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Ed Webb

TCM Explores Depictions of Arabs in Cinema in Acclaimed Race & Hollywood Initiative - 0 views

www.tcm.com/...movie-news.html

Arabs movies film stereotypes television

shared by Ed Webb on 27 May 11 - No Cached
  • Turner Classic Movies is preparing to launch Race & Hollywood: Arab Images on Film, a month-long movie event that focuses on the diverse portrayals of Arabs in cinema. Tuesday and Thursday nights in July, TCM host Robert Osborne will be joined by internationally acclaimed professor, author and Middle East media consultant Dr. Jack G. Shaheen to introduce a wide range of films and provide extensive insight into Hollywood's ever-changing attitude toward Arab people.
  • 14 TCM premieres, including the award-winning Gulf War action drama Three Kings (1999), starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube; the romantic comedy-adventure Jewel of the Nile (1985), starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas; the Libya-set dramas Lion of the Desert (1981), starring Anthony Quinn; The Black Tent (1956), with Donald Sinden; the adventure films Tarzan the Fearless (1933), with Buster Crabbe; and the silent classic The Sheik (1921), starring Rudolph Valentino. The July lineup will also include David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), Kismet (1944), The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and several animated shorts featuring Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Popeye and other famous characters
  • I can't say the celluloid Arab has changed. He is what he has always been - the cultural 'other.' Arabs have too often been viewed as backward, barbaric and dangerously different through Hollywood's distorted lens. Unfortunately, these stereotypes are now deeply ingrained in American cinema
  • Ed Webb on 27 May 11
     
    This is huge. And overdue.
Ed Webb

AI Causes Real Harm. Let's Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype - Scientific Ame... - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/...ot-imaginary-existential-risks

opinion analysis AI class race computing propaganda science

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Aug 23 - No Cached
  • Wrongful arrests, an expanding surveillance dragnet, defamation and deep-fake pornography are all actually existing dangers of so-called “artificial intelligence” tools currently on the market. That, and not the imagined potential to wipe out humanity, is the real threat from artificial intelligence.
  • Beneath the hype from many AI firms, their technology already enables routine discrimination in housing, criminal justice and health care, as well as the spread of hate speech and misinformation in non-English languages. Already, algorithmic management programs subject workers to run-of-the-mill wage theft, and these programs are becoming more prevalent.
  • Corporate AI labs justify this posturing with pseudoscientific research reports that misdirect regulatory attention to such imaginary scenarios using fear-mongering terminology, such as “existential risk.”
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  • Because the term “AI” is ambiguous, it makes having clear discussions more difficult. In one sense, it is the name of a subfield of computer science. In another, it can refer to the computing techniques developed in that subfield, most of which are now focused on pattern matching based on large data sets and the generation of new media based on those patterns. Finally, in marketing copy and start-up pitch decks, the term “AI” serves as magic fairy dust that will supercharge your business.
  • output can seem so plausible that without a clear indication of its synthetic origins, it becomes a noxious and insidious pollutant of our information ecosystem
  • the people selling this technology propose that text synthesis machines could fix various holes in our social fabric: the lack of teachers in K–12 education, the inaccessibility of health care for low-income people and the dearth of legal aid for people who cannot afford lawyers, just to name a few
  • Not only do we risk mistaking synthetic text for reliable information, but also that noninformation reflects and amplifies the biases encoded in its training data—in this case, every kind of bigotry exhibited on the Internet. Moreover the synthetic text sounds authoritative despite its lack of citations back to real sources. The longer this synthetic text spill continues, the worse off we are, because it gets harder to find trustworthy sources and harder to trust them when we do.
  • the systems rely on enormous amounts of training data that are stolen without compensation from the artists and authors who created it in the first place
  • the task of labeling data to create “guardrails” that are intended to prevent an AI system’s most toxic output from seeping out is repetitive and often traumatic labor carried out by gig workers and contractors, people locked in a global race to the bottom for pay and working conditions.
  • employers are looking to cut costs by leveraging automation, laying off people from previously stable jobs and then hiring them back as lower-paid workers to correct the output of the automated systems. This can be seen most clearly in the current actors’ and writers’ strikes in Hollywood, where grotesquely overpaid moguls scheme to buy eternal rights to use AI replacements of actors for the price of a day’s work and, on a gig basis, hire writers piecemeal to revise the incoherent scripts churned out by AI.
  • too many AI publications come from corporate labs or from academic groups that receive disproportionate industry funding. Much is junk science—it is nonreproducible, hides behind trade secrecy, is full of hype and uses evaluation methods that lack construct validity
  • We urge policymakers to instead draw on solid scholarship that investigates the harms and risks of AI—and the harms caused by delegating authority to automated systems, which include the unregulated accumulation of data and computing power, climate costs of model training and inference, damage to the welfare state and the disempowerment of the poor, as well as the intensification of policing against Black and Indigenous families. Solid research in this domain—including social science and theory building—and solid policy based on that research will keep the focus on the people hurt by this technology.
Ed Webb

Liberal Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim hostility is not just a conservative phenomenon | Mid... - 1 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...servative-phenomenon-105761593

