fall2008|islammedia&thewest

... not just because I adore her as a friend, but because of the way she writes and her devotion to the subject. Her blog, "ILA Dispatches," clearly demonstrates her knack of analyzing the Arab world through the lens of media, as well as her well-rounded interest in the subject. Even judging from her Facebook account, which is laden with links to news articles and video clips about the Middle East, it is obvious that Lauren's voracity to learn more about the subject at hand is insatiable.

One of the articles that she analyzed that I particularly enjoyed was one from the New York Times entitled "World Falls for American Media, Even as It Sours on America" by Tim Arango. In the article, Lauren explains, Arango describes "how shortly after the attacks on 9/11, a delegation of high-level media executives, including the heads of every major studio, met several times with White House officials (including at least once with Rove) to discuss ways that the entertainment industry could play a part in improving the image of the United States overseas," and how one of these ways was to manipulate American media - particularly television and film. For me, these two means are incredibly potent because they are the most easily transferable, not to mention our most consumed media exports. At the end of her post, she asks us and explains, "How important is it to wield our 'Soft Power?' When media is used as a mere band-aid, it comes as no surprise that broadcasting '8 Simple Rules' and gossip shows 'The Insider' and 'Inside Edition' on MBC 4, is no cure-all." In effect, it's a brilliant question: how far has it really gotten us?

Aside from that, all of Lauren's posts are well-conceived and brilliantly executed in an enviable journalistic manner. A good portion of her posts are in regards to the crossroads of feminism and the Arab World: a topic that she is clearly passionate about. Her insight into the manner reflects that of a seasoned professional journalist. She addresses her feelings about these issues with a great degree of clarity while giving her opinion and asking us what our opinion is.

Abstract: The landscape of Arab satellite television broadcasting is a breathtaking array of programming that disproves Western conceptions of Arab television as being anti-Western propaganda. In this paper, I will be discussing just how affluent the television industry is in this misunderstood area of the world, and asking questions as to how the progression within the industry can be seen as a Western influence. I will also be discussing how the United States’ involvement in Arab television should be carried out from this point forward, after my analyses of Arab television programming and structure.

Table of Contents

1. Structure of the Arab Television Industry
a. Ownership and Government/State Control
i. Non-governmental Arab Satellite Television Networks
b. Commercialism and Advertising
c. Foreign Involvement and Arab Television
2. Current Programmatic Trends in Arab Television
a. Overview
b. What is Available?
c. The Point of Regionalization and Programming Trends
d. The Question of Globalization
3. Current U.S. Involvement in Arab Television
a. What is Our Role?
b. The Lesson of Al-Hurra
c. What Should We Do?

I. Structure of the Arab Television Industry

a. Ownership and Government/State Control
Historically, the current landscape of Arab television is the result of rapid sociopolitical change in the region, particularly over the past ten to fifteen years. There is definitely validity in saying that the programming landscape of Arab television – and Arab media in general – would not be as rich or as multifaceted as it is in the contemporary period were it not for media globalization, and the lingering impact of colonialism at the core of the matter. As discussed on 02 November 2008, it wasn’t until the early- to mid-1990s that “all Middle Eastern and North African governments owned their media as absolute monopolies,” utilizing the media for purely political means; such reasons included the preservation of control over national unity, the utilization of media as propagandist tool, and the preservation of media from being used as a soapbox by alternative political groups (“Television”).
Prior to the turning-point in 1990, Arab media could be classified in one of two ways: either that of a “strict control system” – where the government wielded control over every decision – or that or a “loyalist system” – whereby media wasn’t necessarily owned by the ruling governments, but catered the beliefs of the state’s ruling party (“Television in the Middle East”). The only pioneers in terms of the concept of “free media” were Israel and Lebanon, which continue to be proponents of relatively “free” media enterprise today.
As with anything, however, money and politics control the mainstream: Saudi Arabia has been no stranger to this, with its royal family having used its affluence and prestige to influence the nation’s media industries over the past seventeen years. The nature of the Arab world’s television landscape is also very similar to that of Western media: Saudi Arabia’s regional takeover, for example, is a reflection of the swiftness of media conglomerates, whereby a very small number of multinational institutions increasingly dominate the nation’s media in nearly every – or even in all – realm(s) (Cochrane 1, 5). Governmental control over media means regional clout for the governing family, thus ridding the soapbox – which television especially provides – that dissenters could potentially access with ease.
As of the 1990s, the nature of Arab television and the overall media industry was met with technological advances, the most relevant being the satellite, which had become cheaper, more accessible, and more widespread amongst Arab nations as a result of Western influence during the Gulf War. By 1996, two pan-Arab satellite channels – LBC (Lebanese Broadcasting Channel) and al-Jazeera (broadcasting out of Qatar) – broke the mold of what Arab satellite television had been until that time, with al-Jazeera providing uncensored news, and LBC offering unabashedly informal entertainment to audiences (“Television”).
Since the increase in availability and decrease in price of satellite technology in the region, the number of free-to-air satellite channels in the Middle East currently exceeds 350, which is a stunning statistic, seeing as though there is a lot more programming diversity in the Arab television landscape than can be found in the United States (“Television”). Examples of non-governmental Arab satellite television networks can be found below: it is truly astonishing to see just how swiftly the increase in television networks have been over the years, and experts do predict that the number will only continue to grow as we progress into a more globalized world.

i. Non-governmental Arab Satellite Television Networks
The following data is from Table 10.1 of William Rugh’s Arab Mass Media: Newspapers, Radio, and Television in Arab Politics. Divided between free-to-air networks and subscription-based networks, the data is broken down into network name, its national origin, and the year of its establishment. Take note of how the number of free-to-air networks grew exponentially after the year 2000.
• Free-to-Air:
o MBC – Saudi – 1991
o Future – Lebanese – 1995
o LBCI – Lebanese – 1996
o Al-Jazeera – Qatari – 1996
o ANN – Syrian – 1997
o Al-Manar – Lebanese – 2000
o Al-Mustaqilla – Tunisian – 2000
o NBN – Lebanese – 2000
o Dream TV – Egyptian – 2001
o Zayn TV – Lebanese – 2001
o Al-Mihwar – Egyptian – 2002
o Al-Khalifa – Algerian – 2002
o Al-Arabiya – Saudi - 2003
• Subscription:
o ART – Saudi – 1994
o Orbit – Saudi – 1994
(source: Rugh 219)

b. Commercialism and Advertising
Launching a satellite channel is still a commercial venture – it requires a great amount of capital, and thus traces of influence run through the veins of those stations being ran by political elites. Essentially, as with most business ventures, the founder of a new satellite channel must make a choice: either “free-to-air commercial broadcasting, which would carry advertising and derive revenue from that source, or fee-based subscription broadcasting using encoded signals and decoders rented by audience members” (Rugh 218). The commercial model, which is freely used in the United States (with some exceptions) and has been gaining momentum in Western Europe, is – of course – an advertising-based model.
Advertising is a risky venture in the Arab world for many reasons, when compared to the Western model:
• the region – taken as a whole – is not wealthy, and is thus not conducive to being sold products
• audience research is difficult to do, so advertisers do not know much about their audience, which makes niche marketing impossible
• politics steer ads to regime-loyal outlets
(source: Rugh 219)
However, the most lucrative market in the region is – unsurprisingly – Saudi Arabia, with over $270 million having been spent on advertising in 1995 (219).

c. Foreign Involvement and Arab Television
As William A. Rugh notes, the advent of Arab satellite television was important because it brought to the Arab world a new style in news coverage and in political discussion programs. Politics, thus, came out of the private sphere of face-to-face conversation and into the public sphere, made into a neutral subject for regional broadcasting, vis-à-vis Western news outlets, such as MSNBC or CNN (201-202). Would this have even been a modern reality had it not been for the West?
It’s a question worth considering when discussing the evolution of Arab television. Many media scholars and Arab television moguls alike have heralded the Kuwait crisis of 1990-1991 as a major turning-point in this media landscape. It was during this tumultuous period in the Middle East when Arab political leaders and entrepreneurs watched the crisis unfold on CNN (for it was during this time when satellites were still a luxury item reserved for the wealthy and prestigious), and realized that the U.S. network provided a much more sophisticated and interesting program than local broadcasts (211). It was from that moment that Western television began to truly influence the way that politics and commercialism mixed in this region, and helped entrepreneurs to formulate new ways to rehash Western television templates to awaiting media audiences in the region.

