Within a day of the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks in the United States, amateur animations, depicting the humiliation, torture, and death of Osama bin Laden, Taliban, and other Arab and Muslim characters began appearing on U.S.-based Web animation portals such as About.com's Political Humor site and Newgrounds.com. Narratives centered on shooting, bombing, torturing, and humiliating the Arab characters. Hastily created and aesthetically crude in execution, the pieces had thin plots and relied heavily on anti-Arab representations to depict meaning and sentiment. One such animation, The Fingers of NYC (Stitch, 2001), was posted on September 12, using a still photo of the Statue of Liberty and a crudely drawn animation of Uncle Sam shooting an Arab man in the head after the Arab whimpers in a faked accent, "Oh, please, but I like America!" This and other like animations appeared to be not much more than the scribblings, almost akin to graffiti, of a few emotionally raw individuals with Web access, expressing the immediate confusion and rage many U.S. citizens felt in response to the 9/11 attacks.

During the days, months, and years that followed 9/11, dozens more anti-Muslim and anti-Arab (1) cartoons were posted to Web animation portals by amateur and freelance animators, indicating a trend rather than mere oddity. As of June 2005, the author's effort to comprehensively count publicly accessible, free-of-charge, English-language anti-Arab animations on the Web yielded 106 cartoons. Viewings of the animations climbed into the multimillions at one portal alone by June 2005 (Newgrounds, 2005d). As the U.S. invasion of Iraq was threatened and finally commenced on March 20, 2003, additional anti-Arab plot possibilities became a part of the animators' grab bag, including the anti-Hussein narrative. Several pieces emerged as Web "classics," enduring in their Web-based exhibition spaces for 4 years or longer as the U.S. War on Terror and the U.S.-Iraq war continued. What is striking about post-9/11 anti-Arab animations is the similarity of their imagery and narrative themes to those used in prior animations, despite markedly different production, distribution, and exhibition methods. In particular, they appear to remediate theatrically released World War II racist animated propaganda films developed and distributed by particular U.S. animation houses in collaboration with the U.S. government. The rapid generation and exhibition of the post-9/11 animations, seen in parallel with the gradual removal of like animations in the traditional U.S. mass media channels of commercial film and television since the end of World War II, indicates vacillating attitudes about the social acceptability of governmental and corporate use of the animated form in the service of racially charged wartime propaganda.

This study explores the ways in which post-9/11 anti-Arab Web animations situate the Web, and the new media technologies that support it, as a cultural space that can be used by animators to recirculate and commercialize images involving race and racism during wartime. The theory of remediation, as developed by Bolter and Grusin (2000), is employed to frame the discussion of the cultural logic of the Web as a remediated and remediating space in which the new medium gains currency through homage to older forms, and simultaneously older media forms maintain currency by incorporating elements of the new. These Web animations are considered as a group in a comparison of production, distribution, and exhibition circumstances during World War II and today. In addition, a catalog of narrative themes is provided, along with critical analysis of the animations' metanarrative. That post-9/11 anti-Arab Web animations were created by amateurs and freelance animators speaks to a shift in how animated wartime propaganda has been deployed over the years since the advent of the animated film form. In the absence of corporate-produced and government-influenced wartime animations, such as were produced and exhibited in the United States for the World War II propaganda campaign, these violent, vengeful, and racist Web animations are notable. The production, portal-based exhibition, and online longevity of the pieces indicate that the affordances of the Web and new media technologies constitute a new production, distribution, and exhibition site for animators to create and exhibit animated narratives. By engaging the myth of the Web as an amateur, folkloric, and grassroots cultural space, the animations, their creators, and the host sites and animators have eluded organized public criticism for their role in these negative constructions of "Arabness." Although the ideological power of these texts may be disavowed, due to their apparent status as citizen-generated populist speech, in aggregate the metatext shows the Web can serve as a critical cultural location at which the animators employ the Web to stabilize their identity and power as they consider and confront an enemy-other: the Arab Muslim world.

Historical Animated Racial Stereotyping

Animation has been dependent on simplistic iconic representation, including stereotypes, for narrative shorthand and comedic potential due in part to animation's inheritance from the tradition of cartooning and its satirical mechanisms, and use of caricature as a specific design strategy in which particular bodily or environmental elements are foregrounded or exaggerated (Wells, 1998). Although the use of stereotypes is commonplace across all narrative forms, and is not inherently ideologically problematic, stereotypes of particular groups in certain historical moments are damaging. However, they are not damaging because they misrepresent a reality; they are damaging because they fixate on a moment in one singular representation, denying the possibility of change, play, and difference (Gilman, 1985). In the case of racial or ethnic stereotyped representations in U.S. mass media, the dearth of a diverse range of representations of characters from minority groups means that the stereotyped negative representations can constitute the only mass media representations such groups have. Advocates for racial and social justice believe the prevalence of negative racial stereotypes has deleterious effects on the progress of their causes.