US USA media politics Islam Muslims violence terrorism Islamophobia

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • it would be wrong to view Islamophobia as a strictly conservative phenomenon. Polling data indicate that 49 percent of Democrats hold unfavourable views of Islam. Also, Brookings Institution scholar Shadi Hamid has argued that US President Barack Obama, a Democrat, holds views that amount to “Islamic exceptionalism”. Hamid argues that Obama’s statements about Muslims suggest that he is “frustrated by Islam” and that he has bought into Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis
  • American news media, including liberal outlets, have done a poor job contextualising stories about Muslims and Islam. A growing body of empirical research into American news media coverage of Islam reveals deeply problematic patterns - negative, stereotypical portrayals, almost no Muslim sources, and few mention of Muslims or Islam in the context of positive news. That American news outlets apply the “terrorism” description almost exclusively to Muslim-perpetrated violence cannot be lost on anyone paying attention
  • while denunciations of terrorism by Muslim groups generally go unreported, Islamophobic statements drive news narratives
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Glaringly absent from American news media are opinion polls showing that Muslims are no more likely to accept violence than other groups. For instance, a 2011 Gallup World Violence poll showed that Muslims were just as likely as non-Muslims to reject vigilante acts of violence against civilians
  • A 2011 Gallup poll found that American Muslims were the least likely of all polled American religious groups to accept vigilante violence against civilians. In all, 26 percent of American Protestants, 27 percent of Catholics, 22 percent of Jews, 19 percent of Mormons, 23 percent of atheists, but just 11 percent percent of Muslims said that it is “sometimes justified” for an “individual person or a small group of persons to target and kill civilians”.
  • the CIA estimates that there are around 30,000 Muslim jihadists in the entire world. A Kurdish leader has suggested that the CIA underestimates the jihadist threat, and claims that the total number is closer to 200,000. Even assuming the larger figure, jihadists represent a grand total of 0.01 percent of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims
  • Media scholar Jack Shaheen carried out a content analysis of more than 900 Hollywood movies featuring Arab or Muslim characters. Shaheen found Muslim characters are almost never cast in positive or neutral roles. The overwhelming majority of films that feature Arab or Muslim characters cast them as enemies, terrorists, violent, savage or backwards
  • compared to other threats of violence, Muslim terrorism garners exaggerated attention in American news and politics.
  • In the 14 years since 1 January, 2002, Muslim terrorists have killed 45 Americans in the United States, a smaller number than right-wing conservative terrorists have killed during the same time period. Also, since the start of 2002, there have been more than 200,000 firearm-related homicides in the United States
  • More realistic, proportionate presentations would greatly improve American political life. However, given the extent to which the Islamophobia industry is funded, people shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for fairer, less sensational presentations.
Ed Webb

Hollywood blockbuster "Noah" faces ban in Arab World - News - Aswat Masriya - 0 views

en.aswatmasriya.com/...view.aspx

film censorship religion MENA

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Three Arab countries have banned the Hollywood film "Noah" on religious grounds even before its worldwide premiere and several others are expected to follow suit
  • Islam frowns upon representing holy figures in art and depictions of the Prophet Mohammad in European and North American media have repeatedly sparked deadly protests in Islamic countries over the last decade, fanning cultural tensions with the West. "Censors for Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE (United Arab Emirates) officially confirmed this week that the film will not release in their countries," a representative of Paramount Pictures, which produced the $125 million film starring Oscar-winners Russell Crowe and Anthony Hopkins, told Reuters
  • the studio expected a similar ban in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Noah, who in the Bible's Book of Genesis built the ark that saved his family and many pairs of animals from a great flood, is revered by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. An entire chapter in the Koran is devoted to him.
  • Cairo's Al-Azhar, the highest authority of Sunni Islam and a main centre of Islamic teaching for over a millennium, issued a fatwa, or religious injunction, against the film on Thursday. "Al-Azhar ... renews its objection to any act depicting the messengers and prophets of God and the companions of the Prophet (Mohammad), peace be upon him,"
  • Mel Gibson's 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ" on Jesus's crucifixion was widely screened in the Arab World, despite a flurry of objections by Muslim clerics. A 2012 Arab miniseries "Omar" on the exploits of a seventh century Muslim ruler and companion of the Prophet Mohammad also managed to defy clerics' objections and air on a Gulf-based satellite television channel.
Jared Bernhardt

FOXNews.com - Report: Snoop Dogg Joins Nation of Islam - Celebrity Gossip | Entertainme... - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...0,2933,502887,00.html

Snoop Dogg Nation of Islam Farrakhan

shared by Jared Bernhardt on 03 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Jared Bernhardt on 03 Mar 09
     
    I know this has ABSOLUTELY no relevance..but could the Nation of Islam be the next trend in Hollywood?
Ed Webb

