“It Wasn’t Us, You Know, It Was Them”: An Analysis of Representation of Muslims by Muslims

Abstract

The representation of minority and repressed groups has been a hotly debated topic in American society. In this regard, it matters just as much who is represented as it matters who is doing the representing. In this regard, it is important to study how representation by people from the minority group represent themselves as opposed to how people from the majority group represent them. This thesis aims to investigate this question as pertaining to the representation of Muslims in the United States. This is particularly interesting as past representations, as this thesis will argue, have mainly focused on representing Muslims as terrorists or as patriotic and Americanized. By analyzing two American shows made by Muslims (East of la Brea and Ramy), I show that Muslim produced shows manage to step outside of this dichotomy by using several techniques in which humor plays an important role.