ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the fact that narrative cinema's first duty is to provide an engaging spectacle and an intense emotional experience. In cinema, people enter a liminal game space where cognitive-subjunctive possibilities can be played within a zone that is, by the film's end, politically and socially restorative and thus ultimately non-challenging to the status quo. For this reason, suicide provides tensions on screen that must be, in the last count, emotionally satisfying for the audience. Regarding the operation of this sort of engaging emotional rollercoaster, chapter argues that Rene Girard's 'victimage mechanism' is a generally satisfying model. Additionally suggest that this Girardian approach needs methodological amplification to suit more precisely the realm of death on film, and suicide in particular. The chapter focuses on the use of clearly identified 'Muslim' characters. It acknowledges the work of Jack Shaheen, who focuses not on 'Muslim' but 'Arab' characters who are, in the eyes of Hollywood, ipso facto Muslims.
