Four days after giving a pilot greenlight to drama Alice In Arabia, ABC Family is pulling the plug on the project about an American teenage girl kidnapped by her extended royal Saudi Arabian family and forced to live with them. “The current conversation surrounding our pilot was not what we had envisioned and is certainly not conducive to the creative process, so we’ve decided not to move forward with this project,” the network said in a statement. The project was met with disapproval by Muslim advocacy group the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which called on ABC Family to meet with Muslim and Arab-American community leaders so they can voice their concerns about potential stereotyping. “We are concerned that, given media references to the main character ‘surviving life behind the veil,’ the pilot and any resulting series may engage in stereotyping that can lead to things like bullying of Muslim students,” CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said Wednesday. In a letter to ABC Family President Tom Ascheim, CAIR-LA wrote, “As the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, we are concerned about the negative impact this program could have on the lives of ordinary Arab-American and American Muslims.”
Source:
The source link isn't working correctly. It sends me to an error page.
ReplyDeleteTry now.
ReplyDeleteIt's still not working. It's linking to the secure version of the page which has...issues
ReplyDeleteIt's linking to: https://deadline.com/2014/03/abc-familys-saudi-arabia-set-pilot-alice-in-arabia-not-going-forward/
When it should link to: http://http://www.deadline.com/2014/03/abc-familys-saudi-arabia-set-pilot-alice-in-arabia-not-going-forward/
*sigh* What a load of crap. It's very unlikely I would have watched it, but it's annoying how companies bend over and submit every time some group throws a hissy fit.
ReplyDeleteIn this case it's pretty much just "We don't want you to show things about our country that could make young people see us in a negative light". How stupid is that? Absolutely any one can go to google right now and do a five minute search to discover things they don't like. Being opposed to your way of life does not mean that you should support ignorance in order to keep the peace.
I'm sorry, but stuff like this just annoys me so much. Crap like this is encouraging the younger generation to be ignorant of the world.
It was working for me with the https, but I changed to http for you.
ReplyDeleteThanks, not sure why it went weird with https.
ReplyDeleteThe Muslim community is already seen as terrorists by a hole lot of people. Children, adults and muslim women live with this prejudice everyday. Be it the way they dress, be it their praying times being prohibited. I had never heard of this show before, but when I read this I instantly felt it was going to add to that. It does not sound like it shows them in a good light. This organisation is only trying to protect other Muslims.
ReplyDeleteI am always the first person to say representation matters, but not when it stereotypes and creates more problems for the people they are representing.
I'm sick and tiered about all those "communities" trying to slowly gain power to rule over people outside their communities with being offended about just nothing and endlessly complain and complain. Much ado about nothing, but interesting to see what those communities think of peoples right to free speech.
ReplyDeleteDeep down you "communities" don't respect anyone outside your "community" anyway and call them "infidels", you're just to cowardly to admit that freely....yet.
BTW it's not that it has never happened that US citizens have been kidnapped from the US and were forced to live in an Arabic country, with "family" so now you can't even tell the truth on a TV show?
Interesting!
Well said
ReplyDeleteBeing a Muslin, I totally agree with this.
ReplyDeleteThat's really ignorant of you to say that.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I couldn't have said it better myself.
ReplyDeleteIgnorant and highly insensitive it amazes me how people act all open minded and defend stuff like legilaz
ReplyDeleteSee? "Communites" are allowed to force their world view on everyone, but as an average American citizen, you are not allowed to speak your mind? Just great.
ReplyDeleteI never supported any legalization of any kind of drugs, so what has that to do with a TV show showing an US citizen getting kidnapped by Arabic people.....it happens why not mention it on TV???? Censorship?
Really? Are you denying that US citizens have been kidnapped from the US and were forced to live with "family" in Arabic countries?
ReplyDeleteI can't open SpoilerTV only the comments from Diqus, is something wrong with the site?