'Three Thousand Years' and the History of Middle East Tales - New Lines Magazine - 0 views

newlinesmag.com/...e-history-of-middle-east-tales

film media Turkey MiddleEast MENA review orientalism

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Aug 22 - Cached
  • a film based on “The 1,001 Arabian Nights” is a risky venture. On the one hand, Hollywood Golden Age standards like “The Thief of Baghdad” (1924) and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (1944) get applause even from someone like Jack Shaheen, who in his book “Reel Bad Arabs” tries very hard to sniff out anti-Arab sentiment. On the other hand, Disney rolled the dice in 1992 and wound up with “Aladdin,” one of the most scandalous films ever made. This was thanks to an ill-advised song lyric about the Middle East: “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face.” (The 1993 VHS version tossed out this carbuncle but kept the phrase “It’s barbaric, but hey it’s home.”) The 2019 Will Smith reboot of the same name, one of that year’s highest-grossing films, didn’t do much in the eyes of critics to update Orientalist caricatures. Teachers still use the 1992 version to show what not to say about Arabs and Islam. Another Disney production, 2010’s “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” which was based on the Persian national epic “Shahnameh,” got panned for casting Jake Gyllenhaal, a white actor, to play a Persian character. And the list goes on.
  • both Byatt and Miller get much of the folklore right. Viewers learn that djinn come in many varieties, including those who fear God, like Alithea’s djinn insists he does, and those who don’t. Djinn are made of “smokeless fire” while humans are made from dust, based on the Quran’s chapter 55, “The Merciful.” Djinn can live for thousands of years, change size and shape, make love, eat and sleep (the djinn in the movie says his kind don’t do the latter). All this and more, drawn from Islamic folklore through Byatt’s story, makes Robin Williams’ blue meanie from the 1992 “Aladdin” look like the cardboard cutout he is
  • at a time of heightened sensitivity to who gets to tell stories, can Hollywood still celebrate the Middle East?
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  • these tales don’t come from fantasies like “The 1,001 Arabian Nights” but instead Middle Eastern history, especially Ottoman history. Anyone familiar with the region’s culture and storytelling will be struck by how thoughtful the film is, despite its kooky, over-the-top vaudeville
  • Miller’s location, cast and music celebrate rather than lampoon the Middle East, above all the wonders of Turkey. Shot on location in Istanbul, the film pans over Topkapi Palace, the Hagia Sophia and other iconic hotspots. Turkish actors fill most of the minor roles and speak Turkish throughout (Elba gives it his best college try). “Chesm-i bulbul,” or “the nightingale’s eye,” the name for the djinn’s bottle and hence of Byatt’s story, is in fact a beloved style of glasswork. The film credits roll to a Turkish love song.
  • “Three Thousand Years,” billed as “Aladdin for adults” and based on the 1994 short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A.S. Byatt for The Paris Review
  • he adds a scene that’s unjustified by the plot and which mainly serves the demands of cultural sensitivity, in deference to viewers who don’t know enough about the Middle East to see how much care Miller has taken. Back in London and close to the finale, Alithea greets two neighbor ladies who ask why Alithea wastes time with “ethnics.” She fires back that she can’t abide people — like them — with knee-jerk reactions against anyone different. “Fuckface,” one of them spits at Alithea, who ducks back into her house.
  • This scene’s welcome jab at xenophobia is not what annoys; it is rather the non sequitur. It’s the one and only time we meet these neighbors, though they later stand aghast while Alithea explains her enormous ebony djinn will be staying for a while. It’s the one time we hear their views. Their struggle to grasp the Middle East has not shaped us in any way, nor does the script humanize them beyond political caricature. “OK, boomer,” says the movie with a sneer. Miller could have stood on his thoughtfulness toward the Middle East without pandering, but in fairness, he’s less to blame than a culture industry that makes directors like him think that pandering is the price of keeping their skin.
  • Byatt’s story is nothing if not highly sexed, and Miller’s retelling can’t do it justice.
  • That both the djinn and Alithea are trapped by their own gigantic emotions produces one of the film’s loveliest sentiments, spoken by Alithea as part of her wish for the djinn’s affections: “I want our solitudes to be together.”
Ed Webb

Cinema and the Arab spring: the revolution starts here | Film | The Guardian - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...cinema-and-arab-spring-ica

film Islam Muslims Arab arabspring Iran Turkey

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • "If you want to understand the emotive universe from which the Arab spring arose, cinema is a good place to start. Look at a film like Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention: there the director spits out an apricot pit at an Israeli tank and blows it up. The scene is both fantasy and prophecy."
  • I don't think the idea of Islamic cinema even exists in the west. Islam is presumed not to have a modern culture. I'd argue it's important that these films don't insist on any kind of stylistic unity – and that in nearly all of them Islam is portrayed as quite marginal. They argue against religiosity as a determining force. They're all about change, too, about modernity, which neocons like Francis Fukuyama say the Islamic world is incapable of
  • "If you want to be thought of as an auteur, you don't want to be categorised according to ethnicity or religion," Ahmad says. "By calling someone 'Islamic', you're meant to be taking away from their universal appeal."
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  • Some of the most provocative films owe more to pulp and lo-fi subcultures than to mainstream cinema: look at Omar Ali Khan's anti-yuppie, anti-fundamentalist horror flick Hell's Ground (2007), Halil Uysal's Tirej (2002), a mesmerising film about – and made by – Kurdish guerrilla soldiers, and Omar Majeed's Taqwacore (2009), about a bunch of dope-smoking Muslim punks in the US.
  • An alternative canon, curated by the Middle Eastern art magazine Bidoun, points to gems such as Peggy Ahwesh's Beirut Outtakes (2007), made up of film scraps from an abandoned cinema in the Lebanese capital; its combination of colour and decay, Hollywood and local celluloid, high and low culture captures the city's vivid history with panache.
  • Because the Arab spring was a revolution spread (if not created) by digital media such as mobile phones, Twitter and amateur video, it could be argued that more Muslims than ever before now associate political freedom with the moving image – rather than the printed word. What's more, the speed and sophistication of image-production by canny campaigners may also help to dispel some of the orientalist stereotypes that still circulate in the west.
  • "A lot of British Muslim kids are very keen to see themselves represented," he says. "They want to see they have a great culture. But often they go back to a glorious, nostalgic version of Islam that offers them only a narrative of cultural degeneration since the middle ages. Winds of Change should remind us that we have powerful and well-established critiques of religion from within our societies."
Ed Webb

