Abstract
The documentary video, Tales from Arab Detroit, is enjoying a rare blend of critical and popular success. This essay is an attempt to explain why the video is so popular with American audiences (Arab and non‐Arab alike). Special attention is given to (1) the representational strategies the makers of Tales used to shape their video; (2) the identity politics underlying these strategies; and (3) how interpretive differences among the filmmakers culminated in a video that resembles, in unforeseen ways, the Arab community it depicts. The essay doubles as a critique of “main‐streaming,” a representational technique that dominates sympathetic portrayals of Others in American popular media. Tales, it is argued, possesses all the strengths and weaknesses of this technique.
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