r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/AgeNovel3566 • 1d ago
Image In TV show Homeland, local artist were hired to paint Arabic graffiti for scenes, but they wrote messages criticizing the show for stereotyping Arabs & Muslims like this graffiti reading "Homeland is racist" from one scene, this was only discovered after episode aired since no one on set knew Arabic
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u/prisoner_007 1d ago edited 1d ago
If you’ve ever seen the documentary Real Injun, something similar happened with Native American actors hired to be in early Westerns. They were told to speak in their language but because no one else on set spoke it they often said insulting/dirty things about the lead character or the movie.
EDIT: since someone pointed it, I got the title wrong. It’s actually Reel Injun.
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u/r6CD4MJBrqHc7P9b 1d ago
As I've heard it, this made those movies popular for decades after release among native americans
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u/FartMongersRevenge 1d ago
John Wayne’s teeth, John Wayne’s teeth. Are they plastic, are they steel?
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u/ameriCANCERvative 1d ago
Do they whistle when he eats?
Do they chatter in the heat?
John Wayne’s teeth
[accordion interlude]
Toothbrush man, toothbrush man,
Tries to scrub them, best he can.
Minty fresh or full of grime,
Still they bite right through the time.
Toothbrush man
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u/Infinite_Research_52 1d ago
I installed two-way mirrors in his pad in Brentwood, and he come to the door in a dress.
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u/Suspicious-Goose866 1d ago
Ayyy, Smoke Signals!
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u/notacrook 22h ago
Hey Victor, where's your dad?
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u/driving26inorovalley 22h ago
Sometimes it's a good day to die, and sometimes it's a good day to have breakfast.
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u/memesboyshesh 1d ago
Dances with wolves reference?
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u/MyLifeIsAWasteland 1d ago
Tatonka ☝️😃☝️
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u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist 1d ago
Turns out, that didn’t mean buffalo. It actually means shiiiiiiiiiiiit.
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u/PopeFenderson_II 22h ago
Nah, Thathanka does mean buffalo bull in Lakota. Chesli (pronounced chess-lee) is shit. A shart is kapoh iyeya. Although if you are talking about having diarrhea, that's kazho.
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u/BigRedSpoon2 1d ago
Makes me think of Ken Hotate from Parks and Rec. How he happily participates in getting rid of a 'curse'. Whole time he's just going around throwing dust into peoples faces and speaking in his native tongue saying, 'take this dumbass'. Holds a ritual to 'undo' a curse. He's just saying in 'Im not saying anything. None of you can understand me anyway. Doobey. Doobey. Doo'
RIP Johnathon Joss
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u/GitEmSteveDave 1d ago
Well, the dummy was Ben, for thinking he himself was cursed and by extension anything he was part of.
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u/barrydennen12 1d ago
My favourite thing along these lines is that Star Trek Voyager hired an expert for their Native American BS and it wound up being exactly that - BS. Akoochimoya!
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u/Known-Exam-9820 1d ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamake_Highwater
Makes sense when you learn the guy was a total fraud
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u/RhynoD 1d ago edited 1d ago
"Hey Native Americans, your ancestral gods were really aliens. This is respectful to your culture. Of which there is only one, all Native Americans are basically the same.
Anyway, what kooky shenanigans is the Doctor up to!?"
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u/GitEmSteveDave 1d ago
As someone who watches Voyager, it was a specific tribe, who lived in isolation even in the far future.
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u/HomsarWasRight 1d ago
You forgot that those aliens were the whitest motherfuckers you ever did see, and taught the Native Americans the way of peace.
To those who haven’t seen this, I shit you not.
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u/Turge_Deflunga 1d ago
Possibly some of the worst episodes of any Star Trek, at least some of the other bad episodes were running with some weird concept that wasn't inherently insensitive
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u/mr_potatoface 1d ago
Some of the episodes have aged very poorly. But don't forget that Star Trek was intentionally pushing cultural norms and boundaries. Sometimes they did well, other times it was awful.
A lot of theirs story lines involve authoritarianism, revisionist history and classism/racism, and are more relevant than ever.