II. Current Programmatic Trends in Arab Television

a. Overview
The Arab television landscape is certainly one that is on par with what can be found in the West: a plethora of channels that are devoted to a wide variety of subjects, including news, entertainment, talk shows, sports, and music videos. Hussein Amin predicts that satellite broadcasting will soon be “reaching thousands of channels,” with people of all income and education levels having access to a wide array of programming (2). Just like in the United States, television provides the majority of the population with its fill of news and entertainment, quenching its media diet through a very wide array of programming.
Dina Matar, although writing particularly about the advent of more feminist-driven television broadcasting in the Arab world, constructs a fascinating picture of the shifting media panorama in the Arab world at the beginning of this century, when she writes that it is “creating new social and power dynamics in the region. … transnational satellite broadcasting[, in particular, is] providing new spaces for diverse … views of contemporary life in the region and putting forward diverse role models from across the political, social, economic, and religious spectrum” (Matar 513). It is a stunning fact to consider, given the completely skewed ideas about the Arab world’s communications landscape in the West.

b. What Is Available?
The landscape of Arab television’s programming choices is truly astonishing, and provides evidence against narrow-minded Western ideas of what television in this region of the world is like. Reality TV has proven to be a major player in this landscape, tipping its hat to the easily-reproducible formats of such shows: the Arabic version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” was the highest-rated show on Middle East television (“Brand America” 261). Other examples of “reality”-based television programs include “Super Star” (the Arab version of “American Idol”; produced by Lebanese channel Future Television), “Star Academy” (the Arab version of “Fame Academy”; broadcasted by LBC), and “Al Ra’is” (the Arab version of “Big Brother”; launched by MBC) (Kraidy 6).
Other popular shows include:
• talk shows: “Across the Ocean” is broadcasted from Washington and explores U.S. policy toward the Arab world;
• documentary series: “Witness” features independent short films that cover a range of globally-recognizable themes, particularly conflict;
• socio-political programs: “From Iraq” uncovers the realities in Iraq by examining the sufferings of Iraqi people through a range of media;
• Western political debate-format shows: “The Opposite Direction” (modeled after CNN’s “Crossfire”) invites guests with opposing opinions to debate a controversial political topic, and often features exiles;
• morning shows: “Alam al Sabah” was the first morning show to be launched in the Arab world and includes a wide array of topics found on such shows in the United States as “Good Morning America”;
• women’s issues shows: “Kalam Nawaem” is modeled after ABC’s “The View” whereby four women discuss news and current hot women’s topics in a heated debate format;
• sex shows: “Big Talk” features the Arab world’s first Muslim sexologist, Dr. Heba Kotb, who answers questions about sex from Muslim women around the Middle East;
• entertainment shows: “Ikka” is a weekly entertainment program that features two different teams, each equipped with a celebrity guest, that compete over trivia

(source: “Dishing Democracy: Arab TV Guide”)

c. The Point of Regionalization and Programming Trends
Over the past fifteen years, Arab media has developed along a path of regionalization, whereby Arab satellite television in particular produces programs that appeal at once to audiences throughout the Arab world, although it primarily has its gaze fixed on “urban middle-class viewers that appeal to advertisers” (Kraidy 7).

d. The Question of Globalization
As stated above, producers in the Arab television market are more prone to sticking with programming templates that work (not that much unlike those in the West), which is regarding to as “’safe’ programming,” despite the wide array of interests and audiences that come with such a large market of people. For the most part, this has led to an almost superfluous reliance upon imported foreign programs that are “Arabized,” the most popular among them being “non-scripted reality” programming and game shows (Masrieh 2).
Globalization is, albeit, a simplistic way to explain the evolution of Arab television programming, but it certainly gets the job done. As mentioned in previous subsections, it is clear that without the influence of Western media models, Arab television would not be where it is today. Programs that are Western in origin were adapted by Arab producers for two simple reasons: they have proven to be successful, and they have proven to be entertaining. While Arab media producers would have certainly created their own programming that is unique to their own culture and regional milieu, and they do, globalization can most definitely be pointed to as the stimulus for the increase in the variety of options offered by Arab television.

III. CURRENT U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN ARAB TELEVISION

a. What Is Our Role?
It is clear that the United States is no stranger to “Orientalist” ideas regarding the Middle East: our own media portrays individuals of the Arab world in stereotypical lights that are truly unfounded and based upon extreme, racist generalizations of a population. The notion that the United States’ involvement in the Arab television landscape is based on the premise of countering anti-Western propaganda is not as founded as people are wont to believe, and the notion that it is based on the premise of countering anti-Western propaganda just goes to prove how long we have to come as a national – and even global – community in overcoming the socially-constructed “West vs. the Rest” dichotomy.

b. The Lesson of al-Hurra
It is clear that the United States needs to reform its presence in Arab television, or get out entirely. Ventures such as al-Hurra have proven to be disastrous, to say the least, to our nation’s public image in that part of the world. This was highlighted in Kenneth Tomlinson’s speech before Congress two days before the launch of al-Hurra in 2004, when he confidently stated that our nation’s “competitive edge in the Middle East is our very dedication to the truth and free and open debate. …. And we will stand out like a beacon of light in a media market dominated by sensationalism and distortion” (“Brand America” 259). Tomlinson also wrote in a featured article on Arab Media & Society that such media ventures on behalf of the United States in the Middle East “were created to serve information-deprived societies” (1). However, taking into account the damning evidence recorded above regarding the stunning breadth and depth of Arab television broadcasting, it is clear that somebody didn’t do their homework, and we are all to blame.

c. What Should We Do?
With academic scholarship – and people on the ground in the Arab world – point to the clear fact that the United States have approached it in an incorrectly-directed manner, how can we possibly deny that our current strategy isn’t working? As Gordon R. Robison, a Senior Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy and the Director of the Middle East Media Project, writes in “The Rest of Arab Television,” our national mediatized perception of Arab television is that of “endless anti-American rants disguised as news, along with parades of dictators[, which] is far from the truth. In fact, Arab viewers, just like viewers in the U.S., turn to television looking for entertainment first and foremost (2).
As Hussein Amin writes, “What fits one society does not necessarily fit or reflect the will of another” (3), and that is something that the United States should heed. Although it may seem idealistic, I believe that it would behoove both cultures if there were established some sort of camaraderie and appreciation for one another’s culture, while trying to bridge “Orientalist” (and even “reverse-Orientalist”) gaps in thinking and relating to one another. When those gaps are closed and socially-constructed feelings of superiority eradicated, then the United States would be more successful in programming in the Arab region, if that is what we desire. However, a part of me feels as though we really should just leave their media landscape, which, again, most certainly seems idealist. In my experience and expertise, however, it is blindingly apparent that one’s media is reflective of one’s culture, and by establishing media in a developing region of the world that is not reflective of the indigenous culture, then we are setting the stage for major issues of cultural identity in an albeit “shrinking” world. I, personally, would be interested in seeing how broadcasting in the Arab world would look if the West did not assert itself. Shall we give it a shot?

