Resistive Reading of Anti-Islam Movies by Educated American Audience: An Analysis

This article provides an assessment of the dominant meaning inserted in Hollywood movies that offer anti-Islamic content, compared to the meaning that the American audience attaches to these movies. Framed by a theoretical synthesis of Gadamer's approach to reception and Said's notion of Orientalism, we employ such concepts as lived experience, inter-cultural communication and media literacy to indicate how the American audience is taking a resistive orientation. This analytical model suggests that any typical American audience seeks to expand their understanding of the lived experience with Muslims based on their inter-cultural experience with Muslims and apply it to their readings of the popular anti-Islamic movies. To examine the paper's theoretical claims we used an internet-based in-depth interview technique in which 12 women and 10 men participated. Some of the findings reveal that the educated American audience may not perceive Hollywood fiction as a reliable source of information about either Muslims or Islam, and that they engage in alternate and resistive interpretations of movie content.