The animated form, with its dependence on the narrative legacies of print caricature, has long resided in the cultural realm of folk and popular culture. In the United States during the early period of animation and through the development around 1913 of a more organized system of small animation studios, the form was the experimental province of tinkerers and amateurs, as well as lightning sketch artists, cartoonists, and performers (Crofton, 1993). The early stages of the projected animated film form were the result of multiple and diverse efforts by cinematic inventor-tinkerers and their devices, including Plateau's Phenakistoscope (1831), Homer's Zoetrope (1834), Sellers's Kinetoscope (1861), and the Praxinoscope, patented in 1877 by Reynaud (Wells, 1998). In 1888, Reynaud first used his device (which had been used as a children's toy) to exhibit the first projected animated film, Un bon bock, or A Good Beer (Bendazzi, 2001). Early animation was in part characterized by its crude, amateur aesthetic, absent or undeveloped plots, use of negative racial stereotypes, and resistance to the trappings of high art and high culture through its reliance on narrative elements such as pornography, the barnyard milieu, simplistic justice, sadism, and slapstick humor. As such, this type of early animation has been understood as rooted in populist folk art traditions (Panofsky, 1974; Waller, 1980). Thus, the impact of animation has historically been read within the context of popular culture as comic, escapist, frivolous, and devoid of political or sociological significance. This reading of the animated form conflates "seriousness with solemnity, and comedy with 'escapism'" (Wells, 2002, p. 5).

To the contrary: Both animated and comic discourses are intrinsically alternative to dominant texts (e.g., live action, serious dramatic narratives), and as such animation can provide an ideal format for the subversive smuggling of representations of certain ideas into mass media that might otherwise be taboo or unrepresentable (Wells, 2002). Therefore, animated narratives can provide important insights in investigations of cultural phenomena. Above all, the animated form enunciates its inherent otherness in the media landscape and ability to represent difference, while traversing the tensions of difference and otherness in the narratives it conveys (Wells, 2002). In the case of early animation, attendant stereotyping may be understood as related to animators' ambivalence and ignorance about race relations as well as lack of control over the emerging animation technologies and the nascent animated form.

The animation industry has historically been most heavily populated by creative workers who were White male Protestants, largely uncritical in their use of racial stereotypes (Cohen, 1997). According to Cohen (1997), animators in studios in the early years were "more or less unsophisticated in their humor and social behavior" (p. 50) and were unaware that the racial and ethnic stereotypes they engaged in their daily lives, and repurposed in their animations, were offensive or harmful to others. For example, Fleischer studio animator Myron Waldman reported that in the 1930s, Jewish caricatures were objected to by Jewish animators, but because no African American animators worked at Fleischer, nobody was around to object to negative portrayals of African Americans. By the time cinema sound technology was in use, negative stereotypes of virtually every racial and ethnic group had been used as narrative devices in animation.

Sampson (1998) collected and catalogued a comprehensive filmography, including historical reviews and press releases, of U.S. animated cartoons produced between 1900 and 1960 that make ample use of stereotypes of Blacks and African Americans that construct them in negative characterizations. As an aside he noted that Jews, Italians, Native Americans, and Asians have also continually been targets of animators' "humor" (p. vii). Although the Hays Office Production Code of 1930 prohibited offending any nation, race, or creed, animated films continued to represent racial minorities as negative stereotypes, indicating that standards of what was to be considered offensive or damaging were unstabilized.

Of particular relevance to this study, as narratives that provide a foundation for interpreting post-9/11 anti-Arab animations, are those cartoons Sampson (1998) discussed that construct Arabs in negative characterizations. These works illustrate that the use of negative stereotypes to represent Arabs is not a recent phenomenon in the U.S. cultural lexicon. Sampson documented that the Arabs in these earlier animations are often characterized by affording them various African American dialects and accents, a narrative move that addresses a complexity in and conflation of racial tensions among White Americans, producers and audiences alike.

Organized mass resistance to racism in animation has impacted the social acceptability of such representations, altering how animators and their organizations conduct business. After decades of sporadic yet organized mass complaints and protests about racist, sexist, and otherwise troubling representations in animated film, animation studios, their parent corporations, and television companies grew loathe to screen cartoons that were likely to generate controversy. For example, in 1945 animator Walter Lantz was reported to be retreating to the woods after complaints from "pressure groups" and others who objected to racist representations in his Swing Symphony cartoons. Lantz and his distributor Universal faced more controversy just 3 years later when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) raised objections to his cartoon Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat, leading to news media coverage of the protest (Cohen, 1997). By 1958, animation distributors and television stations were cutting racially offensive scenes from previous theatrical cartoons (Cohen, 1997).

Anti-Arab representations in U.S. mass media have not escaped organized criticism and demands for modification. For example, there were citizen protests against the anti-Arab representations in the Hollywood film The Siege (Wilkins & Downing, 2002), and Arab American groups objected to an array of anti-Arab representations in the 1992 animated Disney film Aladdin (Felperin, 1997). Current censorship by television channels and other mass media companies of cartoons containing racist stereotypes, previously exhibited in movie theaters, illustrates the attention mainstream media companies now pay to community groups' organized complaints about objectionable themes and characters (Cohen, 1997; Sandier, 2003). In the present cultural climate, professional animation companies and media conglomerates in the United States risk damaging their brands if they produce or distribute grossly racist caricatures and stereotypes in the same manner (2) such companies felt free to in previous historical periods (Sandier, 2003).