Amin, Hussein Y. “The Arab States Charter for Satellite Television: A quest for

regulation.” Arab Media & Society. Mar. 2008. 01 Dec. 2008.

[http://www.arabmediasociety.com]

Cochrane, Paul. “Saudi Arabia’s Media Influence.” Arab Media & Society. Oct.

2007. 01 Dec. 2008. [http://www.arabmediasociety.com]

“Dishing Democracy: Arab TV Guide.” 31 July 2007. PBS. 07 Dec. 2008

[http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/dishing-democracy/arab

tv-guide/1847/]

Hammond, Albert. “Television: From Media Mobilization to Satellite Revolution.”

Popular Culture in the Arab World. Cairo: The American University in

Cairo Press, 2007.

Heil Jr., Alan L. “Rate of Arabic language TV start-ups shows no sign of abating.”

Arab Media & Society. May 2007. 01 Dec. 2008.

[http://www.arabmediasociety.com]

Kraidy, Marwan M. “Reality Television and Politics in the Arab World: Preliminary

Observations.” Arab Media & Society. Fall/Winter 2006. 01 Dec. 2008.

[http://www.arabmediasociety.com]

Matar, Dina. “Heya TV: A Feminist Counterpublic for Arab Women?”

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27.3 (2007):

513-524.

Pintak, Lawrence. Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of

Ideas. London: Pluto Press, 2006.

Robison, Gordon. “The Rest of Arab Television.” USC Annenberg School of

Communication Middle East Media Project. June 2005.

Rugh, William A. Arab Mass Media: Newspapers, Radio, and Television in Arab

Politics. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2004.

Tawil Souri, Helga. “Television in the Middle East.” ILA: Islam, Media, and the

West. New York University, New York, NY. 02 Nov. 2008.

Tomlinson, Kenneth Y. “Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa: Advancing freedom in the

Arab World.” Arab Media & Society. May 2007. 01 Dec. 2008.

[http://www.arabmediasociety.com]

After a news report was given to interior ministers during a meeting of the EU, several countries have said that they are ready and willing to accept Iraqi refugees who are now camping out on the streets in states of extreme poverty and emotional strife, with priority to be given to those with medical needs, as well as those who are torture victims, single mothers and religious minorities. Sweden has already played a major part in the relief effort for these refugees - having an Iraqi community of about 100,000 people - and is trying to motivate other countries in the EU to help.

The article writes how most Iraqi refugees have been taken in by the United States, Canada and Australia, yet - at least to me - this comes as a somewhat shocking report, for I have never heard of this happening in our country. Perhaps I have not been up on current events, but from what I know, this is not a widely-reported fact in our national media.

What I find to be so extremely sad is the notion of the refugee camps increasing in population yet decreasing in security and quality every day. As always, I am an idealist, but this is such a tremendous disappointment. Many of these refugees have set themselves up in Jordan and Syria, yet this dilapidated and chaotic way of living is no way for ANYONE to live.

BBC Article: EU ready to accept 10,000 Iraqis

I'm just curious (and not just because I work for the guy):

How many of you have seen "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?"... ?

AND: What did you think?

I can't write my opinion - regardless of its pro- or anti- leaning - at the risk of getting my head chopped off, but I'm curious as to what my classmates think.

I found this article by Jim Muir to be a heartwarming piece

BBC Article: Taxi revolution on Tehran streets (there's even a video! yay!)

Supplemental BBC Article: Iran hires first woman bus driver

[will write more soon]

+ = response to the thread

thread: I like these previews for the end of the world that we keep getting.
+ I can't figure it out; are we pre- or post- Rapture?
+ pre-rapture. Unless real Christian have been taken and we are left with the rest.
+ I was monitoring the Twitter feed for "#mumbai" and some fundy kept plugging their "end times" website/newsletter.

see: "Religious: The Long-Awaited Entry"

What I find particularly interesting about Gawker is not only its oft-times satirical play on news - pointing out the hilarity in the stories that are being broadcasted to audiences by multi-billion dollar networks - but also because of its honesty. At the end of Alex Pareene's article - that lists the blog's top four favorite horrific descriptions of the violence in Mumbai by various news outlets, including the New York Times - he writes, "Don't forget to 'Digg It', everyone!", making a reference to the content-sharing community that "surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users."

It's definitely cynical, and callous, but it also makes a fair observation on the introduction of terrorism into all of our lives, with it becoming a common occurrence that we are immune to until something truly horrible happens, then we are thrust into a well-coordinated veil of fear until we are told that things have been quelled. As Pareene may or may not be alluding to, sarcastically or not, these headlines are meant to not only report on the carnage, but to instill fear into as broad a population as possible. Mission accomplished?

Gawker entry: Nearly 200 Dead in India's Worst Terror Attack of All Time Ever

I was admittedly very hesitant to write about this earlier, but seeing as though it's the end of the semester, I thought that I would give it a shot.

To get it out in the open: I love Bill Maher, even moreso than I love Sami Yusuf (ask our beloved Lauren Bohn). With that said, I believe that the majority of the problems that I have had in discussing my opinions in this class this semester in a scholarly manner is the fact that my usual academic rhetoric has been eclipsed with my cynical frustrations about the nature of religion. I was brought up in a very, very agnostic family - I am Jewish by blood, agnostic by belief, much like Mr. Maher himself. I recall seeing his brilliant film "Religulous" hours before meeting with Molly and Amy to discuss a paper for this class, and when I met with them, I was in a cynic's daydream: what's the point of writing a paper about religion and media when I think that religion is a homogenizing mechanism?

Then it came to me: I can just write about that.

For those of you who have not seen "Religulous," Bill Maher - essentially - takes his cynical comedy schtich all over the world, interviewing religious leaders and religious individuals about the nature of religious belief, which is particularly apropos in this current climate of neo-conservative religious leaders from all over the world, spreading the "gospel" of their faiths through sociopolitical actions (i.e.; 9/11, The War on Terror... for those who haven't been listening). As Dubya so poignantly pointed out (and as Maher so brilliantly elicits), "I believe that God wants everyone to be free, and that's one part of my... foreign policy!"

As Maher points out, is religion to blame for the world's ills? Well, yes - when you have high-powered political leaders who are making incredibly important global decisions in certain societies that recognize the separation of church (or whatever) and state, then problems amount. As he says in the documentary, "You do not possess mental powers that I don't" - meaning that you can't prove that something exists when other people can't prove it themselves. When you take religion away from political action - from ANY time period in human history - how much sway does the leader have, then, really?

Who is to say that leaders are mandated by a higher power to reign over us? Maybe I'm too cynical, too secular, too non-academic in my beliefs when it comes to religion, but the politicization and mediatization of religion is truly horrifying to non-believers in a world that is constantly on the brink of one disaster or another. No, I do not see it as a sign of the apocalypse, but of vast human error that is not predicated on to whom or what one prays.