ReplyDeleteSo we see the power of CAIR on hollywood. I can see why the Muslims would not want people to think on this topic. Muslims are still the only ones in the world which accept and condone slavery especially sexual variety.
ReplyDeleteThat is a problem they should remedy themselves. If they were not complicit in keeping quiet these stereotypes would not be so powerful. Keeping people ignorant on the true nature of Islam is not doing anyone any favors.
ReplyDeleteReally bigots? Have you read any of the holy book of Islam?
ReplyDeleteIt happens too many time to speak. The Mother is an American and the Father divorces her and takes the kids to a Muslim country leaving the Mother behind.
ReplyDeleteMore ignorant people.
ReplyDeleteHave you?
ReplyDeleteThe problem was the representation of Muslims on TV.
ReplyDeleteWorking fine for me. See the troubleshooting guide. http://www.spoilertv.com/p/troubleshooting.html
ReplyDeleteExactly that.
ReplyDeleteBut uh, we can't speak the truth out loud because some "communites" are sooo sensitive and offended by the truth it seems.
That is censorship no matter how you put it!!!
Well guess the show was to close to real life and the truth hurt. This opposition from a group that is OK with "honor" killings.
ReplyDeleteGive me a break, if they don't want to be stereotyped then STOP doing the things that make people see you in a bad light. Stop blowing people up, stop "honor" killing your women for stupid things, stop killing people that don't want to become muslims, stop calling for the death of anyone saying something bad about your allah. You know the "peaceful" religion.
ReplyDeleteIt's working fine now, thanks.
ReplyDeleteI'm Muslim BTW.
ReplyDeleteSo you are that each and enjoy Muslim does this?
ReplyDeleteyikes I dont know how they thought there wouldnt be a problem with it to be honest. Now days someone is always offended by something.
ReplyDeleteOf course not, no more than every mexican is a drug runner or a black man is a thug, or a white person is a racist, but that is how they are shown on TV a lot of the time. CAIR just needs to work on their image instead of crying.
ReplyDeleteThis was supposed to take place in Saudi Arabia, a country where women cannot drive a car. Talk about most bigoted country on this planet. Or do you want to tell me that wahhabism is not the most bigoted movement in your precious religion?
ReplyDeleteyou make it sound like every person who is a Muslim does these things?
ReplyDeleteAmericans are ignorant, obnoxious and easily manipulated enough as it is without adding fuel to the fire. They would only watch this and assume all Muslims are the same and then relations would never improve.
ReplyDeletenow isn't that ignorant, arrogant, obnoxious and highly offensive
ReplyDeleteNot every muslim does the "honor" killing, but every person who commits co called honor killing is a muslim.
ReplyDeleteNow, you are the one who is stereotyping all nation. How ignorant and stupid.
ReplyDeleteOH C'MON ?!
ReplyDeleteStereotyping ? Just like germans are fat old jerks that constantly drink beer and talk with some weird accent ? The same way japanese people are constantly portrayed as insane characters ripped straight out of an anime and can't get one word out ? The same way every mexican is somehow tied to the mexican cartel ?
I see that they're affraid of stereotyping but I doubt that TV is the real kicker for stereotypes to happen. Now sure, the FoxNews generation surely is an issue but average americans for sure won't use a fictional show to decide what to think of another culture.
Can you really prohibit art ? If you're playing the racist card you sure can.
Next time they renew 'It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia' I'll play that card as well. 'This show is going to create a wrong stereotype about americans'
This premise sounded interesting to me honestly... Too bad.
ReplyDeleteI will admit the premise was about a sensitive topic, but that is what was appealing to me. Kidnap goes on - In every country in the world - and Saudi Arabia is certainly not immune to it!
Does the fact that there are dozens of stories of kids (and women) being taken to Arab countries and held against their will make every Arab a kidnapper? OF course not! As I recall at least 2 similar cases with fathers taking kids to their home country against the mother's will have been in the news just in the past couple years.
