This essay will talk about the depiction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the film Munich and how the film used common stereotypes to exaggerate the character's role in the story, as well as how this affects people's perceptions in the common culture. I will do this by analyzing the storyline and the techniques used to present and form the characters on screen. Representation which is the description or representation of someone or something in a particular way means to represent or show an image of something that already exists, for example information. When used by the media, it creates stereotypes about people and countries. the presentation gives meaning to the things represented. Because the things that are depicted are images of what the thing, story or person really is, because they can never be 100% accurate, because it's not the real thing, it's is simply how the writer or journalist views the event, and you see things from their point of view (Stuart Hall in his video lecture “Representation & the Media”). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay A certain group of people can be represented by the media using written, filmed or other medium, for example immigrants and immigration are topics that are very controversial, meaning these topics are represented by people biased for their own gain and the true meaning is unclear, meaning no one can see the full picture, but most people nonetheless have an opinion based on where they are from get representation. "There is no such thing as direct access to reality" (dyer 1993), meaning that you, as a viewer or reader, will never see the full picture, even if you were at the scene, you will only see your interpretation of the event, nothing more. Cinema is a very traditional way of imposing stereotypes and opinions on the public. So cinema somehow shapes the way we treat and think about individuals and cultures, even if we haven't been exposed to it directly, for example, the way we see individuals and cultures. the events of Operation Wrath Of God are from the perspective of the Mossad agent and the killings against them are fully justified as they kill enemies of Israel and terrorists, the PLO members who kidnapped and killed 11 Israeli athletes, but if we see it from another point of view, the PLO members needed and deserved a fair trial under international law, but in the film this was not suggested or proposed, nor mentioned either, which would suggest to the audience that their actions were fully justified, to better understand this we need to understand encoding and decoding. Encoding and decoding was first developed by cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall in 1973 and provides an approach to how media messages are created, received and interpreted. He asserts that the audience is presented with messages to decode and digest based on the culture and personal experience of the individual, unlike other theories that take power away from the audience, he asserts that the audience can play an interactive role in decoding the message, depending on the person and people can interpret a message differently from others and the audience can come together to change a message, decoding is essentially about understandingthe message that someone already knows. For someone who knows nothing about the history of the conflict or the culture, this would reflect poorly on Palestinians. Although they are killers, the Mossad agents who carry out targeted assassinations of Palestinians in Munich are all presented as human beings. and caring individuals. The only personality conflicts that emerge are when one of them begins to question the morality of their revenge killings, and even when such issues arise, the morally conflicted character is quickly killed off. The resulting message seems to be that questioning the morality of such acts can only result in death. Added to this are efforts to avoid civilian casualties. At one point, one of the Mossad agents says that "it's strange to think of yourself as an assassin." No such qualms are evoked by the film's Palestinian characters, for whom the morality of murder is natural and has never been questioned. Reports are supposed to tell the truth, but most of the time they have a hidden agenda: either to provoke the reader's emotions towards one side of the debate, or the public does not realize that they are being manipulated, or the words that the author uses to describe are deeply important and can swing the reader's opinion to the left or right, one of the most controversial topics which can be seen an example in articles on immigration, some provoke sympathy for the others as the Sun newspaper describes them as swarms of insects. The representation of Palestinians in Munich is an example of how stereotypes can affect the way people perceive a group. Palestinians are primarily depicted as religious fundamentalists, which this essay suggests is that media mainstreaming is stripping culture of what makes it unique. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has often been at the center of films produced in the West, which seek to explain the heart of the problem. Claims to a truthful representation of reality have traditionally been linked to a parallel assumption of cultural authority over Palestinians who, unlike Israelis, until recently had little access to filmic means of representation. Through a number of films, produced by both Palestinians and non-Palestinians. Munich and other Palestinians to the point that any productive message is lost in the orientalist representations it contains. for nearly thirty minutes, the words “Palestine” or “Palestinians” are not spoken by any of the film’s main characters. Before this mention, Palestinians are called "Arabs", "Fedayyin", "Arab terrorists" and "people like these". The existence of the Palestinians becomes apparent a few minutes into the film, when Golda Meier, a member of Black September, describes the Palestinians as follows: "The people, they want to destroy us... Forget peace for now... We have laws, we represent. civilization... I don't know where they come from." The Munich viewer uses the context to understand the Palestinian cause, Black September's motivations for undertaking terrorism, and who the Palestinians really are. Instead, we We are confronted with a clear example in traditional orientalist texts, namely evil and, in Meier's words, "unrecognizable", while Israel represents Western civilization. In one of the scenes, the main character Avner, l. The Mossad agent, is presented as a sexual being, a lover who has much to lose in the form of a wife and an unborn child. Meanwhile, the only depictions of Palestinians. found in Munich are hysterical women cryingthe death of the “Arab terrorists” of Black September. Thus, the Mossad agent is presented as a lover and a father facing anonymous and faceless terrorists whose families only appear in a very limited sequence of the film. When Palestinian families are featured, they speak Arabic, but subtitles are often not provided, which distorts the Arabic characters and makes them even more “unrecognizable” and disconnected to the viewer. This film is inspired by real events and the operation was an Israeli mission, the film was made from the Israeli point of view, so it is to show how the Israelis responded and their judgment, the Palestinians were initially treated as antagonists in this film when they were shown celebrating when they heard about the massacre on the news, which in itself and for someone unfamiliar with the history of the conflict may give the It feels like the Palestinians are celebrating a murder and when Avner has a heartfelt conversation with PLO member Ali about their homeland and who deserves to rule the land, Ali was justifying the actions committed by the Palestinians and the character's response main shows the audience both sides of the coin, but still portrays Palestinians in a bad light because that is not the view of all Palestinians, as they think they are freedom fighters, but the film shows them more as fundamentalist militants, it puts all Palestinians in the same basket. Elements of the orientalist perception of the history of Israel and Palestine also emerge at different points in the film. Revenge killings are presented in terms of Israel's apparent weakness because it is only a "small country." The Palestinian connection to their land becomes inauthentic or false when a Palestinian character is told that they should leave Palestine and settle elsewhere because "they are Arabs, there are plenty of places for Arabs." This perspective essentializes all Arab cultures into one, portraying them as a mass of people of the same culture who are no different from anyone who speaks Arabic, thus depriving them of their individuality and identity as Palestinians, which which has generally been a method for altered peoples. the Middle East throughout Western Orientalist history. "a culture can have different groups of Arabs" is a cultural and linguistic term. It refers to those who speak Arabic as their first language. Arabs are not a race. Most Arabs are Muslims, but there are also millions of Christian Arabs and thousands of Jewish Arabs in 22 countries, you can't paint all these people at once When Avner truly questions his commitment to Mossad, he is constantly reassured. by other characters as to the rightness of his actions, among other justifications that "if these guys live, the Israelis die... You know it's true", and "you killed for the future, for. peace." When Avner confronts his Mossad supervisor again in the film's final scene and expresses his concerns, he finds himself alone, facing the New York City skyline, as he s attack the murders of Israeli athletes, and must sympathize with the burden Avner carries as a vengeful killer, who walks away and exits the scene. disappears, we see the Twin Towers in the background (which would be destroyed decades later during the September 11 attacks). Munich was specifically chosen for this analysis because Munich was a big budget film made by a group of internationally renowned actors and producers. In Munich, Palestinians are terrorists who are killed in a context of justified revenge. Munich?