As the consensus on RottenTomatoes states, "Religulous is funny and offensive in equal measure, and aims less to change hearts and minds than to inspire conversation," and in that way, I think that Maher has accomplished his goal: to inspire conversation amongst populations - local, national, international - about the role that religion plays in our global political arena, and the dangers of how big of a role it truly plays. Not only does he poke at religion in a way that is unique to Maher, but he truly fears for the future of the world in which religion dictates the lives and the futures of everyone, when for so many people - largely undeclared - it is a unknown trove. As Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News writes in his interview of the film, "What [Maher] does do finally in this funny, refreshing movie is assert how unrestrained religiosity could guarantee the 'end days' many of his subjects admit to looking forward to." Sit on that.

Joe Neumaier's Film Review: Oh God! 'Religulous' features Bill Maher in 'Real Time'

I'm not only posting this because I love Molly dearly, but also because I want to expound upon the point of "celebrity terrorism."

The state of mainstream media is truly deplorable: I think that, for the most part, the majority of us can agree on that. While many members of the media are respectable journalists who are trying to communicate an honest opinion on world happenings to their awaiting audiences, the media - like us, as a population, have been for many, many, many many many MANY years - is privy to highlighting spectacle - creating an event that is composed of easily-recognizable images and rhetoric that are thereby paralleled with an event that is otherwise truly terrifying. Although, I would be wrong to blame the media entirely: while they do have the power, millions of us tune into these media channels religiously every week, thus legitimizing their means through which we are given news in our modernized, fast-paced, ADD-esque culture.

Terrorist attacks have indeed been created into spectacle events, particularly since September 11th: well, I guess terrorist attacks happen every single day all over the world, but those "smaller" ones are gingerly swept to the side in favor of bigger, larger death toll-ridden stories that prove that America is being threatened, even if the attack occurs abroad.

I remember when the massacre at Virginia Tech occurred: I was the primetime production intern at MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," which became the uber-spectacle station to watch because that was the network who was sent a video made by the crazed student. While I agree with Molly's point that these students were trying to achieve some level of celebrity and acknowledgment, it goes a lot deeper than that, as she points out: this kid was mentally depraved, and while terrorist attack overseers are also given the reputation of being blood-thirsty madmen - and thus on par with this terribly disturbed college student - (and I know I'm going to be manhandled for this opinion, probably) bin Laden and other terrorist attack coordinators are conducting their business in the same manner as Western armies in their neck of the woods: they have a point to make, a new society to seek out, and so do "we."

But I digress.

People who "achieve" "great acts" in any society are legitimized by media, and are thus celebratized: Robert Pattison wouldn't have wound up with such an increase in his paycheck if the CEOs in Hollywood thought that "Twilight" was going to blow chunks, Britney Spears wouldn't have been plastered all over the television when she had a mental breakdown if she wasn't an internationally-renowned pop singer, and the images of 9/11 wouldn't have been so magnified - as well as Osama bin Laden's likeness - had the event not had threatened the United States and Western ideals and interests, nor legitimized the common notion that those hailing from the Middle East are barbaric anti-American serial killers, nor had been conducted on the scale on which it did.

In the wake of the devastating and truly sad, multi-area and thoroughly-orchestrated terrorist attacks on tourist and "Westernized" centers in Mumbai, I agree with Molly in questioning our media's constant coverage of carnage: although I am not entirely behind it, I do have to wonder if the media is truly responsible for legitimizing terror and making it a part of our daily lives. Through the intensified reproduction of images and rhetoric, we are cast into positions of fear, whereby we rely on others to tell us how to react, how to feel, how to engage. I do believe that we are perpetuating the cycle of terrorism by legitimizing those individuals who orchestrate the attacks, but I think that pointing the finger in one direction is unfair. I think that we need to take a look in the mirror at our own hypocritical nature and come to a decision.

I mean to post about this a few weeks ago, but it got away from me.

On November 16, Daniel Smith of New York Magazine published a piece entitled "Escape to Dubai" for the publication - it highlights the recent exodus of Westerners to the "hotly speculative Middle Eastern insta-metropolis" of Dubai, which I found to be very apropos in light of the lecture on October 29. As Smith writes, a growing number of Westerners have been all but fleeing to the economic playground of Dubai since the ground in the West began to crack, which - as I will explain in this blog - is a mind-boggling paradox, considering the West's involvement in that part of the world that is largely seen as negative and destructive.

I think that it is a very intriguing article from the get-go: Smith first profiles a young 24-year-old graduate of Dallas Baptist University named Brooke Butler, whose dreams of earning one million dollars within a year are so plausible and definite that it brought a tear to my impoverished bank account and mound of student debt. At times I couldn't tell if Smith was cheerleading for or warning against a young person's move to Dubai, as lucrative an enterprise as it clearly is for many.

What I found particularly eye-opening within the first few paragraphs of the article was Ms. Butler's invocation of the fact that she is actually in the Middle East, saying, “It doesn’t feel like you’re in the Middle East,” she says. “You really have to remind yourself sometimes, like, ‘I’m in the Middle East!’ It’s like you can be in this part of the world that’s booming but it doesn’t feel like you are. It feels like you’re in … New York City! You’re somewhere else.” Part of me senses that her visions of the Middle East - like those of many, many Americans - are of poor beggars, unslightly poverty, roaming terrorists (Middle-Eastern and American alike), and U.S. Army humvees scouting locations everywhere: yet, Dubai is so clearly removed from that vision, and from that reality that exists for so many people in that area of the world.

With the Western economy becoming more and more endangered, I would have to imagine that I am definitely not the only person who finds Western interest in working and living in the Middle-Eastern Dubai a remarkable irony, given the negative mediatized perceptions that so much of the Western population has of that part of the world. Although, as Smith points out, Dubai's economy is not immune to the collapse of the West's, a real estate development employee in Dubai said how the attitude there is like this: “What they are saying is, ‘The USA economic policies destroyed the whole world and dragged us down with it; once that enormous weight is off the world economy’s shoulders, Dubai will bounce right back.’ ” Smith evokes the questionable draw of Dubai to young American entrepreneurs when he writes, "Seen on a map, Dubai wouldn’t appear to be the most American-friendly environment. Located on the southern coast of the Persian Gulf, it is surrounded by Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and, slightly farther to the east, Pakistan": are the tides turning, then?

What's also interesting is Smith questioning if Dubai is truly an escape from modern economic hardships, or just a mirage. As discussed in lecture, Dubai is a land of epic mirage: international cultural fixtures become replicated in a Las Vegas-esque quest for spectacle, selling itself more for the aesthetics than anything. As the same real estate development employee said at the end of the article, "“Mark my words, it’s going to be a lot better here than anywhere else. And if it’s not, well … then the world’s going to shit anyway.”

So is Dubai really a haven in the wake of economic hardship? That's hard to say. It is a booming economic stronghold, with an ever-increasing population that has seen rampant development over just several years. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it sure seems like the opposite is true of Dubai. As Sheik Mohammed said in the "60 Minutes" interview, when asked why Dubai has to have the highest buildings, the most rampant development, the most steady economy: "Why not?" The new visual lexicon of the Middle East is being fed from the visions of Dubai's developers, so can it be said that our vision of the Middle East in its entirety is under development as well? Is this notion of the Middle East as an untapped reserve only true when its oil is not considered?