Professional animators during the pre-World War II period had clearly developed a well-honed visual and aural stockpile of negative caricatures and plots to quickly pull out and use when expedient. This stockpile proved highly valuable when animation houses were tapped by the U.S. government to assist in the war propaganda effort during World War II. Animators were apparently able to quickly adapt their caricature strategies to the current enemy races: the Germans, Italians, and Japanese. As Cohen (1997) noted, "sensitivity took a back seat to the war effort in the forties" (p. 50). Similarly, general U.S. audiences, accustomed to viewing racist animations during peacetime, were well-situated to view with little or no protest those wartime cartoons that used stereotypes to construct enemies as others and motivate the emotion necessary for supporting and waging war.

World War II Animated Propaganda in the United States

According to Shull and Wilt (2004), U.S. animations involving war themes and characters can be traced back to 1915, when the already-established "Col. Heeza Liar" animated series featured the large-nosed diminutive main character as a war correspondent in Co/. Heeza Liar in the Trenches. Put into the context of the numerous mass media channels used to distribute wartime propaganda, animation has been just one method for communicating the common themes of the enemy as stranger, aggressor, subhuman or nonhuman, godless, barbarian, greedy, anarchist, terrorist, outlaw, torturer, rapist, and as death itself (Keen, 1986). Animation was thought to be a near-ideal vehicle for war propaganda, thanks to animators' ability to graphically and quickly convey messages, including that which was otherwise unrepresentable. The animated form's knack for harnessing humor as a communicative tool enabled audiences to laugh at the enemy and feel better amid the otherwise tense and tragic circumstances of wartime (Braamhorst & van Waveren, 1997).

As U.S. involvement in World War II increased, the number of war-related animations kept pace. The day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army took over Disney Studios and stayed for a full 7 months (Watts, 1995), making it resemble nothing if not a military facility (Braamhorst & van Waveren, 1997). All but three U.S. animated war-related shorts were produced by the major animation studios: Warner Brothers, Famous Studios/Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Disney, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, and Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures. These seven major studios controlled the entire market (Shull & Wilt, 2004), indicating a cooperative effort on the part of corporations and government in producing war propaganda. Although there was little formal collaboration between the government and studios, the Office of War Information kept tabs on the U.S. animation houses during the war, providing and enforcing content guidelines and giving comments on film scripts and final prints (Shull & Wilt, 2004). Some 290 war-related animated short films were made during World War II in the United States for commercial release, of which more than 85% were screened before audiences (Shull & Wilt, 2004). Given the fact that theatrical cartoons produced in the 1930s and 1940s were made for general audiences and viewed by people of all ages in movie theaters, these animated shorts were narratives designed for mass audiences, and they document the types of messages the U.S. government wished to communicate to its citizens of all ages (Shull & Wilt, 2004).

During World War II, the Hollywood animators who produced cartoons for the dual purpose of entertainment and propaganda created virulently stereotypical representations of Japanese, Germans, and Italians in such works as Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips, The Ducktator, You're a Sap Mr. Jap, Tokio Jokio, Japoteurs, and Scrap the Japs. As part of the war propagandists' strategy, enemies were typically depicted through stereotype and caricature meant to dehumanize them in the eyes of the viewer, thus smoothing the process of emotional distancing necessary for waging and supporting the war effort. As was the general narrative strategy employed in animation prior to the war, the task of dehumanizing the other was mainly accomplished through use of animal caricatures whose characters were developed merely to the level of hackneyed stereotype, devoid of the richer characterizations and humanization afforded to positive animal characters such as Mickey Mouse. The use of negative animal caricature was meant to communicate that the enemy was subhuman and deserved to be defeated or killed (Shull & Wilt, 2004). One particularly common representation in propaganda in many forms was of Japanese as insects that needed to be exterminated (Waller, 1980). The general U.S. public was receptive to the racist representations contained in these and other cartoons because of highly developed national unity against wartime enemies (Sampson, 1998). During this period it was not considered morally wrong or distasteful for the U.S. government and animation studios to traffic in negative imagery, as long as doing so was in the service of the war effort.

Racist caricature, such as was acceptable and even lauded during World War II in the United States, became increasingly socially unacceptable once progressive social movements, such as the civil rights movement and the second wave of feminism, gained increased power in the 1960s and 1970s (Wells, 1998). Sandier (2003) discussed moves by large brand-conscious media corporations such as Disney and AOL Time Warner toward reducing and eventually eliminating mass public access (via Disney media outlets, Cartoon Network broadcasts, etc.) to previously released animations featuring war propaganda such as Der Fuhrer's Face. Historical overtly racist caricature is now relegated to hard-to-acquire archival collections and videos and unauthorized exhibition. Ironically, these historical animations are now often seen by U.S. youth in classrooms as part of regularly taught history curricula meant to introduce students to the mechanisms and history of wartime propaganda.