Inside Kannywood: Nigeria's Muslim film industry - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...-industry-160304135629131.html

Nigeria Africa film women gender Islam media

shared by Ed Webb on 16 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • This film industry has been coined Kannywood, after the city it originated in. According to statistics from the National Film and Video Censors Board, its movies make up about 30 percent of the films produced by the Nigerian-based film industry popularly called Nollywood, which is often portrayed as the third-largest in the world, after Hollywood and Bollywood. Kannywood even has its own TV channel, Africa Magic Hausa, showing Hausa-language movies on satellite TV.
  • Kannywood treats the viewer to a mishmash of cultural influences. Before the local film industry came into existence in the 1990s, northerners watched Hindi language films from India. The glamour of the Bollywood musicals has rubbed off on the Hausa movies, some of which feature singing and dancing.
  • Their tone is devoutly Muslim, though, and quite often the very last line of the end credits is "Glory be to God". Many of these movies also denounce the hypocrisy of the ruling classes who preach piousness in public while sinning in private.
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  • They don't shy away from the problems women face in everyday life, such as forced marriage, sexual molestation, the lack of female education, and domestic violence - matters this society is not accustomed to discussing openly.
  • It is hardly surprising that women, who for the first time see their own experiences reflected in the public domain, form a significant part of Kannywood's audience. They also play a considerable role in the industry itself. According to the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria, 75 percent of the Hausa movie actors are female, as is the case for two-thirds of the association's members - from singers and producers to actors and make-up artists.
  • the Kano-based film industry is providing jobs and business to the city, something that went a long way towards improving public opinion of the profession.
  • not more than 10 years ago, a moralistic backlash triggered by a sex scandal almost destroyed the local film industry. As is often the case in public fights about morality, the female body was the battleground.
  • The Censorship Board came into existence before the scandal in 2001, and is a combined initiative of the local film industry and the state government. It was a response to the adoption of Islamic law in Kano a year earlier. Under the law, filmmaking was under threat of being abolished altogether. In order to avoid that, Kannywood voluntarily subjected itself to stricter censorship.
  • stricter guidelines, such as the banning of married women from acting, while also requiring all women in the industry to have a male guardian who would be legally responsible if their ward broke the rules
  • The overly zealous KSCB executive lost his moral authority when the police caught him in a compromising situation with a young girl in his car, and Kannywood celebrated when, in 2011, the newly elected governor appointed a new head of the Censorship Board.
  • He describes the task of the board as "preserving Hausa culture".
  • "We don't like to see body contact between men and women. No handshaking, let alone kissing," he says. "And no nudity or transparent dresses." The general secretary explains how things such as prostitution, lesbianism and adultery may be portrayed, as long as it is clear to the audience that they are unacceptable. Song and dance are permissible, as long as there is no physical contact between the sexes.
  • "Filmmakers themselves understand they have a task to educate people and cannot go against society,"
  • Kannywood movies do transmit empowering messages to a female audience
  • "It's the masses who watch Kannywood movies, not the elite. The general public is more ready for social change than political and religious leaders."
  • female producers are rare, let alone female directors
  • most female producers work with a male assistant to get things done on the ground
Ed Webb

Abu Dhabi to be host to major Western media groups - Print Version - International Hera... - 0 views

eduwebb.pbwiki.com/...AbuDhabiMediaCity_IHToct08.htm

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Wayne Borg
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 26 Feb 09
       
      You can't make stuff like that up. He's really called Wayne Borg?
  • Another arm of the government, Abu Dhabi Media, last year agreed to a $1 billion deal to make video games and movies with Warner Brothers
  • a daily prime-time news show from Abu Dhabi on CNN International
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In addition to the $2 billion the country has committed to Hollywood through Abu Dhabi Media, the country has lured the Louvre and Guggenheim museums to establish outposts there, and established The National, an English-language broadsheet newspaper in Abu Dhabi.All of this raises questions of the government, which is building the state-of-the-art facility, exerting control of media - an idea antithetical to traditions in the United States and Western Europe. "Creatively, I have not seen any kinds of limitations," Young said
  • not worried about the country's lack of press freedoms. Last month, journalists there held the first UAE Press Freedom Day, seeking more openness from the government and more access to information.
Ed Webb