You can read the article here: Escape to Dubai [New York Magazine]

The graphic novels that we have read for class surely demonstrate an untraditional way to approach to the “clash of civilizations” argument: they can certainly be pigeonholed in such a manner due to their subject matter. However, they are not perpetuating the “clash” argument in any discernable way – they offer a more humanist understanding of the Westernized “Other.” These media provide a more humanist understanding of cultures and peoples whose views and experiences we are normally immune to in our homogenous, Western media climate. For the sake of this paper’s brevity, the focus will be on two primary graphic novels: Arab in America by Toufic el Rassi, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

To me, the “clash of civilizations” argument is extremely flawed, and thus cannot be readily adapted to the readings of the graphic novels and the other media in this section of the course. Due to the fact that the “clash” creates a strict binary between different populations based on geographic origin and notion of “advancement” as set against what the Western collective deems to be progressive and successful – the “us versus them,” “the haves versus the have-nots,” “the West versus the Rest” – and since this argument does not contextualize historical roots of modern situations, the “clash” is a very problematic argument to make when reading the graphic novels. While Toufic el Rassi, Joe Sacco, Salman Pax, and Marjane Satrapi provide evidence of Western influence over how their lives were shaped, it is nonetheless futile to discuss them as being representative of the “clash.”

As Edward Said writes in the forward to Joe Sacco’s Palestine, “As we also live in a media-saturated world in which a [large number] of the world’s news images are controlled … by a handful of men …, a stream of comic book images and worlds, assertively etched, … distended to match the extreme situations they depict, provide a remarkable antidote” (vi). I think that it is interesting to see the graphic novels as being on par with liberal alternative media in the United States: offering viewpoints from often marginalized and silenced individuals who act as citizen journalists in order to not only describe their experiences, but also to add more perspective to an oftentimes one-sided story. By calling into question the socially-constructed borders between peoples, el Rassi and Satrapi successfully demonstrate the vulnerabilities in the “clash” and Orientalist arguments while also successfully articulating the hardships that exist when the “Other” is caught in the midst of them.

In a sense, the graphic novels, and poems that we have read in class – in particular Arab in America and Persepolis - can be deemed as Orientalist in how they “stress the difference between people” (“Orientalism”), yet not in any way that stresses cultural superiority. el Rassi and Satrapi’s works can be deemed as more “Occidentalist,” since they are putting emphasis on the “East” and the experiences that they – as the “Orientals” – have been through as a result of their geographical origin and of Western influence. What makes the Orientalist argument flawed, however, is the fact that the theory of Orientalism lays claim to the notion that there is indeed a magnificent division between West and East, between the Occident and the Orient, which are all social creations at their core: as stated in lecture, Orientalism “doesn’t tell us about the Orient, but tells us about ourselves – the way in which we imagine ourselves not to be” (“Orientalism”).

Thus, when the theory of Orientalism is applied to the graphic novels, there is a definite issue: the authors do not present themselves as being superior to the West, on par with the West, nor inferior to the West. They are writing as individuals of Middle Eastern origin who have once – or, arguably, continue to – find themselves at a crossroads in identity formation because they have been subjected to the West: el Rassi, by growing up in the United States and writing from the perspective of an American of Arab descent living in post-9/11 America, and Satrapi as a woman of Iranian descent raised during the Iranian Revolution who is sent to Europe to be educated, whose coming of age story from youth to adulthood is readily depicted within a “West v. East” storyline without subjecting herself to that kind of narrow-minded thinking.

As discussed in lecture on 01 October 2008, it is difficult for minorities to find an identity for themselves that is not bitingly stereotypical, which thus leads to a major crisis of identity (“Media Representations”), and this could not be represented more clearly in the two particular graphic novels. They both illustrate (literally, metaphorically) the difficulty that one finds him- or herself in when caught between two parts of the world that have been pinned against one another, and how that is instrumental in identity formation especially in terms of media representations that are carried over into every day “reality.” Both el Rassi and Satrapi acknowledge the hardships that evolve when one is subjected to the “clash”-esque “what is West and what is East” dichotomy, yet they successfully acknowledge the grey area that exists when one does not readily subject themselves to an “either/or” way of identity formation and cultural acknowledgment.

el Rassi and Satrapi’s works break the notion that one cannot be involved in one world and one world only, and instead aim to create surreal, all-encompassing worlds in which no experience is edited, no idea unarticulated, in order to present stories and experiences in their totality. What they do successfully is illustrate the hardships that have been experienced by peoples of similar backgrounds to them, but do not preach that everyone has led a life through those exact same experiences. We, as the readers, get a clear sense of what it must be like to be an Arab-American in a post-9/11 world, and what it must have been like to be a young girl growing up in a revolutionary home during the Iranian Revolution and sent to the West for her education. Yet, these are presented as unique experiences to the authors, and we are implicitly told that not every individual of a similar background has the same story, thus supporting the notion that the aforementioned theories of the “clash” and of Orientalism are harmful because they broadly oversimplify, although the latter theory is more apropos in terms of generalized, Western-mediatized views of the peoples of the Middle East. It is a difficult extrapolation of the stories, but it makes sense: we can get a good sense of what it is like, but it doesn’t mean that their stories should be seen as the story of Egyptian-Lebanese or Iranian individuals during the specific spatial-temporal presets. Instead, they should be read as one individual’s experience, since – at the core – we are all different people, even within civilizations, and personal experience should not be seen as a means to envelop and define the collective.

I believe that the real danger that can present itself in extrapolating the stories in these media is that they can potentially lead to yet another mediatized, generalized understanding of that part of the world from a Western audience’s perspective. While they are surely supplemental in our understanding of the authors and the effects of the globalized world on their lives as seen through their works – as modern “Other”s – they could also be misconstrued as being a totalized representation of a people and of a particular cultural experience. It’s practically on par with looking at The Diary of Anne Frank as being representative of the experiences that every adolescent Jewish girl in Amsterdam found herself in during the Third Reich – the essentializing of a people, of a culture, of a particular historical climate is a dangerous means to an end: just look at the world today.

I don't know how many of you have been to Regal Cinemas at Union Square lately, but I am a regular fixture when there isn't anything that piques my interest (or I have seen everything that has played) at the Angelika or Film Forum or Village East or Clearview Cinemas, etc. etc. Recently, some friends and I made a trip to see "Rachel Getting Married" (which is pretty spectacular, but this blog entry isn't serving the purpose of plugging the film), and instead of catching up on e-mails and texts during the Regal First Looks and trailers, my eyes turned to the screen as soon as I heard the familiar auditory irritation that is Kid Rock - the epitome of redneck, conservative America who is no stranger to hollering about the grand old red, white, and blue via pro-Bush rhetoric.

The music video/Army National Guard propaganda features Dale Earnhardt, Jr., who Wonkette likens to "the closest thing most rednecks have to Jesus." The video features a slew of Army humvees speeding through a row of dilapidated homes, which are presumed to be in the Middle East given the obvious desert setting and racially-ambiguous cast (most clad in tattered, raggedy clothing, with women donning burkas and young chaps wearing dirt-strewn newsboy caps). The video also features the helicopter bombing of a village while brave soldier bros rush in, breaking into a storage area and uncovering a box (filled with straw!) of automatic weapons. Yet, they are also shown to be good people - one of the humvees, while clearly breaking the speed limit of your average American suburb (but it's in a Middle Eastern village so it's okay), stops abruptly as a soccer ball and a young Aladdin-esque child comes dead in the vehicle's tracks, with the child staring up at the massive technological advancement in both awe and shit-in-your-pants fright with big green eyes, with the child running back behind a wooden box with a group of his impoverished friends with Dale picks up the ball and jocularly kicks it back over with an amicable grin. All of this, naturally, is punctuated by Kid Rock's screeches of patriotism, footage of a staged NASCAR race, and a coming-home flag-waving parade of "American warrior[s], citizen soldier[s]." The best part about it? You can download the song for free off Yahoo!.

