The movie “Theeb” centers around a Jordanian child fleeing the impact of war in 1916.
I was reading Stephen Holden’s admiring review of the film in the New York Times (2015-11-05) but was brought up short by a seemingly casual bit of overt racism. Holden writes, “In Jacir Eid’s extraordinary performance, Theeb exhibits the composure, bravery and cunning of a little savage driven by animal instinct.”
Calling this child a “savage” and an “animal” is to invoke classic racist tropes. To some, this might be seen as just a passing comment in a review of a film that hasn’t received much attention here as of yet. But in the context of the outpouring of racist fear-mongering against Syrian refugees engaged in by over half of the US’s Governors in the past week, it seems doubly important to decry any attempt to dehumanize Arabs, especially an Arab youngster who is, as in this case, a child refugee of war.
Unfortunately, there is no comment thread for the review on the Times website. I’ve sent a letter to the editor. You can too.
(I’ve re-written the opening paragraph to clarify what I thought was clear earlier but perhaps was not: that the review was written a few weeks ago.)