Islamophobia in Early and Contemporary America: Reproducing Myths in Slaves in Algiers (1794) and Argo (2012)

This paper examines the representational practices in Susanna Haswell Rowson’s melodramatic comedy Slaves of Algiers, or, A struggle for Freedom (1794) and Ben Affleck’s thriller movie Argo (2012) claiming that both works, although historically distant, employ a similar repertoire of representations which repeat myths and stereotypes about the Islamic culture and people. Deploying Stuart Hall’s theory of representation and drawing on the historical and cultural contexts of the two works, the paper puts forward the argument that Islamophobia is a media-made myth which comes to the foreground in times of westernIslamic conflicts and which is regenerated through western xenophobic language and images that reiterate established cultural presuppositions.