Ah, all in a day's work for multimillionaires.

I guess to be a real patriot, you have to be an American redneck who digs NASCAR and Budweiser kegs and hillbilly rock music. Oh, and you should really want to wage war against innocent people, who in their every day life is just like the average American: we care for our families. Call me callous and pretentious, but this video is the epitome of stereotypical middle-American thinking in regards to the Middle East and our involvement there, and of all of the things that "real Americans" stand for: the simple-minded nature of it all floored me, seeing as though this is an ad campaign that is being waged in New York City. Go figure.

What I find to be the most disturbing element about the video is that it brazenly sends a startling mixed message about America's "necessary" role in wartime - I found myself and my friends with jaws dropped and eyes wide as we watched a group of National Guards sweep through an obvious Middle Eastern village that was ablaze, which had no context clues about its original arson, although they (the troops) were cleaning up. Is the commercial implying that we know how to clean up our mess in the Middle East? Is it saying that we know what we're doing, and even though we are pillaging the lives of countless innocent people, that there is a plan? The commercial offers to the viewer a crass parading-about of American Army National Guards, and although it is clearly a recruitment video, the fact that it is being played in a movie theater in a city where the anti-war, anti-military/industrial-complex sentiment is so strong, is truly baffling.

The video can be found here: YouTube

Wonkette Supplement: Wonkette

My hometown of Highland Mills, NY is like any other Sarah Palin-esque ideal of “small-town America,” without the creepy conservative idealism and blindly-patriotic residents. One church, one synagogue, and a student population that – in recent years – has been privy to quelling upper-middle-class white suburban boredom with bringing brass knuckles to their $48.5 million public high school, provoking fights with the principal in the art department corridor and spray-painting intricately-patterned swastikas on swing-sets in the parks of neighboring towns where residents of Kiryas Joel – a nearby fixture – bring their kids, although the majority of the residents of my town are of Jewish heritage. I guess I don't give my town enough credit: we are considered to be successful, overachieving commuters whose kids have the highest standardized test sources in the region and tend to go to upper-crust private universities after twelve-year stints in the public education system. What has definitely lent strength to my town's identity is its two-minute proximity to the Woodbury Common Premium Outlet Center, considered to be the largest outdoor shopping mall in the Northeast and America at large: this has become such a vital part of its identity that whenever anyone asks me where I’m from, 99% of the time I can say “practically right next door to the Woodbury Common in ‘upstate New York’” (although ask anyone from my town if we are considered “upstate,” and (s)he will look upon you as if you just committed to first-degree murder) and (s)he will know exactly where my town is. However, the Woodbury Common is not situated in Highland Mills, but Central Valley, which is considered by locals to be “the poor man’s Highland Mills.” Nestled in the Hudson Valley with quaint streets populated with large family homes and small shops and cafes, Highland Mills looks like a transplanted 1960s Greenwich Village sans the relatively heterogeneous population.

The concept of Orientalism is a sound argument of understanding the relationship between “the West” and “the East” – a cultural binary that makes the Orientalism argument mirror the “clash of civilizations” argument. It is without a doubt that Orientalism explains how “the East” has been – and continues to be – represented in the West, in regards to its culture and historical illustration. It is a definite that stereotypical images of the populations we consider to be “Other,” compared to what we deem to be Western culture, have illustrated how we react to and see cultures that are not Western in origin. However, as Edward Said points out, the concept of Orientalism is an easy way to draw boundaries between cultures, populations, and histories: it can be seen more broadly as the way in which populations that are not “Western” in origin are marginalized and summarized for public discourse and “knowledge.” Said’s work on Orientalism has been groundbreaking in the field of how we distinguish “the West” from “the East,” and how that dialectic has formed the grounds upon which we look at one another.

Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism rides high upon the reality of identity politics: he mentions how “European culture has gained strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (3). What Said argues is that the creation of the “Orient” – and even the creation of the “West” – is based on arbitrary fictions: we give labels to a place that we perceive as different than ours, and those labels become a part of our common vernacular. Just as Osama bin Laden is incorrect in stating that the entirety of America voted for George W. Bush to be the leader of our country, today’s media is incorrect in showing only images of violence and hatred toward the United States when there are demonstrations in the Middle East: this latter “repertory of images,” as alluded to in the documentary about Said’s work, becomes an integral part of our collective visual culture, which in turn supports harbored prejudices and long-standing stereotypes about a certain people whom we culturally deem as subordinate.

The public’s perception of the “Other” – in this case, specifically, the Western notion of the popularly-accepted faction of what constitutes Middle Eastern populations – is disseminated through media, which is then consumed by awaiting audiences. Said argues that the concept of a “clash of civilizations” is “manufactured” (xxix), that this is not a natural occurrence, but a means through which we define our world by its most basic cultural distinctions; the same, he says, goes for Orientalism, which he is not a proponent of but rather a critic. Said makes the strong argument that Orientalism – like the “clash” – is a construction of history, which is not a natural occurrence, but is a cultural, political, and socioeconomic construction determined by the authors of history: the victors, the imperialists, the populations not waving the white flag. Said sees cultural and civilizational polarizations – such as “the Orient,” “the Occident,” “the East,” “the West” – as reductive, that such distinct binaries “lead the mind away from concrete human history and experience and into the realms of ideological fiction, metaphysical confrontation, and socioeconomic reality” (xxiii), thus accepting the notion that populations are to be viewed as watered-down collectives, not as multifaceted groups.

Those who write history are the victors; the “losers” of any sort of conflict are cast out of the history-writing process, since their tactics have not led to the “progression” of civilization. As discussed in lecture, “history is often made by men and women, but it’s important to realize who’s been included or excluded, and what we include and exclude in our historical accounts; the role of the victor in the interpretation of history” ("Orientalism").

Orientalism is strong in that it has a very approachable consideration of history, culture, and international relations. Said argues against the notion of the “timeless Orient,” which he says is an imaginative creation of a people and a culture of being stuck in time, forever living in the desert sands upon camels, that the populations within this designated area of the world is somehow outside of history. However, as explained above, history is fluid – albeit determined by victors – and has monumental influence in the creation of a culturally-identified Other. As mentioned earlier, Said notes that culture cannot be so easily pigeonholed, and that it is done simply as a matter of convenience and subordination of the “Other” as opposed to a humanist equal.

Where Said makes a downfall, though, is his apprehension of audience agency – that we, as “Western” consumers of television, film, and other media forms that have a deep-rooted history in the presentation of the hook-nosed, “evil-doing” Arab, readily act as a sponge of these stereotypes and appropriate them to our everyday knowledge of that area of the world. Said writes how this very notion of individual choice and opinion “is subject to investigation and analysis, which it is the mission of understanding to apprehend, criticize, influence, and judge” (xxix).

This is just not so.