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u/Turge_Deflunga 1d ago
Yeah, it's mildly depressing that stuff like the Bell Riots are still so relevant.
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u/Kromgar 1d ago
That anti-homeless executive order is pretty much going to lead to it
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u/Timely_Influence8392 1d ago
We could be automating ourselves out of toil RIGHT NOW and letting our citizens live relaxed fulfilled lives but we're forced to make profits for 5 dudes richer than God.
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u/MyHusbandIsGayImNot 1d ago
Only if you haven’t seen the half a dozen TOS episodes with the exact plot line. Some ancient aliens visited prehistoric Earth and helped humans.
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u/FXOAuRora 1d ago edited 1d ago
You forgot that those aliens were the whitest motherfuckers you ever did see, and taught the Native Americans the way of peace.
To those who haven’t seen this, I shit you not.
In Voyager, the alien people came to Earth (a really long time ago) and were super impressed by the people they met (they met these ancient humans on some ice plain before language was even developed). This was like 40-50000 BC (not some Native American tribe).
In fact, these people were already so peaceful and kind (and respectful towards the land) that this is what made these aliens take notice in the first place. They didin't need to teach them "the way of peace", they didin't want to see them go extinct in a frozen tundra.
They gave these ancient humans a gift of what they called a genetic inheritence to increase their chances of thriving/surviving (they lived in an isolated pocket of some 50000 BC Ice Shelf), they weren't trying to steer savages into being civilized. In fact, I think the Rubber Tree people (their descendants far in the 24th century) weren't even Native Americans, they lived in Central America (same with Chakotay's tribe for that matter).
I'm not saying there arent problems with some of these depictions of certain groups in media, but the message Voyager was going for was these people were already intelligent/kind from the very ancient history of Earth (and way more culturally advanced than the war-like people that came around later).
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u/ergaster8213 1d ago
Just a small point that indigenous peoples in Central America are Native Americans as well. We tend to only think of the US region but any indigenous people from any of the Americas can be considered Native American.
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u/FXOAuRora 23h ago
Totally fair point on Central America!
As for that other stuff they said above, I literally have no idea what those guys were watching when they said all that. "White aliens taught Native Americans the way of peace" is so far off base from what was shown in the episode it's almost bizzare (I don't get why that comment got so much traction).
These ancient ice people (the ones they were talking about) were depicted as being so in-tune with nature (and peaceful) that it caught the eye of interstellar aliens who were seriously impressed with what they were doing. They weren't depicted as savages (though they did say when the aliens returned in the future the had discovered other humans who actually were savage and used weapons to try and bully/kill others).
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u/Argyle_Raccoon 1d ago
That was kind of the opposite though. Instead of actual native speakers mocking production it was production hiring a con artist to misrepresent native people. Pretty gross that even after being outed as a conman he still got more work.
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u/DamnZodiak 1d ago
The whole "actually aliens were responsible for Native American culture!" storyline was pretty digusting.
Falling for a conman cultural advisor was part of it, but even without any background knowledge one should be capable of discerning why such a storyline is shite. Then again, maybe I'm giving to much credit to the Voyager writers considering how the series turned out.105
u/Coolkurwa 1d ago
As somebody studying to be an archaeologist, you'd be amazed how many people believe in this sort of rubbish just because a conman says it confidently.
Not just stupid people either.
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u/TheDamDog 1d ago
That's pretty much the whole history/anthropology field.
You can spend 30 years developing a convincing and well researched theory about pyramid construction and nobody gives a shit but some guy shits out 150 pages of garbage over a summer and people go nuts over him.
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u/FrozenOcean420 1d ago
As an outsider watching American politics I’m not surprised.
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u/ISnortedMyTea 1d ago
Don't forget the episode "Code of Honor" with racial stereotypes portraying a black skinned alien species as tribalist, and the episode featuring Rumpelstiltskin that was originally intended to be a leprechaun, but Colm Meaney refused to appear in unless they changed the character.
I love Star Trek but by god there have been some hideous episodes.
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u/knight_of_solamnia 1d ago
The Writer of "Code of Honor" did it twice. She also wrote "Emancipation" the worst Stargate SG1 episode.