Without actually viewing the pilot or reading the script I cannot comment on whether or not the show handled such a sensitive topic appropriately, but no topic should be off limits. Some of the best, most powerful series and movies have been based in real history and very sensitive topics.
This scrubbing of the project is another case of political correctness at its worst.
By that logic at some point every TV series or movie with a topic that may offend some community will need to create a fictional country to base their show in. A fictional country that is dissimilar enough from any real country that it will not be offensive to anyone.
ReplyDeleteHow sad would that be?!
I guess it's ok cause iif people was throwing fist cause Rapunzel is black in OUaT imagine a series where the muslims (that some people already see as terrorists) are the bad guys and makes a girl to follow their rules. It's an interestiing concept but the backlash could be really hard.
ReplyDeleteConsidering that Muslims just generalized all of the young of America, it shouldn't be a surprise that people generalize Muslims. There are exceptions to everything, but the existence of the exception does not mean we should be ignorant of the reason for those generalizations.
ReplyDeleteIt's really terrible how Muslims are treated here, but encouraging ignorance of your way of life is not the way to get people to be more accepting. If they don't hear the truth from you, they'll hear the lie from someone else. Who knows how this show would have handled it. It was pressured out of existence before we had a chance to find out.
I can understand not wanting to make things worse, but that shouldn't come at the expensive of the possibility of making things better.
As I said, I am the first person to say representation matters, but when shows exist only to fuel hatred (and I have a feeling this would do that) I believe it is best they get cut before it acts against who it is representing. If the idea of the show was not infused in a context of hatred I don't think this organization would have complained but it is (as some comments here can proove) so I am glad ABC heard them.
ReplyDeleteTo me it is not.. and almost never should be about representation - It should be about story.
ReplyDeleteI found the premise of the series "Missing"a couple years back interesting as well. It was about a mom traveling Europe to find her kidnapped daughter. The series itself was actually fairly bad, but the premise interested me because of the possible element of real human drama. I don;t think Eastern European groups should have been offended by the idea of white slavery, Euro drug cartels or arms dealers.. They exist.
I do understand the sad state of media and its portrayals of many countries and cultures, but I do not think that means one should necessarily not shine a light on disturbing topics from any given country just because it may offend someone.
Go back to one of the most powerful series of my lifetime, Alex Haley's Roots. Should that have been stopped because it put white Southerners in a bad light? Should various White or Southern groups been up in arms? I don't think so.
I just do not think anyone makes progress by avoiding uncomfortable topics or themes. And for that matter, not every series needs to be about making progress in the first place!
Again though, without having actually seen Alice in Arabia I cannot know how the show would have handled anything. No one can honestly.
It could have been a hate filled show that was about little more than Western Anti-Muslim propaganda.... or it could have been a well-handled story about a family dealing with a traumatic situation that just happened to be in an Arab country. Regardless, to judge it before actually seeing it is just wrong.
I agree with you that we don't know how the show would handle it.
ReplyDeleteI must also agree that ending a show because it might get some people angry would be wrong. Focused on the might, and focuse on the some.
But the things is. The premise of this was Muslim people kidnaping an american girl. Since the show would probably be centered around her (from what I understood of this), no matter how nice the muslim caracters could be portrayed or how many people outside of the kidnapers where shown, she'd still be surounded by kidnapers- and not only kidnapers, but kidnapers of white people.
It would not just make muslim people angry about they're representation, it would give reason for people who don't understand that the world is diverse and that all religions and all sort of people have the right to be in the world to increase their hatred of what's different. -simply because it shows the muslims as kidnapers.
The story itself is not the problem, IMO, it is the moment right now, where Muslims are the firsts to be considered the cause of an attack, when muslims are already suffering on the streets. Add this premise to this time, and I am scared of the consequences.
So what I am saying is not that some people might dislike the show for how they are representated, but that the representation might encrease hate. And that's why I think it was a good thing it is not happening.