Said and Sheheen both argue that media producers play an integral role in the development of Orientalist-based stereotypes, when in fact the argument is a lot stronger than that: Orientalism is, rather, a broad concept that encompasses a wide variety of disciplines, which them become disseminated through the filters of popular culture and easily-digestible, “culturally-situated” images.

Said invokes the concept of the “clash of civilizations” when discussing the “imperialist invasion and occupation of Iraq by Britain and the United States” following the terrorist attacks of September 11, saying that this – the clash – is broadcasted as being “unending, implacable, irremediable,” to which he responds “I think not” (xvii-xviii). What makes Orientalism stand out from the “clash” is the former’s humanistic undertones – Said is concentrated on the notion of community, stating how “every domain is linked to every other one, and that nothing that goes on in our world has ever been isolated and pure of any outside influence” (xxiii), that the very idea of global isolation is a false concept.

As Said writes, “to insist that the terrible reductive conflicts that herd people under falsely unifying rubrics like ‘America,’ ‘the West,’ or ‘Islam’ and invent collective identities for large numbers of individuals who are actually quite diverse, cannot remain as potent as they are, and must be opposed” (xxviii-xxix), that these “rubrics” are murderous in nature and demonstrate falsely-acquiesced power. As has been stated by Said as well as in lecture: in order to produce knowledge, you must have power. This acquisition of power by “the West” over “the East” has been a historical undertaking based on arbitrary presumptions and ideals. The surge of stereotypes about people from “the East” – the so-called “Orientals” – are rooted in this power, and because of this power, the stereotypical images cannot yet see the light at the end of the tunnel. As Said suggests, we must accept each other at a community-based level: we are all human beings, despite our physical disparities and cultural adherences, but that does not mean we must look to convert a “lesser” people to a life we perceive to be more construction. What does power mean in a world where populations are disrespected on a human level?

Said, Edward. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vintage, 1997.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 2003.
Shaheen, Jack G. “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 588 (2003): 171-193.
Tawil-Souri, Helga. “Media Representation” ILA: Islam, Media, and the West. New York University, New York, NY. 01 Oct. 2008.
Tawil-Souri, Helga. “Orientalism” ILA: Islam, Media, and the West. New York University, New York, NY. 29 Sept. 2008.

Given our current state of globalization and global affairs, media is used – and is necessary – to disperse the concept of the “clash of civilizations.” In our modern, fast-forwarded world, we need those stereotypes generated by the notion of the “clash” because we typically don’t have the time to learn the nuances behind the argument. The “clash” is a reductionist argument to the extent that we rely on those aforementioned stereotypes in order to satiate our understanding about other civilizations and our relationships to them in a simplified, easily understandable way. Regardless of its inaccuracy on several levels, it is a necessary evil in our postmodern, media-engulfed age.

The founding father of the “clash” theory, Bernard Lewis, discusses in his thesis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” how in our post-Cold War world, divisions still exist amongst peoples of varying ideologies, particularly between the West and the Muslim world. Lewis presents this as a strict dichotomy of civilizations that becomes readily familiar with the argument, as a clash between those who share the same values and ideals that “we” do and those who don’t, also known as “‘good’ Muslims versus ‘bad’ Muslims” binary.

Lewis discusses that this kind of animosity that the Muslim world harbors against Western civilization has existed since for centuries, and how it has only gotten fiercer within the last one, what with the explosion of wars, commercialism, and the recent globalization phenomenon. The ideological collisions over culture and politics between the two binaries are damning representations of the “soulless American imperialist empire,” with Western ideals being the catalysts behind the clash, and – in Lewis’s opinion – not in a particularly negative way. With all of these bombardments of the Muslim world, Lewis argues for a laissez-faire approach to the turmoil within the Muslim world, stating how it is not our business as to how they handle the onslaught of Western ideals, and that we must allow the population to deal with their problems amongst themselves – that we can pry, but “at the end of the day, the modernization process can only come from Muslims figuring it out for themselves” (“The Clash, as Imagined”).

Samuel Huntington, the proud disciple of Lewis, makes the argument more complex and thus a more detailed insight into the idea of the “clash.” In his thesis, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Huntington no longer utilizes the strict divide between two sectors as the crutch for the argument, but rather expands it to nine civilizations, with the divisions being based on culture and, thus, irreconcilable differences. Huntington takes a page from Lewis’s argument by stating how we should not just be spectators to the Muslim plight, but we must take an active role in order to maintain control and dominance over the world: we, meaning, the West. There is, essentially, a three-pronged approach to Huntington’s argument: we can allow countries to be isolated, OR they can join and integrate with the West, OR they can try to become modern without necessarily Westernizing (“The Clash, as Imagined”). For the sake of the Western world and its global dominance, he argues, we should direct the Muslim world from the first and third options.

As Huntington notes, civilizations are now distinguished by the cultures that envelop them; he points out due to this evolution of people defining their identity in terms of religion and ethnicity, “they are likely to see an ‘”us” versus “them”’ relation existing between themselves and people of different ethnicity or religion” (29). This “good versus bad,” “us versus them,” “good versus evil” motif is prevalent in the arguments of Lewis, Huntington, George W. Bush, and Osama bin Laden, in an effort to streamline the case of the “clash” in favor of one civilization over another, and to propel the notion that – in the immortalized words of Bush – “you’re either with us, or you’re against us,” and that your choice is vital.

Huntington’s argument for the “clash” frames the world s a perpetual struggle between peoples and their evolution of important ideologies. As he writes, “the conflict of nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies, first among communism, fascism-Nazism, and liberal democracy, and then between communism and liberal democracy,” and then, when the Cold War ceased, the struggle became “between the West and non-Western civilizations” (23).

What’s fascinating is bin Laden’s take on the “clash argument”: he boils it down to a battle between “Muslims … and the global Crusaders” (Lawrence 108), and that “it is a known fact that America is against the establishment of any Islamic state” (110). bin Laden’s invocation of religious weight to the “clash” is on par with Lewis, stating that “this [Clash of Civilizations] is a very clear matter, proven in the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet, and that any true believer who claims to be faithful shouldn’t doubt these truths (124), not only lending religious support to the “clash,” but also to the antiquated “us versus them” argument discussed by Lewis.

The clash can be argued, then, as being a “static representation of the evolution of societies,” failing to take into account historical nuances that have accelerated the very notion of a “clash,” if one chooses to accept the argument as the way to explain the current state of global affairs (“Cultural and Political”). What Lewis and Huntington overlook are the other components of history that have led to the evolution of the world, choosing religion as the focal point over socio-politics and the static nature of history. When we reduce history to a “clash” of “good versus evil,” “premodern versus modern versus postmodern,” “developed versus undeveloped,” “West versus Other,” “us versus them,” aren’t we doing more harm than good?

Akbar Ahmed takes a similar approach to Huntington and Lewis, although insinuates that the “clash” approach is an understatement: that, instead, what we are talking about is “a straight-out fight between two approaches to the world … one is based in secular materialism, the other in faith,” and that what is occurring in our world, then, is far more complicated (46-7). Ahmed, too, chooses to give a more nuanced explanation behind the state of the Islamic world and its mediated representation, representing it as known what it’s doing, of knowing why It’s choosing to not fully engage in the Western lifestyle, knowing that it “diverges from their own vision of society” (51) and that “the Muslim lives … in the real world, but within the frame of religion” (55).