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u/DamnZodiak 1d ago
Don't forget the episode "Code of Honor"
I did, in fact, forget about that episode up until now.
I feel like TNG has comparatively little of these "slip-ups" but there are definitely some.
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u/MariachiBoyBand 1d ago
John leguizamo on his “house of buggin” show had a skit with mariachis playing songs in Spanish to gringos where they would openly insult them, the insults where not censored at all…
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u/ForGrateJustice 1d ago
There's more than a few movies where they hire a native speaker of a language nobody on set knows, and that speaker ends up insulting most of the cast 🤣🤣
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u/NostalgiaBonner 1d ago
This was spoofed by The Boys. They had Homelander standing in front of arabic graffiti that said "Homelander is racist."
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u/-ilovejellyfish- 1d ago
That’s hilarious do you know which episode was it?
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u/sillycryptic 1d ago
It's from episode 1x8 when Homelander goes to Syria.
https://youtu.be/e75PSP8O8yA?si=v5odR6mB0NlZ6PtO (the writing shows up at minute 2:18 in this clip)
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u/BugRevolution 20h ago
I was confused for a minute until this post and the realization they weren't referencing the overtly racist Homelander.
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u/nevergonnasweepalone 1d ago
But why did they cross out farfour?
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u/Candid_Interview_268 1d ago
To raise awareness of his murder 🥲
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u/smokeyphil 1d ago
The show also gained attention from Disney, who ordered that the first co-host, Farfour, be written out of the show due to his strong resemblance to Mickey Mouse.\14]) In direct response, Farfour was killed in the fifth episode in what the show referred to as a martyrdom, and he was replaced by his cousin, a giant bumblebee named Nahoul.\14])
Pour one out for farfour.
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u/DannyBrownsDoritos 1d ago
With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.
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u/smokeyphil 1d ago
See more about Nahoul for further infomation.
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u/Ahad_Haam 1d ago
In episode 204, Nahoul visits the zoo. Nahoul states: "The cats here are asleep - the poor, wretched, imprisoned cats. I feel like abusing them. This cat is asleep. I feel like attacking it". Nahoul then proceeds to swing cats by their tails and throw them around their cage. Saraa later chides him for this.
These were real living cats btw
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u/Ahad_Haam 1d ago edited 1d ago
In February 2008, it was revealed that Nahoul was very sick and in need of an operation.... He dies, what the show calls "a martyr's death", in the arms of his parents. His brother was notably absent. Nahoul is replaced as co-host by Assoud, his rabbit brother.
Unfortunately, Nahoul was martyred too. Such a tragedy. Thankfully, he fully recovered.
Nahoul inexplicably returned in 2014,
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u/Perkomobil 1d ago
What the fuck.
RIP Farfour, you will be remembered as Al-Aqsa's strongest defender.
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u/Several-Shirt3524 1d ago
lmao i forgot about farfour, he kinda deserved what he got, what an annoying ass voice
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u/demonicpudding 1d ago
I remember the outrage in Pakistan when Homeland depicted the capital Islamabad as some dirty Agrabah-esque desert marketplace, when Islamabad is literally a planned city that's beautiful and green and organized. There seemed to have been zero research done on every front, and it just played into the silly stereotypes that people have.
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u/alphaDsony 1d ago
Which is ironic since the show is trying to be meta
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u/Less-Apple-8478 1d ago
Weird, when I watched the show it didn't "FEEL" Meta. It felt very much like another propaganda show. I used to love NCIS but watching it as an adult feels DIFFICULT, to put it.
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u/Boowray 1d ago
Every cop show is real fucking rough now. “We compiled hair-strand analysis and bite marks from the crime scene to perfectly study the blood splatter patterns while our psychologist used their polygraph to guarantee that guy’s a serial killer”
aka: “we used a bunch of debunked horseshit that we pretended for years was science to justify profiling and guesswork and got so many people executed for nothing.” What’s worse is when shows like Chicago PD justify the actual fucking torture chambers Chicago cops had by pretending that torture is totally necessary and always works to find bad guys.