Modern animation companies generally eschew such grossly negative representations. Searches for government-sponsored animated wartime propaganda associated with the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and 1991 's Operation Desert Storm yield no results, signifying the pull-out of large animation houses and the U.S. government from a propaganda strategy that served so well during World War II. However, racist wartime caricature that achieves a sort of propaganda effect is experiencing renewed life on the World Wide Web, where the animated war propaganda form is remediated.

Post-9/11 Anti-Arab Web Animations

When the unique ability of animation to represent the otherwise unrepresentable is combined with the World Wide Web as an alternative media space, it is perhaps unsurprising that some of the most culturally taboo narratives are circulating as animations on the Web. The Web has become a central cultural site where a myriad of forbidden narratives and other expressive forms are exhibited. For instance, Frank (2004) documented the use of the Internet and Web to circulate and exhibit electronic folklore called "photoshops" that include anti-bin Laden and anti-Afghanistan images. Kuipers (2002) wrote about the circulation of visual disaster jokes on the Internet after 9/11, including those that showed bin Laden, the war in Afghanistan, and the World Trade Center (WTC) as sites at which net-citizens (netizens) react to mainstream media coverage of the WTC attack. These netizen uses of the Internet to circulate material of a possibly offensive nature have met with little censure from justice-oriented community groups, provided the taboo narrative or expression appears to be the work of an individual rather than a government, organized group, or corporation. (3) In the United States, the Internet has been imbued with the myth that it is a more democratic forum for citizen expression than other communication media such as commercial radio and television, periodicals, books, and films. This myth is in place due to the relative ease with which individuals may create, exhibit, and distribute their messages to a potentially large audience, and the loose (in comparison to some other countries) U.S. regulation structure in which the Internet functions.

As a potentially interactive and collaborative communication space, the Internet allows users to express themselves in ways that interact with racial ideologies brought along with them as they address and engage the Internet, a cultural space that allows people to propagate, disseminate, and commodify representations of racism (Bendazzi, 2001; Nakamura, 2002). To consider the Web in this way is a critical strategy similar to employing the theory of Orientalism, so labeled by Said (1978, 1997) in his critical analyses of Western ideology and colonialism through the examination of Western discourse about the Orient in general, and the religion of Islam and Muslim peoples in particular. Critically interpreting the phenomenon of amateur post-9/11 anti-Arab Web animations involves the stance that this group of animations situates the Web as a location where the animators may conduct the work of stabilizing identity and power in oppositional terms to the constructed enemy-Other: the Arab Muslim world. Concurrently through the logic of remediation, the old visual and narrative forms of animated racist representations and racist war propaganda are refurbished and revitalized with an aura of high-tech glamour, and the Web as a new medium is afforded increased cultural status among animators, animation fans, and anti-Arab racists through its use as an exhibition space for animated racist war propaganda.

Method

In the study, the research questions were as follows: How do the production, distribution, and exhibition circumstances of post-9/11 racist wartime cartoons on the Web differ from the production, distribution, and exhibition of World War II era U.S. racist cartoons? What major and minor themes, character types, and plots are post-9/11 Web animators using to communicate their stories? What do these common themes, character types, and plots indicate about the legacy of racist wartime animation?

To gather texts for inclusion in this study, Web animation is defined as those animations created for the Web that create the illusion of motion, rather than record motion as in live action film (Furniss, 1998). Thus, live action films and videos posted on the Web were excluded. The scope of the study was further limited to linear narrative animations as relevant texts, excluding interactive animated games. This exclusion was warranted because considering interactivity involves a separate set of theoretical considerations and literature (e.g., hypertext theory and author-reader agency in relation to the narrative), and is therefore beyond the scope of a single article-length study. Of linear-animated narratives, the author strove to develop as comprehensive a list of English-language public texts as possible (in effect, attempting a census) to capture the range of such works available on the Web. Using major Internet search engines including Google, Teoma, Alta Vista, MSN Search, and Yahoo!, bimonthly searches were conducted starting in September 2001 and ending in June 2005 for relevant animations using keywords such as Arab, Islam, Muslim, Taliban, Osama, bin Laden, Saddam, Hussein, Iraq, cartoon, and animation. As animations were discovered, they were downloaded for the purpose of archiving, repeated viewing, and content cataloging.

The Web sites that hosted or linked to the greatest number of anti-Arab animations at U.S.-based portals were Newgrounds, with 42 bin Laden (Newgrounds, 2005c) and 15 Hussein (Newgrounds, 2005b) pieces, and About.com, with 23 bin Laden (Kurtzman, 2005a) and 21 Hussein (Kurtzman, 2005b) pieces, with some animations duplicated at both sites. Other animation portal sites, containing far fewer animations and links, included Madblast.com, Atomfilm.com, Entertainmail.net, and iFilm.com, with between 2 and 12 animations each. Occasionally the author found animations hosted by the creators themselves at off-portal sites such as Evildave.com; such pieces were typically also cross-posted at the animation portals. The total number of English-language animations considered at publicly accessible, fee-free sites across the Web was 106.