The clash is a problematic perspective, given that no matter which side you look at it from, it is “monolithic in approach”: it produces too broad of a perception of what civilizations actually stand for and are composed of, and thus pits one fundamental generalization against another (“The Clash, as Imagined”). The argument is also fatalist in approach: with two sides going at it, the constant friction will lead to one disappearing… or, if the friction is equal, both will explode. The argument also produces a very strict binary that is hard to overcome: that if you look at the “clash” from the “Other’s” side, then you are wrong. Huntington makes this case when he proposes that civilizations are separated amongst “fault lines” of cultural differences, which is an interesting metaphor not to be overlooked: when considered in terms of plate tectonics, constant friction amongst plate boundaries causes one of three things to happen. These three phenomena are collision, divergence, and transformation… and none of the outcomes are hopeful for coexistence.

The media’s construction of the “Other” is one of the most important negative consequences of the “clash,” and Western media is not entirely innocent of keeping the Muslim world’s anxieties at bay. As Ahmed quotes, “Nothing in history has threatened Muslims like the Western media,” what with its speed and tenacity and non-traditional leanings (47). The media are an incredibly strong force that can all but obliterate an opposing culture, between stereotypes and as “an extension of political arguments” (49).

Mahmood Mamdani’s argument against the “clash” is vital, as it disengages the momentum with which Lewis and Huntington’s argument propels. As discussed in lecture on 24 September 2008, the “clash” proposes that there is “some sort of constant, essential, fundamental truth that never changes,” and yet, as Mamdani points out, civilizations are much more in flux, changing with the tides of socio-politics (“Cultural and Political”).

In Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Mamdani argues that “rather than illustrating a deep-seated clash of civilizations … political clashes came out of recent history, that of the late Cold War” (11), which puts the “clash” argument into a more appropriate socio-political context. Mamdani also reflects on how this current era in which we live is marked by the “rapid politicizing of … culture,” and how this is a problematic notion, given that politics and culture are entities that compose civilizations. Mamdani also discusses how the notion of “good” Muslims and “bad” Muslims refer strictly to the political identities of the population, not to identities founded in culture and/or religion, and that “the presumption that there are such categories masks a refusal to address our own failure to make a political analysis of our times,” addressing one of the main flaws of the “clash” argument: that is does not dive deep into the issue at hand, but instead chooses to make broad political and cultural assumptions without taking into account the nuances that make up every civilization (17).

Media create the notion of the “Other” – we are not immune to it, but we do have the ability to distinguish right from wrong. The “clash” creates a culture war, which is ultimately irreconcilable… unless we use brute force, which won’t necessarily end in our favor, as we are seeing in the “War on Terror.” If populations are “set in their ways” and culture thus dictating certain worldviews and ideas, then isn’t it best to leave them be, as to not drum up resistance that cannot be overcome if such ideas are so embedded? The “clash” is a flawed argument – it creates the notion of a cultural binary that has been the topic of fairytales and other means of ideological dispersion since storytelling began, the notion of “good” winning over “evil” and that there is no other way to read the struggle and the people involved in it. This notion has only increased in strength with media globalization, whereby issues have become streamlined, easily digestible sound bytes and images that we don’t need to question, because they adhere to already-embedded stereotypes and ideologies inherent in our own culture.

What does it mean to be in a culture of language, where language has no value? The old mantra of “Actions speak louder than words” is certainly applicable both for and against the “clash” argument: whether we stand back and approve of the sense of “Otherness” generated by the “clash” and the media, or decide to not accept them, is a testament to our own feelings in regard to a strict binary. As discussed in previous lectures, the “clash” can be easily critiqued as being reductionist and normative, which legitimizes our seeing through a mediated lens of our own creation, when – in fact – the world and the populations that occupy it are a lot more multifaceted and, thus, more complicated than a black-and-white strategy utilized in order to categorize populations and make cultural differences easier to digest (“Cultural and Political”).

The media feeds us with the “clash” argument as being a valid argument, a “West versus the Rest” war of ideologies that is unavoidable and an effect of our globalized era. For those populations within our own culture who do not have the resources – nor the inclination – to question what the media presents as the truth about the “Other,” these images and ideas created and propelled by talk show pundits and journalists are the only means by which those aforementioned populations and subjected to those “Other” cultures, thus drumming up support for the “clash” through stereotypes and a false sense of cultural superiority, when in fact the fact is a reductionist – and therefore inaccurate – means to illustrate global affairs. The “clash” is simply a mater of convenience and, as stated earlier, a somewhat necessary evil in our globalized world, where actions and generalizations are accepted more readily than intricate descriptions… simply because our notion of time creates apathy.

Ahmed, Akbar S. “Media Moguls at the Gates of Baghdad.” New Perspectives Quarterly. Winter 2002: 46-62.
Huntington, Samuel. “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs. 72.3 (1993): 22-49.
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"I can press when there needs to be pressed; I can hold hands when there needs to be... hold hands" --George W. Bush, on how he can contribute to the Middle East peace process, Washington, D.C., Jan. 4, 2008

Admittedly, I am no scholar on Middle East affairs, but I don't think that holding hands is going to clear the skewed air that the media has created - and continues to perpetuate - about the Muslim population.

I think I can say with a fair amount of support from everyone in the class that we have grown up in an age of intense media stratification and proliferation, and how this experience has led to a skewed view of lands that are "alien" to us, such as the Middle East. Generally, our first mediated relationship with that area of the world was the classic Disney movie, "Aladdin", which gets a lot of necessary flak from media critics and scholars about its repugnant representation of the Arab world (remember the lyrics to the classy opening song "Arabian Nights"? "Oh I come from a land / from a faraway place / Where the caravan camels roam / Where they cut off your ear / If they don't like your face / It's barbaric, but hey, it's home"? Precious, really.). Prior to - and especially after - the September 11th terrorist attacks, the media constructed - and continues to manufacture and uphold - a view of the Middle East, its people, and its culture that is remarkably off-kilter from what can be said is the truth.

I am a notorious film buff through and through, and am particularly interested in how the medium constructs identities and upholds - or demolishes - identity stereotypes. Muslims, Arabs, and anyone who can be readily identified as being from the Middle East are more often than not portrayed as evil rapscallions who are hellbent on destroying the American good guy (the shining beacon of a metaphor for hopeful, democratizing America), who just wants to solidify a little bit of peace, love, and understanding. Sure, the film medium - like any other art - tends to reflect the hopes and fears of a society at any given point in history. But is the support of Muslim stereotypes going to aide the opinions of the average citizenry, or continue to perpetuate the milieu of stereotypical thinking that is the antithesis of progressive thinking and cultural harmony? If anything, such films perpetuate the ideology of the good guy vs. the bad guy, the American vs. the Muslim, thus maintaining the streamlined notion that the two civilizations are in a hopeless, perhaps endless clash, with the ending hopeful prophecy that the democratic American will win.

From a mediated point-of-view, the clash of civilizations is very real and unremittingly sustained in newspapers, television narratives, infotainment, and mainstream filmmaking... just to name a few sources. I personally don't agree with the clash of civilizations argument, which I will address in another entry. I'm positive that the majority of us have taken at least one class where this issue was addressed; I know that I have.

I am not naive enough to think that it is that simple - that our cultures are the result of a strict division of ideals - nor am I naive enough to think that our relationship with the Muslim world has not become muddled over the decades and that our cultures are vastly similar. We don't need to hold hands with the Muslim world; what we do need is a national population who has a comprehensive understanding of our common humanity.

Some food for thought: Article re: Muslim representation; The Guardian