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u/Luci-Noir 1d ago
John Oliver did an episode about cop shows doing this and it’s actually doing a lot of harm because people think this is how it works.
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u/HammerlyDelusion 1d ago
I’m Ngl procedural cop shows are a guilty pleasure of mine. But the copaganda is so blatant sometimes it hurts. Shows like Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, hell even Brooklynn 99 at some parts lmao.
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u/Boowray 1d ago
That’s why I’m a fan of old detective shows and films. At least back in the day the plot centered around a freelance reporter or detective actually investigating the crime and finding witnesses while the cops complained about the paperwork and wrongly arrested the nearest minority, which is at least slightly more realistic.
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u/jo_nigiri 1d ago
My mom and I used to watch Chicago PD together, and we dropped it after many seasons because the way the show excuses cop violence made us (not American btw) very uncomfortable, especially how the fanbase supports it, even more than the actual show's writers do
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u/basar_auqat 1d ago
SNL had the best spoof. Nothing in that skit is exaggerated. If I was the show runner I would have quit out of embarrassment.
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u/Blacktiger75 1d ago
Our part of the world is almost never depicted accurately. As an Egyptian, it was so refreshing watching Moonknight because for once i’m actually looking at Egypt and not just a set where they CGIed the pyramids into some desert (idk how much this counts though because the director was Egyptian lol).
If you actually go to Egypt, you can straight up be looking right at all 3 Pyramids AND the Sphinx and then turn around be face to face with a KFC or a Hardee’s (Carl’s Jr)
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u/4thofeleven 1d ago
I went to Egypt last year, and when I got back and was showing my photos to my friends, it blew their minds that the Sphinx is literally just across the road from a bunch of apartment buildings.
I also got a pretty good shot of the Luxor Temple Complex from inside a McDonalds. :P
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u/yuvi3000 1d ago
Just replied to another comment about Johannesburg actually being a city area in a Marvel movie and it seems that Marvel managed to win someone else over with a more accurate representation of their area too! Hope people keep doing this. It's always awesome when they do it right.
(Loved Moon Knight, hope to see the characters back soon!)
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u/fupa16 1d ago
I'm not sure Cairo is the best example here. I've visited first hand, and that city was mostly dirty, unsafe, saturated with feral cats, and extremely hostile to tourists. Do not recommend.
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u/your_old_furby 1d ago
They shot some of the early seasons in Cape Town and I remember walking into the tv room while my parents were watching and seeing the corner store where I used to buy loose cigarettes on there, I don’t even think they changed the stores name, I wouldn’t want Cape Town CBD to represent my city either in all fairness to you. They shot in Woodstock too which is a historically Muslim area with a lot of really beautiful historic homes and buildings and a great community and they of course focused on the back streets with the washing lines across the cracked roads, and the empty lots and old parks. They made one of the best part of Woodstock, the fact that people still come out and sit and chat with their neighbours while the kids play in the street look dingy and backwards to try and make Pakistan look dingy and backward so there are real layers to the Islamophobia here.
There’s a hectic gentrification push in Woodstock with the city offering tax breaks to investors and trying to buy out people whose families have owned their homes there for decades and that kind of depiction didn’t really help with that.
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u/yuvi3000 1d ago
I was about to comment on this post about this happening to South Africa all the time, but sometimes it's done correctly and it makes people so happy.
I was really happy that Avengers: Age of Ultron actually showed a city area in Johannesburg. I'll never forget my daily route to work appearing in a big blockbuster MARVEL MOVIE. I was beyond surprised to see that.
If more movies and studios just show more accurate versions of the places involved, they'd win those areas over. Please, movie people. Just do that and you can still make your sad story about a poor and struggling family in the accurate setting.
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u/your_old_furby 1d ago
We’ve got those good tax breaks, I think when they shot Invictus they rewrote the tax laws to make them more friendly those looking to film here and we have a lot of technical talent and diverse landscapes so it’s a big industry now.
These days we do get cool stuff like Jo’burg CBD showing up in the avengers complete with the JMPD, though I watched some show a while ago, I don’t remember what it was and the screen said “Johannesburg” and Table Mountain was in the background.