Remediation

The theory of remediation as developed by Bolter and Grusin (2000) names and traces the formal processes of remediation, transparency, and hypermediacy. Through these processes older media forms, as both root of and rival to the new, gain reaffirmed importance when creators and users incorporate formal elements of new media forms. An example of this dynamic is when television programming incorporates animated graphics that resemble the flat, solid-color 2-D look of Macromedia Flash animations on the Web. Newer media forms, on the other hand, acquire heightened cultural status by refashioning earlier forms, such as when the Web is used by people to circulate and access representations of oil paintings, photographs, films, and television clips. Thus, the theory of remediation refutes the critical assumption that new media achieves cultural currency by radically departing from the old, and that those who create using older media forms are resistant to incorporating elements of newer forms.

Although the theory of remediation is useful and instructive here, there are two ways in which this study moves away from the original argument. First, Bolter and Grusin (2000) limited the discussion primarily to formal remediation, and did not directly address narrative remediation. Second, although the authors at one point wrote that they wished to treat "digital technologies themselves as hybrids of technical, material, social, and economic facets" (p. 77), the general absence of human agency in the discussion points to underlying technological determinism. Therefore, this study of racist Web-based wartime animation invokes the theory of (formal) remediation and additionally considers narrative remediation, eschewing the flavor of technological determinism in Bolter and Grusin's argument as it appears to privilege technology as a self-propelled rather than human-produced phenomenon. By foregrounding the analysis in circumstances of production, distribution, exhibition, and narrative strategies, both historical and current, the racist animations under consideration here are grounded as expressions of human material, cultural, and political work.

Results

The circumstances of production of wartime anti-Arab Web animations are dissimilar to the U.S. studio production system in which World War I and II animations were created, and dissimilar to the studio-government collaboration that occurred during World War II in particular. The advent of the personal computer, the Internet, and especially the Web has altered the conditions of U.S. media production and distribution such that it is feasible for many (although not all--access and skill differentials factor largely in the persistence of digital divides) individual citizens to make their own media content and exhibit itto audiences outside their immediate social and familial networks. This relative ease contributes to the folkloric aspect of the Web, because ostensibly anyone with access to the right hardware, software, and minimal skill set can contribute. Further, the aesthetic qualities of these animations, with the unskilled drawing, simplistic scene design, crude character development, low-quality audio, choppy motion, and undeveloped or nonexistent plots, signify their nonprofessional or folk nature.

The people creating these animations appear to be amateurs and freelance animators rather than individuals who are professionals employed at animation companies. Similar to many forms of graffiti, which are scribbled anonymously or with pseudonyms or nicknames, the authors of these animations are often difficult to determine for those who do not personally know the creators. The practices of animators on the Internet make it very difficult to verify the "real" identities and vocational status of those who post animations, another phenomenon that contributes to the folk aura of these Web animations. In many cases, the animators use pseudonyms such as "CarrotCIock" and "brokenpuppy" rather than full legal names. Another way in which the animations signify nonprofessional status is that there are often discrepancies between the titles of the animations as contained within the pieces themselves, the titles the animators enter when self-submitting their work to the portals, and the titles used by portal staff when indexing the animations. This indicates a lackadaisical stance toward the naming of pieces in comparison with professionals, whose commercial livelihoods depend on extreme accuracy and consistency in the correctness of titles and production credits.

Reading through the animators' notes to viewers posted on Web pages from which the animations are linked, it is possible to summarize the reasons they give for having created and posted these animations. Mainly, amateurs are motivated by personal reasons related to rage over the 9/11 attacks and the desire to offer their work for criticism by other members of the portal community. When the post-9/11 animators posted notes on hosting pages about the purpose of their work, the most frequent rationale had to do with venting anger, frustration, or resolve to seek vengeance against the attackers. For instance, animator Michael Bregman (2001) wrote, "This is my little way to vent my anger and pain about what happened at the World Trade Center in New York. I hope it will put a smile or two on people's faces." JmBd (2001) wrote, "Osama! If you see this then this message is for you, you dirty--!!!! WATCH IT!" Matt Coupe (2001) wrote, simply, "--you bin." A smaller group of animators use the anti-Osama and anti-Hussein pages as a narrative thread around which they may build a cartoon to post for others to view and criticize. Creator notes posted with these animations invite viewers to criticize technique. For this group, the point seemed to be the chance to enhance technical animation skills such as audio optimization and design, rather than necessarily making a political statement. Anti-Muslim and anti-Arab animation is the narrative-du-jour for use as a vehicle for attracting feedback for skill development.

In contrast, freelance animators posted pieces to promote their businesses or produce income through Web advertisements. Rather than posting for emotional, political, or skill-development reasons, these animators posted for profit-oriented reasons. Here, the overt commodification of racism on the Web is apparent. For example, freelancer Jeff Swenson created Taliban Women's Revolt on commission for an adult humor site that was used to promote a pay site. According to Swenson, "the client wanted something satirizing the Taliban and as usual it had to be twisted or in bad taste" (J. Swenson, personal communication, December 10, 2003). At Newgrounds (2005e), animators are encouraged to post their work as follows:

   Flash content is the driving force behind Newgrounds; if you have
   some decent talent, try submitting some movies to The Portal! Even
   if you run your own site, submitting movies to The Portal is a
   great way to pull traffic. You'll see an immediate boost in visitors
   to your website!