Despite Hopes of Hollywood Visit, Iran's Leaders Stick to the Same Script - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...02visit.html

Iran film culture USA

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Both movies are despised here by vastly more people than have actually seen them.
  • Iranian religious rulers banned Western movies after the 1979 revolution, fearing that their cultural influence could undermine Iran’s revolutionary zeal.
  • But pirated copies are widely and secretly distributed for private use. And satellite television, which is illegal but has been common since the mid-1990s, has allowed Iranians to see pretty much anything they want.
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  • “Only one Iranian film has been nominated at the Academy Awards in the past 30 years, and we want to change that,”
Ed Webb

Jewish Horror, Monotheism, and the Origins of Evil - Tablet Magazine - 0 views

www.tabletmag.com/...jewish-horror

film horror Israel Judaism analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 23 Feb 19 - Cached
  • the new horror film The Golem, from directors Doron and Yoav Paz
  • The directors of The Golem, who are Israeli brothers
  • Reasons for the dearth of Jewish horror fiction are varied, ranging from producers possibly fearing that the ethnic particularism of these themes wouldn’t draw in as wide an audience, to the (incorrect) sense that Judaism doesn’t offer the same baroque supernatural possibilities that Christianity does.
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  • The theme of the golem, after all, has been explored several times before, from the silent film era of Paul Wegener’s expressionist Der Golem (1916) until today, including in The X-Files and The Simpsons’ annual “Tree House of Horror” Halloween episodes. There have also been a small number of horror films that explore Jewish folklore, such as Ole Bornedal’s The Possession (2012), which in lieu of The Exorcist’s Pazuzu features the malicious spirit of legend known as a dybbuk, an entity which also appears in David Goyer’s The Unborn (2009), and even in the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man (2009). Yet despite a preponderance of Jewish horror directors from Curt Siodmak, creator of The Wolf Man (1941) to Polanski, Hollywood has tended not to explore explicitly Jewish themes in horror.
  • the sense of the terrors of the real world is fundamental to monotheistic horror, for it asks what the ultimate origin of evil is.
  • The Franco-Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov in The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre distinguished between what he called the “uncanny,” whereby the supernaturalism of a story can be ultimately explained by rational recourse, and the “marvelous” in what’s been depicted is to be understood as genuinely supernatural. For Todorov, that which is fantastic in literature exists in the ambiguity between the uncanny and the marvelous, where the characters in a story (and the reader) are unsure as to whether events witnessed are genuinely supernatural or not. Todorov writes: “The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.”
  • what I’ve termed “monotheistic horror” in contrast to “dualistic horror.” The latter is any work which posits supernatural evil as somehow separate in agency from God, while the former steadfastly holds to all things—even evil things—as having their origin in the Lord. I’d argue that Jewish horror fiction, for all of its diversity, must be resolutely defined by an overpowering sense of monotheism, and that it is that sense of the fundamental unity of reality that makes those works terrifying. Ghosts, goblins, and ghouls can exist in both types of horror, but in dualistic horror God is either configured as explicitly separate from those evil things, or mention of Him is passed over.
  • The Paz brothers’ film is an example of Jewish horror not because it takes place in a 17th-century shtetl, or because its story deals with that most Jewish of monsters, but rather because there is no sense that anything that happens doesn’t occur due to the power and sovereignty of God.
  • in The Golem the creature is fashioned in adherence to God’s reality. Hanna’s creation is not demonic, but rather divine—if still capable of malevolence.
  • Any fiction that presents the malevolence experienced in reality as integral to the unity of that very same reality is monotheistic horror. In this way, I’d argue that Franz Kafka is one of the greatest horror writers of the 20th century, with a dark perspective that rivals that of H.P. Lovecraft. The latter thought the world meaningless, but Kafka never fell into that error. The result is paradoxically a horror all the more disturbing for what it implies about evil’s derivation.
  • For Kafka the deep wisdom of reality is even darker than Lovecraft’s nihilism, for his horror is based on the type of irony that can only be born from the most radical of monotheisms. The author could tell his friend Max Brod that here is “Plenty of hope—for God—no end of hope—only not for us,” a succinct summation of the major themes of Jewish horror, where what is fully externalized is a theodicy that recognizes evil exists in the world while also acknowledging that God must be its author.
  • The ur-text of Jewish horror, and what I would argue is perhaps the most terrifying story every told, is the biblical Book of Job. Few narratives can match Job in the sheer awful implications of what’s been recounted, of the upstanding man of Uz who “was perfect and upright, and one that feared God,” but who nevertheless was struck down by the Lord with a deluge of afflictions. So many details of Job’s story, often associated with the fatalism of Greek tragedy to which it bears some similarity, have a gothic sensibility. There is Satan who talks of “roving about in the earth and … walking about in it,” and of Job cursing himself by asking, “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?” Then there is the pyrotechnic impressiveness of God himself, who “answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?”
  • Monotheistic horror should not be interpreted as the logical culmination of monotheism itself, rather it should be seen as the dark undercurrent, the nagging anxiety, of what it means if there is only one Lord but we’re uncertain as to if He is always benevolent, for as Miles observes “all of God’s actions could actually have been the devil’s.” There is the upsetting ambiguity of monotheistic horror—not that God’s actions are the devil’s, but that they could be.
  • one of the most potent lessons of Jewish horror fiction: that there is a permeable membrane between civilization and anarchy, where those who claim to protect us one day can cast us aside the next. The “friends” of Job are among the most callous of monsters in the book. What makes Jewish horror so frightening is its entirely accurate understanding that all evil ultimately must have its origin not in devils, but in the two most frightening things in our sublime universe: God and his creations.
Ed Webb