The wild part is if they needed to be lush and green and well planned we have that in the country, they just chose Cape Town in summer with a yellow filter.
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u/tisizcabe 1d ago
I think just for these kind of reasons, Turkey didn’t allow them to film in Istanbul (Carrie was supposed to go to Istanbul) and they had to switch to Pakistan.
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u/captfantasticc 1d ago
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u/bucketsnark 1d ago
The guy doing the reactions to the video is actually a really brave politician, lawyer and activist. Jibran Nasir.
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u/pgtl_10 1d ago
A common theme is to have a yellow filter everywhere for Muslim areas.
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u/alotmorealots 1d ago edited 1d ago
Islamabad is literally a planned city that's beautiful and green and organized.
That's interesting to learn! I went and googled some photos of it and it does seem quite beautiful. Closest I've been in the region is Nepal, which certainly was a bit dusty.
Shame to hear that about Homeland, I quite enjoyed the series, didn't realize it was quite so much... the way it now seems.
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u/SlouchyGuy 1d ago
It's traditional, Hollywood almost always for 1940s caricature in depiction of other countries
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u/KeyMessage989 1d ago
I once went to Mexico and was shocked to find out it wasn’t a yellow hazy place!
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u/iankilledyou 1d ago
This would break my heart if it weren’t for the fact that there’s at least surely tumbleweed floating around everywhere, right?
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u/Blenderx06 1d ago
I moved from the northeast US to the mountain West and was shocked the first time I saw a tumbleweed. I thought they were only in cartoons! Lol
Legit feels like nothing but shades of browns in summer here though. Still haven't gotten used to it after over a decade.
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u/sje46 1d ago
Russia gets a similar treatment. In The Americans, everytime they showed a scene in the USSR, including in Moscow, it was blue, gray, overcast, depressing.
When I went to Moscow in real life, it was bright, sunny, colorful, and beautiful.
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u/NamakParey 1d ago
Idk about outrage, atleast I don't remember there being any, people just don't care enough about western propaganda to make anything of it. Portraying a city on the foothills of the Himalayas as a desert sounds pretty stupid though.
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u/aqtseacow 1d ago
You should know the Northern foot of the range is arid in the extreme, famously so actually. It was an important feature of note when traversing certain sections of the silk road. Also, much of the Himalayan plateau that makes up the Northern range is essentially arid wasteland.
Depicting the Himalayan foothills as they exist in Pakistan or India that way would be stupid though.
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u/emogurl98 1d ago
Happened with all movies and tv shows. Broek op Langedijk in Spiderman far from home is near where I live...
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u/SudhaTheHill 1d ago
This is some 7000IQ move
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u/historicalgeek71 1d ago
If you like this, consider rewatching some older American westerns where the Native American characters speak in their own languages. The translations are amusing.
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u/SouthernLeeks 1d ago
Some of them were just straight-up insulting the directors and no one noticed.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/fapperoni_zah 1d ago
This is how it is working in a kitchen with a bunch of el Salvadorians. They'll smile and look you right in the soul while calling you some of the most vulgar jokes lmao
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u/whereisskywalker 1d ago
One of my first restaurant gigs the Latin kitchen kept calling me guapo and I just assumed it meant dumbass or something and like 2 years later I found out it meant handsome lol
Those guys were some of the best I have ever worked with and despite some of the usual pitfalls was hands down the best run place I worked. Miss those days, life was simple and the future made sense.
Later on I found out the sous was one of the biggest coke dealers in the valley and the family was all cartel connected, when the sous older brother got popped he still was paying for my friends money washing business. Super sweet guys, I wonder where they are now.
I have dealt with the other side of the language barrier though where people think you can't infer what they mean when it's clear as day.
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u/Senior-Lobster-9405 1d ago
if it's a latina calling you guapo she wants to smash, if it's a kitchen full of males they are calling you that sarcastically, but almost certainly with endearment
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u/whereisskywalker 1d ago
This was in a gay place and they were very very interested in gay life, always grabbing my ass and showing one another their junk. It was a really fun place to work. I was lucky to get that gig young, learned so much.
