, this article contends that these films recentre whiteness to either villainise Arab Muslims or totally erase them. Stillwater disguises the stereotypes on which Arab racialisation is predicated by embedding them in the details of a subplot. Dune, by contrast, is set in an imaginary Arab space with no Arabs, and yet portrayals of Arabs and Islam are front, and centre and it imagines a world with fierce but “generic” coloured people serving their great white leaders.