Beirut's draq queen scene is starting to flourish, inspired by Ru Paul - The Washington... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...8-a17e-162b712e8fc2_story.html

Beirut Lebanon drag LGBT LGBTQ

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jan 19 - Cached
  • Beirut’s drag-queen scene
  • The Middle East is known for its conservatism, but with its febrile nightlife and more liberal mores, Beirut has long been hailed as a relative haven for the region’s LGBTQ community, though not without challenges.
  • Performers usually turn up in their street clothes, transform into a whole new character, then shed their costumes again before slipping back outside. Anissa, though, will be making an entrance tonight. A car to the venue has been organized, and she wants to enjoy the reactions of her fellow passengers. 
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Many here who became drag performers grew up watching Bassem Feghali, a comedian who gained popularity in the early 2000s by impersonating female singers. In 2015, Evita Kedavra, a Palestinian Armenian drag queen, took the stage, and one by one, the circle grew. 
  • With dozens having taken the plunge since last year’s Grand Ball, the artists credit one celebrity above all: RuPaul and his wildly successful talent show “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” “That made a huge difference,” said Narcissa, another drag queen, of the Emmy-winning U.S. television series. “Suddenly everyone was watching it, and you just thought, ‘Wow, I could do that, too.’ Those artists taught us a lot.”
  • a scene that blends an homage to American drag culture with something distinctively, and irreverently, Lebanese. Anissa Krana and Narcissa exude Hollywood glamour, all tumbling curls and dresses with jewels. Performers like Kawkab Zuhal set kohl liner on dramatic lashes for acts lip-syncing to Arabic music or telling sharp jokes about Lebanon’s crumbling political system. 
  • The Grand Ball earlier this month was to be at one of the biggest, with some 30 contestants competing in front of an exuberant, tightly packed crowd
  • In October, to almost everyone’s surprise, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Sasha Velour strode through one of Beirut’s most famous civil war landmarks, a brutalist-style cinema still riddled with bullets known as the Egg
  • “My drag is what I couldn’t be when I was young,” said one performer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety. He said he had started trying on his mother’s heels and makeup in secret, years before coming out as gay. When his parents found out, they barred him from their house and his friends turned on him. He lives with other drag queens now. “They’re like my family,” he said. “We help each other with food, with makeup, money — everything.”
  • Although the Lebanese state is more tolerant of homosexuality than other Arab governments, the penal code can still be invoked to make arrests
  • “We don’t have stable laws here,” said Narcissa. “One minute, the state is looking one way; the next, it’s staring right at us.”
  • Only a small number of venues are recognized as “safe spaces” for the drag and broader LGBTQ community, and owners must have strong ties to local authorities to ensure the police won’t turn up and harass attendees
Ed Webb

Why is the Egyptian state monopolizing the entertainment industry? | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...olizing-entertainment-industry