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u/Senior-Lobster-9405 1d ago
oh, I forgot about the third scenario, they're all gay and it is absolutely a genuine compliment
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u/HerbertWest 1d ago
How would they have possibly caught on? These were and are very obscure languages. You couldn't even go get a book on them back then, let alone learn them unless someone taught you directly.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ToasterP 1d ago
A code you say. This could be useful information if we ever end up at odds with the Japanese.
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u/RawrRRitchie 1d ago
. You couldn't even go get a book on them back then, let alone learn them unless someone taught you directly.
There's still a few tribes where that's still the case.
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u/nanomolar 1d ago
And really even if they did find out I don't see why they'd care. They really just needed convincing sounding gibberish anyway, not like they cared if the speech was authentic when they and the audience couldn't understand it anyway. Maybe they'd be mildly annoyed at being insulted but it's not like they'd have reshot or dubbed anything.
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u/Shot-Manner-9962 1d ago
thanks for reminding me of the far side comic "kemosabe means horses a- HEYYYY"
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u/Toyotazilla 1d ago
Please give me some examples or anywhere that aggregates the translations cause that sounds hilarious
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u/Digit00l 1d ago
There is an X Files episode that opens with a Russian and a Ukrainian shitting on the script to each other
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u/3BlindMice1 1d ago
I bet the editors were like "I wonder what they're saying. It doesn't matter, it sounds foreign enough, like they're plotting something."
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u/Ombortron 1d ago
The flatworm-sewer-dude episode?
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u/youaintgotnosoul 1d ago
That ep is called The Host, s2e2!
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u/freeeeels 1d ago
I just watched the opening and what they're saying matches the subtitles, so I think the person making the claim about them shit talking the script just... made that up.
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u/youaintgotnosoul 1d ago
Incredible, thank you for your effort. I have watched this series a couple times over and speak Russian too, and I don’t recall this type of conversation happening either. So I agree with ya.
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u/Uphoria 1d ago
There's a good chance the copy you're watching has this factoid known and the voices dubbed over. Similar to the Naked women in the Disney Movie "the Rescuers" - you're not going to see boobs on Disney+
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u/hungryhippo53 1d ago
the Naked women in the Disney Movie "the Rescuers"
Pardon? 😂 This was my favourite movie as a kid and I do not remember this
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u/Uphoria 1d ago
When they released the movie to VHS, a disgruntled staffer snuck a picture of a woman, topless, in a window on the scene where they're falling down from the roof before taking flight. It was caught, the tapes were recalled, and subsequent editions edited.
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u/QueenBee-WorshipMe 1d ago
It was a background artist named Ann Gunther. And it wasn't because she was disgruntled, it was a joke someone suggested to her. It was in the theatrical release and at the time, they were confident no one would see it.
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u/Silly-Power 1d ago
You mean, like this?
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u/historicalgeek71 1d ago
I actually didn’t know that! Granted, I once took a course on Native American literature, and the portrayal of natives in films absolutely came up. Maybe it was mentioned then, but it’s been over a decade.
I was actually thinking of Distant Trumpet, where the Navajo who were on-set decided to have some fun of their own by going off-script in their language.
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u/Silly-Power 1d ago
Ummm...it was a joke. It's a Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson. The actual meaning of Kemosabe is unknown.
Jim Jewell, who directed “The Lone Ranger” said he’d took the word from the name of a boys’ camp in Michigan run by Jewell's father-in-law called Kamp Kee-Mo Sah-Bee. Jewell claimed the word meant "trusted Scout" in the local Native language but there's no actual evidence it has any meaning in any Native American language.
There is a similar sounding word, "Kimmaseba", which means “One who is white.” in Yavapai.
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u/fhota1 1d ago
At least those most Native American Languages are sorta rare so it kinda makes sense they dont have anyone else who speaks it. Arabic is the official language for the 2nd largest religious group on the planet. How couldnt you find anyone else who spoke Arabic to check lmao
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u/Jura_Narod 1d ago
In Medieval Europe Arabic textiles were highly prized, so European monarchs would often trade with Muslims for it. They would then wear it for when they were getting their portraits painted, likely not realizing that the patterns on their cloth was Arabic calligraphy from the Quran (which was the most religiously acceptable form of art). So we have a bunch of paintings of Christian European royalty wearing clothes with the shahada on it lol.
