Julia Kristeva (1982) argues that the abject not only lies outside the self but also functions as its opposition. The abject is ‘immoral, sinister [and] scheming’ (Kristeva 1982). Furthermore, abjection is the state of revulsion that is a threat to the being of the self as it blurs the boundaries between the subject and object, leading to its destruction. The abject becomes the other, the source of fear. Abject representations of terrorists post-9/11 have flooded the media. These images of abjection, however, are problematic as they solidify the ugly image of the Hollywood Arab, in which Arabs are generally viewed as one whole mass: as Lina Khatib (2006) observes Arabs ‘are not assigned a particular nationality or even a particular Arabic accent or dialect’. The terrorist’s image conforms to the modality set by film, and by mirroring the reel image1 it obfuscates the line between the real and the unreal. This paper proposes that such portrayals have been successful in placing the Arab within the abject, a priori not human. Initially, the paper will outline the portrayal of the Arab in film, before examining the point at which the images of the reel Arab and the real terrorist interconnect through a study of a number of terrorist images vis-a-vis these reel portrayals, and ultimately show how the images of terrorists aired in the news media have not deviated from these preset stereotypes. Jack Shaheen has documented Hollywood misrepresentations of Arabs in two of his books Reel Bad Arabs and Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11, two comprehensive studies, in which he analyzed at least 1150 films (Shaheen, 2008, 2009). Shaheen (2008) argues that Arabs ‘remain the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood’ and that malicious ‘stereotypes equating Islam and Arabs with violence have endured for more than a century’. The Arab is always the evil other outside of the self, outside of civilization and needs to be defeated; s/he is physically menacing and repellent. This abjection has to be contained. According to Kristeva (1982), within abjection lies a dark and violent revolt at being, which is directed against a threat that ‘seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside’ and culminates in a violent mourning for a lost object. Tim Jon Semmerling