Egypt cinema movies film media censorship military

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Jun 19 - Cached
  • Egyptian television series that aired during the peak Ramadan season this year dramatically decreased by half from previous production volumes. Production restrictions and censorship in the most populous Arab country are on the rise, tough circumstances for the entertainment industry, exacerbated by a military-linked production company’s recent monopoly of soap operas. The move also raises concerns about whether a similar fate might be in the works for the film industry.
  • In late 2018, a memo circulated to industry professionals by state affiliate Egyptian Media Company (EMC) laid out a set of regulations making it virtually impossible for almost any production company asides from EMC sub arm Synergy Production to produce soap operas in the 2019 Ramadan season
  • “We have to understand why Synergy is gaining this much control…it’s also very clear that some series [this year] have an almost didactic direction, promoting particular ideas such as improving the image of police officers. Mandating which themes are to be discussed and which won’t be is not censorship, its indoctrination,” Aly Mourad, the CEO of Al Shorouk for Media Productions, tells Open Democracy. “I don’t think we’ve heard of this level of censorship since the time of [Former President] Nasser; it’s like we are going back 60 years in time.”
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  • “What I fear is that this pool of currently unemployed talent will switch careers, which will come at the longtime expense of the industry since these are trained professionals. I do not believe that the military [Synergy] sees this; they simply have one clear goal: to control the industry. The government has effectively, through the institutions it runs, carried out the first monopolization process in the history of neoliberalism.”
  • In June 2018, the authorities banned a film examining a love affair between a Muslim man and a Christian woman before it hit the cinemas, although director Khaled Youssef said he obtained the necessary licenses. The decision was later revoked, but was alarming to many given rising censorship levels
  • While over fifty shows typically aired during the peak Ramadan season, even during economically turbulent years as in 2017 and 2018, only twenty-four shows aired last Ramadan, and over two-thirds of them are produced by Synergy. Production powerhouses like El Adl Group and Beelink Productions were notably absent this season from their regular Ramadan run, while regionally acclaimed megastars like Yossra, Adel Imam and Laila Elwy uncharacteristically did not star in any shows during the peak season either, likely due to the dramatic, forced budget cuts which make casting an A-lister virtually impossible. Compensation levels for many of these lead faces could often be as high as EGP 50 million (~USD 3 million), the currently imposed budget cap for aggregate production costs of a Ramadan soap opera’s full season
  • “For a producer, the direct client of drama series is television channels, and several factors have negatively impacted their purchasing power. The GCC-owned channels are struggling in light of the economic difficulties there, primarily due to the war in Yemen, so the main overseas market for selling television series is not that great. Add to this that privately owned channels in Egypt were never highly profitable, and media budgets generally were slashed with Egypt’s high inflation levels [during the past couple of years], and you have a situation where many production companies are struggling to stay afloat.”
  • Over the course of the past year, EMC CEO Tamer Morsy also gradually gained majority ownership of key television networks such as CBC, ONTV, DMC and Al-Hayat, a move facilitated through the recent launch of EMC affiliate United Group for Media Services. Moreover, state-owned entities effectively gained control of both the production and purchasing sides of the business as these unprecedented levels of regulation and government ownership were put in place.
  • in early May United Group for Media Services launched paid streaming app WatchiT and prohibited the longtime convention of shows airing online on YouTube for those who couldn’t catch them on satellite television channels. Widely accessed streaming app EgyBest, among other free online streaming services, were also blocked to allegedly mitigate “piracy”, granting government intelligence-affiliated WatchiT a monopoly over streaming services. Since digital finance and financial inclusion levels are low in the most populous Arab country, the decision came to the dismay of throes of viewers regardless of political affiliations or regulation concerns. For those following television series on satellite channels, short broadcast announcements interrupt episodes to denounce a May 28 Human Rights Watch report on enforced disappearances, killings and torture in North Sinai. Other broadcasts order audiences to pay heed to “threats to terrorism and national security.”
  • “Because these people [Synergy and EMC] are military men, their mentality is to cut off what doesn’t work, with little concern for the consequences. The military don’t understand or love the arts; they see it as just another industry they can profit off by minimizing losses.”
  • “It’s understandable that they [the military] would be more concerned with penetrating television production as opposed to the cinema industry, because viewership numbers are higher for television series in comparison to films. Not everyone can afford a cinema ticket, but most Egyptians, be they rich or poor, have access to a television set. There’s nothing to stop them from gaining as much control of the film industry as they have with television, but I believe they’re not investing in it [as much] because it isn’t as lucrative,”
  • Saudi Arabia is once again opening cinema theaters following a 35-year ban, creating a significant potential box office market for Egyptian films, particularly since plans for the inauguration of 2,000 theatres in the kingdom before 2020 are in the works
  • our country was once the Hollywood of the Middle East,”
  • There was a time when everyone in the Arab world recognized Umm Kalthoum and Ismail Yassin, even more so than [our own president] Nasser. We need to work towards reestablishing that, and understanding how entertainment can be used as a tool for soft power
Ed Webb

'The End': Anti-normalisation, Islamofuturism and the erasure of Palestine - Middle Eas... - 0 views