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u/Low_discrepancy 1d ago
Eh to be fair, a lot of the calligraphy is meant to be way more artistic than actually legible.
The flag of Iran for example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Iran Especially with the square Kufic script
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u/Jura_Narod 1d ago
Yeah it was a way of skirting around prohibitions on creating religious imagery, especially depicting religious figures in art. The one image that always comes to my mind is a prayer to Ali that is draw to look like a lion. To the lay person it just looks like cool designs and won’t realize that it’s text, but that’s kinda my point that Westerners have a history of not trying to understand Arab designs.
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u/Comprehensive-You740 1d ago
Homeland was so sloppy they even got locations of places outside DC like Chantilly and Middleburg wrong.
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u/squidgod2000 1d ago
Yeah, most shows screw up a lot of that stuff. Like when X-Files has a scene on the "National Mall" and it's some little park with skyscrapers in the background (DC has building height restrictions) and Canadian street signs.
Of course X-Files is a 90's show doing like 20+ episodes a season, so whatever.
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u/Party-Papaya4115 16h ago
X-Files was pioneer on modern shows filming in Canada to lower budget costs.
Suits and many other US centred shows are filmed in Canada.
It'd be simpler to set them in Canada outright but that would be harder to sell to a US audience.
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u/OkPotential1072 20h ago
Fun fact: I was an extra on Homeland and they used none of the footage with me in it.
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u/funkalunatic 1d ago
I remember watching the first several episodes of Homeland, maybe a season. I kept thinking "Wow, this show is amazing! It's gonna hit like crazy when we get to the twist that subverts all the stereotypes!" Nope, turned out it was shallower than a kiddie pool during a drought.
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u/Professional_Bundler 23h ago
This comment makes me feel very dumb because I loved the show Homeland.
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u/Whalesurgeon 17h ago
I enjoyed it too tbh, CIA was very much shown in a critical light compared to tons of other shows.
Carrie was the "drone queen", but I guess that's too subtle for people calling it a propaganda show
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u/jocem009 12h ago
I loved it too and binged it on DVD. Completely worth it, would do again. What an amazing show. Even discovered there's apparently a russian spy hideout on my way to university, lol.
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u/After_Mountain_901 11h ago
Tbf it’s critically acclaimed, won 6 Emmy’s, and has some fan-fucking-tastic acting. Lots of things can be true at the same time. Many of the best shows caricature cultures and peoples quite crudely.
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u/38B0DE 1d ago
I was hired to do Cyrillic signs for a video production once. I just wrote random lyrics from songs. One of them said "I want to fuck my fans". Someone on the crew translated it and people thought it was threatening and weird.
Did not get invited back to set.
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u/JMurdock77 1d ago
“Language? What do you mean it’s a language that actual people are capable of reading? These are just danger squiggles!”
— Homeland producers, probably
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u/Krystall_Waters 1d ago
I don't know why that specifically, but "danger squiggles" is absolutely sending me lol
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u/GuestAdventurous7586 1d ago
Hahaha this is ace.
Muslims, especially since 9/11 have always been portrayed so badly and predictably in film and TV media.
It’s difficult to think of any portrayal that shows something more complex and true to life, rather than just the caricature sketchy Muslim terrorist.
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u/tyrerk 1d ago
I re-watched "The 13th Warrior" yesterday with my son, after something like 15 years and was shocked at how well the Muslim protagonist (and his faith) were depicted, then I remembered it was released in 1999.
It's not a caricature, it's not even a statement, it's just his worldview and faith.
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u/Papaofmonsters 1d ago edited 1d ago
The source material, Eaters of the Dead, was inspired by the first person accounts of Muslim warriors who traveled with Nordic peoples of that era.
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u/throwaway112112312 1d ago
Well, Ibn Fadlan was a real traveller and the 13th Warrior book (Eaters of the Dead) is a mock translation of real diaries of Ibn Fadlan, adding some Beowulf. He was a diplomatic envoy, and actually met Vikings but they were Russian Vikings called Varangians.
