Reality television shows, evangelists, adoration of movie stars and the sadness of losing sons in a desert battle are not unique to America.
Top scholars from across the U.S. gathered Friday in the McCormick Tribune Center to discuss these topics through a Middle Eastern perspective. In the all-day symposium on media in the Arab world, discussion ranged from the reception of Vivien Leigh in Damascus to the rise in religious broadcast programming and Islamic evangelism in Nigeria.
“This was a great way to get an interdisciplinary discussion going on international issues,” said Amber Day, a coordinator for the Center of Global Culture and Communication, which sponsored the symposium.
The CGCC is an interdepartmental forum run by the School of Communication that focuses on the importance of globalization in communication studies. The center plans to sponsor a similar event next year.
The audience ranged from 20 to 30 people throughout the day; few students attended.
Notable speakers included:
Ramez Maluf: “Religion and the Rise of Arab Broadcasting”
The warbling voices, screeching and falsettos characteristic of American Idol appear outside the United States. According to Maluf, some of the most-watched satellite TV stations in the Arab world are those featuring American Idol and Star Academy spin-offs. These reality TV shows serve an important function.
“The effect of reality programs on democracy in the Arab world is that they teach people how to vote,” Maluf said.
Arab TV stations like Al Jazeera are quite different from American TV stations in that they are mostly privately funded, said Maluf. Advertising is limited: About $500 per capita is spent in the U.S. on advertising compared to $7 or $8 per capita in the Arab world. This is even less than what is spent in Africa.
Although Arab print journalists have a strong tradition of covering politics and encouraging change, broadcast journalists do not.
“Because they feel they’re under attack from the West, broadcast journalists feel they have to defend Arab identity,” Maluf said.
He said that Arab journalists are in a rut if they don’t challenge and investigate issues instead of just assuming establishments like monarchies and religion to be givens.
Kevin Dwyer: “Egyptian Political Cartoons: Journalism, Art, and Humor in the Public Sphere”
Dwyer, an anthropology professor at the American University of Cairo, examined the rich history of political cartoons in Egypt.
“Freedom of expression is enshrined in the Egyptian constitution, but that doesn’t mean it’s implemented,” Dwyer said.
He continued by saying that many political cartoonists intentionally build in ambiguity to their work to protect themselves in a court of law.
Other cartoons, however, are far less subtle. One cartoon he showed titled “Panic in America from a New Terrorist Wave” featured two FBI agents surveying an American landscape where Osama bin Laden’s face was on the Statue of Liberty, a mother pushing a baby carriage and couples strolling by. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” one FBI agent asks another.
“Speaking truth to power provides the basis for the questioning of accepted values,” Dwyer said.
Holly Rehm, a Weinberg junior who studied in Cairo last fall, attended Dwyer’s presentation with her Arabic class.
“It was really interesting because you don’t get to know how Egyptians think about the war very often,” she said.
Roxanne Varzi: “Mothers, Martyrdom, Memorials, and Media in the Iran-Iraq War”
Roxanne Varzi, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, presented her research on cultural production following the Iran-Iraq War. Much of her presentation focused on the 2005 drama Gilane, directed by Mohsen Abdolvahab and Rakhashan Bani-Etemad.
While most Iranians dismissed the film because it was “made for export,” Varzi considers it to be a message to the Iranian government and the West about the anxiety Iranians feel regarding war and martyrdom.
“The film shows that war benefits no one, especially the mothers of the martyrs,” she said.
Varzi said the film is relevant in Iran today because President Ahmadinejad has brought back the martyrdom rhetoric.
Elizabeth Thompson: “Scarlett O’Hara in Damascus: Cinema and Arab Politics of Late Colonialism”
“Do we have to pay to see an American abandon his wife when we can see that in Syria every day?” an audience of Muslim women shouted after watching Gone with the Wind in Damascus in 1942. Elizabeth Thompson, an associate professor at the University of Virginia, presented this and other interesting scenes from her research on cinema audiences in the late colonial area in the Middle East.
Movies about marriage were vehicles for debate about social policy reform in the Arab states in the twentieth century, Thompson said. The Syrian women viewing Gone with the Wind looked to Americans for a better marriage life.
The Syrian audience also had a fascination with Mammy (played by Hattie McDaniel) and demanded that the scenes featuring her were replayed. Thompson explained that this may be due to the slaves that still existed in Syria in that time period; the wealthy Syrian ladies may have feared that the comfortable world they knew would disappear just as Scarlett’s did, leaving them with famine and poverty.
In addition, political groups spread their message to the masses by sponsoring movie days at Syrian cinemas. These venues draw the second largest audiences, after Friday prayer at mosques.
Brian Larkin: “Ahmed Deedat and the Form of Islamic Evangelism in Nigeria”
Brian Larkin, a renowned scholar and anthropology professor at Barnard College, explained the strategies of Ahmed Deedat, an Islamic evangelist and famous critic of Christianity.
“Deedat preaches against Christianity using Christian texts,” Larkin said. “He argues that if there are all these discrepancies in the Bible, how is this the work of God?”
Deedat derives his authority from his knowledge of Christian, not Muslim texts. By physically and rhetorically occupying a Christian space, Larkin says the evangelist can undermine the religion’s ideas better than if he simply argued that the Quran says the Bible is false.
This perceived need to strip Christianity of its legitimacy is based on the rise of Christianity in Nigeria.
“This comes out of being adrift in an ocean of Christianity,” Larkin said.
The symposium closed with a roundtable discussion about the various presentations and how globalization is changing the Arab way of life.
“They may be praying five times a day and wearing head scarves,” said Yesim Burul Seven, a visiting scholar to Northwestern from the Istanbul Bilgi University. “But [Arabs] go home and watch TV and want to be part of that culture they see.”