www.middleeastmonitor.com/m-and-the-erasure-of-palestine

media TV television Ramadan Egypt Palestine

shared by Ed Webb on 20 May 20 - Cached
  • The End (El-Nehaya), the Egyptian dystopian science fiction thriller series, has captured the imagination of audiences throughout the Arab world this Ramadan TV season. It is ranked the third most popular series this season, and has generated a lot of discussion in social media about its futuristic technology and debt to Hollywood science fiction and dystopian films.The End was also lumped into the debate over normalisation in this year’s Ramadanic TV programming and was attacked by the Israeli Foreign Ministry for its anti-normalisation stance. The End is premised on the fictional idea that the Arab world would become a superpower and that Israel would be destroyed less than a century into its establishment — that is, in less than thirty years. In its place, Al-Quds conglomerate will be created and will be under total Arab control.
  • Some contrasted the daring futuristic scenario with the utter impotence of the Arab world today, to offer any viable solution to the Palestinian struggle for freedom and the ongoing Nakba. Others thought it was enough that the series managed to provoke and infuriate Israel.
  • The series does not only substitute one form of domination in Al-Quds conglomerate for another. More importantly, the Palestinians are completely erased from Al-Quds conglomerate itself.
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  • Ironically, the liquidation of Israel in The End did not bring an end to the oppression in Palestine or the Arab world in general.  Around 2090, Al-Quds conglomerate became the main site for a robocide, the genocide in which humans eliminated all robots after one of them terminated its owner. Consequently, laws were passed to ban the production of robots and the development of AI. The series merely substitutes one form of domination and apartheid for another.After the elimination of the majority of the robots, the all-powerful Energy Co. was established in Al-Quds conglomerate. The corporation employs algorithmic governance, using surveillance technology, facial recognition software and military drones to track and control citizens. Its security forces regularly attack and brutalise citizens. One form of oppression is gone, but Palestine and the Arab world do not live in liberty yet.
  • The most bewildering aspect about this triumphalist history of the liberation of Al-Quds conglomerate in the dystopian world of the series, is the absence of any trace of the Palestinians or Palestinian culture. The obverse side of the obliteration of Israel seems to be the erasure of the Palestinians.
  • The people who live in Al-Quds conglomerate speak Egyptian colloquial Arabic, and no one seems to be taking pride in their Arabic cultural heritage or Palestinian identity.
  • The other noticeable feature about the representation of life in Al-Quds conglomerate is its patriarchal gender politics. Women and men follow a rigid division of labour, even professional women who have careers. Radwa, the protagonist’s wife, works as the principal (agricultural) engineer at Green Co., the company responsible for providing food supplies to Al-Quds conglomerate, but she has to perform the domestic chores in the house.
  • the dystopian world of the series is deeply steeped in Islamic culture and traditions. If Afrofuturism, for example, is “rooted in and unapologetically celebrate[s] the uniqueness and innovation of black culture,” this series is clearly grounded in Islamofuturism.
  • The series illuminates and raises questions about these significant matters that have affected humanity in the last few decades. These issues include not only the polarisation of wealth and the cupola created in the global apartheid, but also neoliberal algorithmic governance, the naturalisation of AI (as both human surrogates and sex bots), the rise of megalopolis cities as corporations, renewable energy and ecological sustainability.
  • it is not clear where the series positions itself on the question of the state and the military.
  • the series itself is produced by Synergy, a mega-entertainment production house that has monopolised the Egyptian media sector and has ties to Egyptian intelligence.
Ed Webb

Dune: An accomplished escape into the realm of cinematic Arab appropriation - 0 views

english.alaraby.co.uk/...ealm-cinematic-arab-subversion

media film MENA culture representation

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Oct 21 - Cached
  • the most overriding issue, for this critic at least, is the total lack of significant Middle Eastern and North African representation in the cast despite the very clear influence of MENA, Islamic and Arab culture on the desert planet and this universe in the original book and this film. I’ve written before about the importance of Fremen characters being played by MENA actors not least because their language is mostly made up of Arabic words, like “Mahdi'' (‘the rightly guided one”) and “Lisan al Gaib” (“the voice from the outer world”), respectively. Though it's notable that jihad, the phrase frequently used in the book, has now been replaced with "crusade" and "holy war". 
  • One can easily observe the Bedouin and Amazigh inspiration behind this nomadic community on the page and the screen, through the Fremen’s penchant for Keffiyeh, group feeling unity and strength in their ability to survive in such a dangerous environment. These ideas, as well as the cyclical nature of dynasties and civilisations, were reflected in Tunisian sociologist, philosopher and historian Ibn Khaldun’s 14th Century book of Islamic History, “The Muqaddimah”, which underpinned much of Herbert’s sci-fi series.
  • Jordan’s Wadi Rum and Abu Dhabi in the UAE provided the vast beauty and brutality of this fictional desert planet landscape. The pale, flat-roofed buildings of Arrakeen, the planet’s seat of power which, in the book, was transferred from the city of Carthag (sound familiar?) under Harkonnen rule, is reminiscent of North African architecture. If the overarching storyline about Imperialist colonisers stealing a powerful fuel from the native population doesn't remind you of a certain 20th Century Western conflict with the Middle East, the Knights Templar colour scheme of the Sardaukar certainly hints at a 12th Century one. A holy war no less!
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  • With all this rich, Maghrebi and Middle Eastern culture, aesthetic and historical references on display, once again I must ask: where are the significant MENA actors?
  • What an opportunity it would have been to cast the likes of Egyptian actor Amr Waked or French-Algerian actress Lyna Khoudri in these roles. Instead, we get Javier Bardem doing whatever the Arab version of Blackface is.
  • The rest of the Fremen - those whose faces aren't masked and have speaking roles - are made up of actors of Guyanese, West or East African heritage. This wouldn’t be a problem at all if there were at least some MENA actors to reflect the diversity of that region which Villeunueve claims to care so much about and admitted to using as inspiration: “I feel true that I’m right in doing it this way. It feels authentic, it feels honest and true to the book.”
  • We’re used to being vilified, maligned or erased on screen. We’re used to having most of our representation in Hollywood limited to plane hijacking or suicide bombing or perverted sheikhs or refugees or having non-MENA actors replacing us in our own stories. Like Dwayne Johnson who is playing Black Adam, the first MENA superhero character to get his own solo movie. Can you imagine the outrage if The Rock was cast as Black Panther? Or Shang-Chi? People wouldn’t stand for it.
  • But in a post-9/11 world where Arabs and Islam are still considered too dangerous and foreign to pass the racial profiling in studio boardrooms and casting call discrimination, too taboo to be given the same equal opportunities for positive or nuanced representation as other ethnic minorities are now slowly beginning to benefit from, must we continue to wait and bittersweetly watch films like Dune that take but do not give back?
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