Last night was the premiere of All-American Muslim on TLC. It was right after Walking Dead so I’m not sure how many of you were still stuck in the after glow and unable to make the switch.
Anywho…for those who saw it, what did you think of it?
Did you learn something about Muslims?
Did it change your opinion about Muslims?
Are you planning on watching it again?
I was going to watch it, but then I realized “Lost Girl” was on, so too bad for “All-American Muslim.” Maybe I’ll set the dvr at some point if you guys say it’s good.
I watched half of it. It was mildly interesting, I learned nothing new about Muslims and I changed the channel because I got bored. I did find the young man converting from Catholicism to Islam so he could marry his girlfriend a little bit intriguing. I doubt I will watch it again, but we’re dumping satellite anyway, so I won’t be watching a lot of stuff.
Sounds interesting. I’m reminded of an episode of Morgan Spurlock’s series 30 Days where people lived completely different lives for 30 days - pro-choice activist living with pro-life people, homophobe living with gay couple. And the best one was a born-again Christian living in Dearborn with a Muslim family, living as a Muslim. That one seemed to have the deepest and most lasting impact of the whole series.
LOVED that show. I wish he would make more.
Yeah, it was the rare “reality TV” series that actually told us something about real human beings instead of featuring a passel of wanna-be fame whores. Morgan’s own experience in the coal mines was astonishing television, seeing men go off to work every day to do something that they knew would probably kill them, but doing it because they really had no other choice.
I’m not at all interested in watching the program, but I’m curious- is there ANYTHING about the family the show focuses on that non-Muslims could or should find disturbing of off-putting?
Or is this just a way of spoon-feeding Americans the message that “Everbody is just the same, so let’s hold hands and sing Kumbaya”?
I’m inclined to believe that the makes of shows like this are condescending liberals who are waaay too quick to believe the average American is a bigoted yahoo who’s dying to launch a pogrom against Muslims, and thinks this show is a necesary antidote.
I know too many “average Americans” and yes, a huge percentage are bigoted yahoos. And a good portion of that bigotry is due to the fact that they have little to no contact with people unlike themselves. (Visiting my sister’s boyfriend’s family is like walking onto the Jerry Springer set). That was what 30 Days was about - actually live in someone else’s world for a month, see life through their eyes. The Christian from West Virginia who lived with a Muslim family had to dress in traditional Islamic garb, study Arabic, pray in a mosque, distribute Islamic litature, etc. For instance, he asked the wife about the hajib, and she pointed out that Mary wore one and you could see a light going on behind his eyes. He went back home a different man.
I’m sure the people who made this show made it for no reason other than they thought people would tune in and they could sell some products. If the message that “Muslims are regular people who love their families, provide for them and try to live a decent life” gets passed along, so much the better. What possible harm is there in reducing folks’ tendency to demonize a whole group?
I haven’t see it either, but I’d imagine the producers looked around for the “most interesting” examples - a son who feels he is the victim of racism, or a daughter who feels pressure from her friends to Westernize. That’s the nature of reality TV.
I would describe TLC’s shtick instead as “shows where people do nothing but ordinary, boring things, but you’re supposed to watch because they’re somehow different.”
Hence all of their little person shows, where nothing interesting ever happens, but they’re little people! I remember the ads for one episode of the show about the little family where the father bought a barbecue grill, and he had to stand on a box to use it. The Duggars fall into the same category, and the 500-pound people kind of do too.
Actually, IMO, yes. Their opinions about women on the program were greatly off-putting. At one point while watching the show I said, “this isn’t helping me like or understand Muslims. This is actually doing the opposite.” One of the women on the show wants to open a nightclub but the man she is speaking to is so clearly against it not only because it would be “inappropriate” for a woman to own a nightclub but also because he thinks she would fail because women aren’t good at running businesses. They were both Muslim btw if that wasn’t obvious.