The circumstances of how viewers access these animations are markedly different from the ways audiences viewed prior wartime animations. As discussed earlier, previous animations were seen by general audiences in groups in movie theaters as prefeature shorts and fillers. In contrast, post-9/11 animations are exhibited via hosting primarily by commercially sponsored animation portals that feature these and many other animations as content for the purpose of attracting Web surfers, thus generating advertising revenue. Although the sites in this study were unwilling to disclose site traffic pattern data, it is probable that viewers of Web cartoons reach the animations via four possible routes: (a) search engines, (b) browsing links at animation portal sites, (c) link sharing with other people, and (d) clicking links posted at other Web sites. Viewers are not restricted to citizens of any one nation, and can potentially include people from anywhere in the world who have access to the Internet, including Arabs, Muslims, Al Qaeda members, and even bin Laden and Hussein themselves. Thus, the pieces function within a double mode of address, simultaneously addressing those identifying as survivors of the 9/11 attack and their sympathizers as well as those identifying as the perpetrators or aggressors in the attacks and their sympathizers.

These animations are messages from amateur and freelance animators, yet because they are exhibited via a medium that reaches potentially millions of viewers, they begin to approach the impact of mass media messages in terms of scope and reach. Unlike prior theatrical animations, which were viewed by general audiences, somewhat captive as they waited for the feature to commence, these works are seen only by those who actively pursue them. According to the Newgrounds (2005d) viewing statistics featured on each animation's page, numbers ranged from 44,951 to 2,766,923 views for the bin Laden animations and 46,293 to 477,994 views for the Hussein animations as of June 20, 2005. These numbers do not include views at other portals, the animators' own Web sites, or other sites legally or illegally hosting the animations. Because the Newgrounds site does not specify whether these data track individual views of the animations, or discrete computers as tracked through Internet Protocol addresses, it cannot be determined with accuracy how many individual people are watching the animations. It is likely that some viewers watch certain animations only once; some watch certain cartoons several times; and it is also likely that, in some cases, two or more people are viewing the same screen simultaneously.

Editorial selection processes occur at the animation portal sites. Although the path to exhibition differs from the theatrical industrial system in place during World War II that shaped how people saw World War II narrative animation, the effect of the portals' selection processes is similar to the extent that it limits and channels what Web surfers see. The gatekeeping mechanism portal sites serve for Web users (see Hargittai, 2004), functionally filtering, limiting, and guiding users to preselected sites, approximates the restrictive role of the theatrical distribution and exhibition system in place during World War II in the United States (see Bordwell, Staiger, & Thompson, 1985; Wasko, 1982).

At Newgrounds (2005a), animators can self-submit via a Web form, but submissions are subject to a set of rules, and are further subject to review by the owners of the site. At politicalhumor.about.com, editor Dan Kurtzman is entirely responsible for featured content and is motivated by advertising revenue generated according to site visitation statistics. He hand-picks the animations he links to, considering (a) what he thinks is funny, (b) what he thinks is of potential interest to his audience, and (c) what has already proven popular at other sites. Some of the animations are those submitted to him by readers, and others he finds on his own by browsing other sites and reading blogs (D. Kurtzman, personal communication, October 19, 2003). The other portal sites also bear the mark of a human editor or filter who selects what visitors see when visiting the site in that not all animations are featured on all sites, and that links to animations often include a short editorial or promotional comment designed to sum up and promote the animation, encouraging a click-through.

Narrative Strategies

In this study, post-9/11 anti-Arab Web animations are considered as a group, focusing on production, distribution, exhibition, and general narrative strategies rather than close textual analysis of individual animations. Although many of the animations featured bin Laden and Hussein explicitly as primary targets of violence and humiliation, several featured generic Arab and Muslim characters. The overall dearth of Arab and Muslim characters in the Western media landscape invites interpretive slippage from bin Laden and Hussein in particular to Arabs and Muslims in general.

After reviewing, summarizing, cataloging, and archiving each animation, analysis of narrative strategies showed that these animations consistently employ a set of stock milieus, narratives, characters, caricatured visual elements (turbans, desert settings, etc.), plots, and audio elements, affording grouping into two main categories, each of which contains subcategories and overlapping elements: (a) the revenge narrative, including the subthemes of violence against and humiliation of Arab characters; and (b) the deviance narrative, including subthemes of Arab characters' deviance from Arab and Muslim culture and depiction of (putative) Arab culture as deviant from (and therefore inferior to) Western values and practices. These narrative strategies correspond fully with Orientalist tropes that construct Islam and the Arab world as other.