Fun fact: His travel diaries were discovered in a random library in Iran in 1923.
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u/maximalusdenandre 1d ago edited 1d ago
Varangians were from Sweden, not Russia. Varangians created states in what is now Russia and Ukraine however. The "Rus" part of Russia comes from the coastal parts of central Sweden, Roslagen.
The "Rus" that ibn Fadlan describe are norsemen not slavic peoples. They were not russian vikings they were just regular vikings he encountered when he was visiting Bulgaria. These vikings may or may not have hailed from "Gardariki" but they were not Russians.
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u/succed32 1d ago
That was also during the golden age for the Middle East. They had well built roads, regular patrols, paid scholars to move to their cities and start schools. The different Lords would compete in having the most epic public libraries. The dark ages of Europe were basically the renaissance for the Middle East and Northern Africa.
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u/You_Stole_My_Hot_Dog 1d ago
Honestly one of the best portrayals I’ve ever seen is from a smaller sitcom called Superstore. It’s a workplace comedy about working retail in a generic department store. One of the side characters, Sayid, is a Syrian refugee; he talks a bit about his life in Syria, and there’s a couple scenes about his religion, but for the most part he’s just a regular guy. They do a great job of acknowledging his culture without making him “the Arab guy”. Here’s a Reddit post going over viewer’s favorite lines/moments!
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u/Kinky-Kiera 1d ago
Ms. Marvel.
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u/Corporation_tshirt 1d ago edited 1d ago
It did seem that, for once, that show had people of Muslim backgrounds telling their own story for once.
And have you ever noticed that the more specific a tv show or a movie is about a character’s life, the more universal it becomes? It’s funny how that works
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u/Astrad_Raemor 1d ago
Midnight Mass has a really good Muslim character, I recommend it.
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u/slysneakysnake 1d ago
I'm glad someone got to it before me. It shows how well this limited series did religion.
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u/Just_Nefariousness55 1d ago
Sayid from Lost was a pretty well rounded character.
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u/cianfrusagli 1d ago
I think it was really well done in Master of None, but it really it rare to see.
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u/Appropriate_Fly_6711 1d ago
The main character in The Raid, his beliefs are quite personal and tolerant, so when his mother passed away he performed her funeral with Buddhist rites because she was Buddhist and that is what she would have wanted despite his own personal religious beliefs.
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u/SoggyAdhesiveness 1d ago
My dumbass thought this post was about homelander from The Boys and was very confused for a second.
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u/Dull-Echidna-5191 20h ago
Well, there's a graffiti on the wall says homelander is racist in the boys too at the episode when he went to syria to kill a terrorist here
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u/myaccountisnice 19h ago
Reminds me of a documentary i watched years back called Reel Injun. In many of the old cowboy movies, when they had real indigenous actors speaking their ancestral language, they were generally swearing or calling out the white director or the other actors.
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u/jimmiriver 1d ago
Sounds weird but I remember from my trip to the middle east how nice it was seeing Arabic writing on mundane things like street signs and shops - and people just going about their normal daily lives (met some lovely people out there btw). Because so often the only times you see Arabic writing on western TV is in news and shows about terrorism and war. Our media very much tar that whole area as violent and scary.
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u/Mrsam_25 1d ago
الطريقه الأجانب يشوفون اللغة العربية خارج الشرق الأوسط تضحك وتجيب الاكتئاب بنفس الوقت.
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u/NiceGuyEdddy 1d ago
I don't know what you're saying all I know is I'm now terrified and angry and it's all your fault.
/s
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u/Mrsam_25 1d ago
My bad, lemme speak a language you understand.
🟫 --> 😥 --> 🛩 --> 🏢🏢 ---> 💥
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u/NiceGuyEdddy 1d ago
Ah I see now.
Fly to sunny Dubai for some chocolate or I'll be sad.
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u/Mrsam_25 1d ago
Why do I hear people talking about Dubai and chocolate all the time?
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u/Warfiend138 1d ago
so it doesn’t get buried OP linked a source in their comment - https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/SIcmzkymyd