The most prominent narrative strategy involves depictions of revenge against Arabs. Depictions of violent revenge range from off-camera violence to extended, highly detailed, gory scenes of compound violent acts. Cartoons often feature the characters of bin Laden and Hussein as the victims of vengeful violence and humiliation. Some animations feature generic Arab male characters in the role of victim. More subtle and complex are those humiliation narratives that work by disempowering Arab leaders by placing them as having power and status equal to or less than other characters in the animation. For example, in Power Puff Girls ... (Bregman, 2001), bin Laden is easily vanquished by the fictional little girls. In Osamafeld (Jacob, 2001), the animator communicates humiliation by inserting Hussein and bin Laden into the context of the U.S. sitcom Seinfeldas mere comedic relief. These animations in particular, along with the entire category of anti-Arab Web animation, humiliate by reducing Arab world leaders and devout Muslims to mere characters in the landscape of U.S. popular culture. The violence and humiliation occur both diagetically, within the narrative of the animation, and nondiagetically. A diagetic example occurs in Osama ... (Maxmanx, 2001), in which bin Laden is shown being personally assaulted by George W. Bush. A nondiagetic example, or one where the viewer may perceive the Arab character's humiliation without the target character displaying signs of knowledge of the humiliation, is found in E! Bin Laden, which shows an animated interview with a former roommate of bin Laden who reveals an embarrassing story (Stamper, 2001). These narratives are dependent for their effectiveness on the understanding of the viewer that the situations the characters are placed in, and the behaviors and characteristics with which the characters are endowed, are meant to communicate vengeful humiliation.

The second main narrative category involved depictions of Arabs as deviant, either in terms of Arab or Muslim culture and values, or Christian or Western culture and values, or both. Deviance is constructed as either generalized deviance or sexual deviance in particular. Often deviance is related within the narratives to hypocritical or blasphemous behavior, in relation to Islam, Christianity, or both. Arabs are shown as godless both because they do not adhere to Christian principles and they do not even adhere to their own religious and cultural norms. Alternately, the cartoons in which Muslims are portrayed engaging in abhorrent behavior may be read as insults to Islam, as if such practices were routine and expected according to Islamic precepts (Oska, 2003; Stamper, 2001). Many animations utilize two or more narrative strategies in the course of one story. For example, it is common for the animators to depict the Arab characters as deserving victims of both violence and humiliation (Ratatat, 2001). Such practices described are abhorrent to both Western and Arab cultures.

The power of these animated narratives moves beyond their simplistic plots, characters, and selective audience. Their power also lies in the double logic of (a) their role in the rejuvenating remediation of the animated film form and racist narratives, in effect paying homage to previous racist animations by reinvigorating their role in culture through the aura of new media; and (b) simultaneously heightening, among particular audiences, the cultural status of the Web as a new medium by incorporating the "classic" form of animation and racist war propaganda narratives. The racist animated form has been revived in Web animations that remediate racist animated caricatures from history by borrowing heavily from narrative and visual strategies employed in the past. Jingoistic wartime icons such as U.S. flags, valiant U.S. soldiers, and savage animal-like enemies are recycled in the Middle Eastern desert landscape. The racist animated form is afforded a regained cultural foothold due to its newfound association with the hip, modern, high-tech ethos of the Web, as well due to its narrative "facelift," achieved by amplifying and foregrounding folkloric strategies such as crude aesthetic style, simplistic plots and characters, and use of explicit graphic narrative elements including brutal sadism, gore, pornography, bestiality, and scatological themes.

This is in stark contrast to the absence of wartime racist animation in modern mainstream mass media and the high production values and relatively sanitized, wholesome narratives characteristic of mainstream animation shown currently on television and in mainstream commercial movie theaters in the United States and the industrialized West at large. As modern film and television venues, with their corporate ownership and desire to protect their brands, are not free to display the kinds of grossly racist, violent, and sexually crude representations contained in these Web cartoons, Web animations and portals are a vehicle for the smuggling of otherwise unrepresentable stories and images into mass media channels. In these alternative venues it is permissible, even expected, that the violence suffered by the Arab characters, and the degree of gore and explicit sexual imagery used, far surpass the depictions of animated violence and negative stereotype that have been historically permissible or would be permissible today in dominant media channels. Thus, through these animations, the Web is constructed as an alternative space that can be used to accommodate narratives that were once accepted and lauded by mass audiences, but are now culturally problematic. The Web's status among audiences suspicious of or dissatisfied with mainstream mass media as an alternative media space is heightened as it is used to host animations deemed too crude or offensive for general audiences.

Conclusion

The popular phenomenon of post-9/11 racist wartime animations demonstrates that anti-Arab discourse is thriving on the Web, uniform and ubiquitous in its mediated representations. The animations, individually and as a group, show an ongoing subcultural conviction that negatively portrays the Arab culture. By creating these animations, animators wish to construct themselves and their ideological position as morally righteous, all-powerful, and just. The cultural logic of Orientalism, along with the remediation of racist animation and wartime animated narratives, are enunciated clearly in these animations. These legacies provide the material and practices the animators were able to draw from as they hastily assembled their arsenal of plots, characters, milieus, and themes. It appears that these amateur animators have internalized the narrative strategies of wartime propaganda, including the use of racist stereotype, and reinscribed Orientalism as part of a new medium.

What is distinct, then, about post-9/11 wartime animations that has allowed them to escape mass organized protest that has occurred in the past against mass-mediated racial stereotypes? Searches of mass media news databases during the research timeframe yielded no reports of mass organized protests against these Web animations; the only observable criticism was scattered remarks posted by portal visitors, disapproving of the racist representations. These remarks failed to result in a single Web cartoon being pulled from exhibition, nor did they result in the generation of organized criticism campaigns such as those lodged by the NAACP and against Disney's Aladdin as discussed earlier. In contrast, protest against the FOX TV network's thriller program 24 (Finkle, 2005) serves as a reminder that dominant media organizations face negative impacts when they engage in gross negative stereotyping. During the 2005 season of 24, Arab Muslims were portrayed as violent terrorists. Fox rebutted Muslim organizations' criticism with claims that the show also portrayed "good" Arabs; in the face of protest FOX eventually offered its affiliates protolerance public service announcements, including one featuring the show's star, Kiefer Sutherland (Rohan, 2005).

There are several possible reasons why there has been no organized criticism against these cartoons. First, the Web, in relation to its mythic status as an alternative media space, is home to a wide range of messages in a variety of forms. The folkloric aspect of the Web, in which postings seem to be the mere musings of an individual, allows these animations to mask the aggregated ideological power of their racist, caricatured depictions. In comparison to previous U.S. wartime animations, these Web cartoons are created by individuals rather than governmental or corporate entities, thus diffusing the possibility of a singular, institutional target against which to lodge organized protest. Second, in contrast to World War 11 propaganda animations that were screened before general audiences for the purpose of persuading those doubtful of the war effort and reinforcing the mindset of the convinced, and in contrast to racist commercially produced animation also screened before general audiences, Web-based animations are viewed primarily by those individuals who seek them. Therefore, the function of these Web animations is primarily to reinforce the opinions of seekers, rather than convince (and at times offend) the doubtful. Lack of exposure to dissenting viewers helps to minimize the likelihood of mass protest. Third, because many of the cartoons focus on identified leader-enemies during wartime, viewers may feel less inclined to protest racist caricature in this instance, despite the ways in which animators caricature the characters' Arab or Muslim status over and above their leader status. Finally, during wartime dissent is often read by government and other hegemonic entities as antipatriotism, and there was initially a marked reluctance to criticize anti-Arab and anti-Muslim actions, media depictions, and so on.

To critically interpret this case as an instance in which the Web is used to communicate and stabilize dominant Western ideology demands the examination of the ways in which animators portray the Arab world as other. On the whole, the meta-narrative of these animations is post-9/11 rage; the communication of the threat of imminent and terrible consequences to befall the Arab and Muslim enemies of the West; the exercise of a myriad of revenge and humiliation fantasies currently at play in the minds of the animators and their viewers; and the spirit of camaraderie between animator and sympathetic viewer, and animators with one another, as they create and share their work.

These narratives expose the powerlessness the animators feel in the face of terrorism, in that the reaction they have is to create, post, or view cartoons laden with racist, spiteful, and puerile images and plots as fantastic and wishful rehearsal for a victory that is unlikely to occur in reality. The animators and supportive audience members expose their desire for mastery and control over both their anxiety about that which is uncontrolled as well as over the constructs of vulnerability, dependence, trust, and terrorism. In doing so, they have remediated and rejuvenated a type of animated narrative that was and is shameful and damaging to the cause of racial justice. As the years have progressed without the capture of Osama bin Laden, and as Saddam Hussein was at large for so long after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and because the U.S.-Iraq War did not result in the speedily constructed stable democratic conditions that U.S. leaders initially predicted, the animators' fervent deployment of violence, gore, scatology, and homophobia against Arab and Muslim animated enemies only seems more revealing. These cartoons are possibly the closest the animators may come to confining, controlling, and vanquishing the elusive and enduring Arab other.

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Notes

(1) The term anti-Arab is used to refer to the group of Web animations that includes anti-bin Laden, anti-Hussein, anti-Muslim, and anti-Arab narratives. Although each person and group embodies specific cultural, ethnic, national, political, and religious identities, and the author does not advocate conflation of these identities at the expense of their uniqueness, the animators and their animations have engaged in narrative slippage between individuals and groups to the extent that it is impossible, in this space, to extract and separate all the levels at which this slippage occurs in the animations. Narratives considered anti-Arab are those that depicted Arab, Muslim, and Taliban characters, including bin Laden and Hussein characters, as villains or suffering various forms of violence, humiliation, and death.

(2) This is not to suggest that animated television programs and films are free of reductive and negative stereotypes based on race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion, and so on; rather, companies now attempt to avoid the types of caricatures that have garnered complaint in the past.

(3) A similar argument (Dundes, 1966), regarding the folkloric nature of bathroom stall graffiti, posits that the favorite topic of folklore is that which is taboo in the culture. The anonymity afforded by the bathroom stall, similar to the putative anonymity of the Internet, enables the relatively risk-free expression of ideas that might otherwise be unrepresentable.

Cassandra Van Buren (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. Her research interests include new media studies and animation.