This is an excellent Youtube talk by Ahmad al-Jallad on the evidence from the rock inscriptions and graffiti from the Arabian Peninsula. Also check out his excellent book on religion and ritual in the Safaitic graffiti.
Long before Abraham/Ibrahim left Ur of the Chaldees for the promised land and became the ancestral icon of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there was that architectural wonder called the Tower of Babel. As noted in the eloquent phrasing of the King James Version of Genesis 11:4: “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” Readers of the text know what happened with that bravado venture. As a refresher, here is how the artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder imagined that ziggurat tower in 1563.
Now what if instead of a massive tower, such an old-fashioned idea, a new world wonder was created with the narrow ribbon of an artificial skyscraper city some 75 miles long, and some 656 feet wide? One set of plans would make this the most eco-friendly living space ever conceived:
THE LINE will eventually accommodate 9 million people and will be built on a footprint of just 34 square kilometers. This will mean a reduced infrastructure footprint, creating never-before-seen efficiencies in city functions. The ideal climate all-year-round will ensure that residents can enjoy the surrounding nature. Residents will also have access to all facilities within a five-minute walk, in addition to high-speed rail – with an end-to-end transit of 20 minutes.
This rival to The Pyramids would reach 1600 feet into the sky, thus becoming taller than the World Trade Center that several Saudi citizens destroyed in 2001 by crashing an airplane into the building. Of course such a major building enterprise would cost a lot of money, like a trillion dollars. I wonder what country would have that kind of funding available and what kind of resurrected Nimrod would think of such an idea?
Guess what? The plans are now on the board with the NEOM project known as “The Line”. You can read all about it on all kinds of websites, like NPR, The Independant, The Guardian, Time Out, and many other sources by typing “NEOM The Line” into Google. The patron of this marvel is His Royal Highness (I guess the Highness in his title inspired the idea to have the highest city in the world) MBS of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It would have been nice to read a review of this fiasco by the Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi, but he is no longer around.
Of all the places on earth, where would be the best location for this ethereal construction project? Why not at the crossroads of the planet? Now that all roads no longer lead to Rome, I guess that would be the Arabian desert in Saudi Arabia. After all who would not want to live in a natural setting with miles and miles of sand and rocks and hardly any sign of wildlife? Unfortunately there are only a few camels left in the Saudi desert, since most are now getting ready for beauty pageants. But at least there will not be the nuisance of fast-driving joy-riding by Saudi youth through the streets, since there will not be any streets. Instead, I suspect that people will get around by doing what they did on the TV show The Jetsons. Of course, Saudi lifestyles will still be enforced, so women will need a male escort and be veiled before taking that five-minute walk to anything they desire.
World reaction to this marvel of marvels is just beginning. Carlos Felipe Pardo informed NPR that “This solution is a little bit like wanting to live on Mars because things on Earth are very messy.” The choice of Mars is proper, since Venus would not be a good metaphor for Saudi censors due to all the naked images of the goddess Venus that are available on the web. I think there would be a positive response from endangered dictators like Vladimir Putin, since the Saudi government has given sanctuary to all kinds of nasty rulers in exile in the past, most recently Ben Ali of Tunisia. Idi Amin, the brutal ruler of Uganda, but clearly thought to still be a good Muslim in the Saudi style, spent his latter years in luxury as a guest of the Saudis.
The Tower of Babel was doomed from the start, but then Nimrod and his like did not realize the vast oil and gas wealth underneath their feet in the Middle East. If they had, we would all be speaking the same language that Adam and Noah spoke. Even Star Trek never imagined that.
This exquisite film was produced in 1973 and filmed in 1972, thus representing Yemen half a century ago. It is now available on Youtube. The filmmakers were Karen and Alain Saint Hilaire. The camera was a bolex ebm electric. It has filmed when Qadi al-Iryani was the head of government. There are scenes from the Tihama, Sanaa, Sa‘da, Ma’rib, etc, including many crafts, fishing, agriculture, a funeral, celebration of the end of the civil war and much more. It is well worth spending two hours to watch this archival film of a Yemen now largely past but not forgotten.
This is a beautifully filmed and played Youtube video of Lebanese music performed in the ruins of a temple in Lebanon.
Disclaimer: This is a reworked paper, originally written for a course called "Post-Colonial Perspectives on Audiovisual Media" at Stockholm University, in which I explore orientalism and pinkwashing in the Israeli film HaBuah [The Bubble], 2006, directed by Eytan Fox.
Edward Said begins his landmark text Orientalism (1978) with a statement on “the Orient” as an invention of European, colonial powers, used to define Europe itself: “The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity ‘a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences” (p. 9). One part of Said’s critique against orientalists and their work was the construction of “the Orient” as inherently different, opposite even, of that which was considered European, or “Western”. This forms a dichotomy between “the East” and “the West”, in which West is always seen as superior to East. Oftentimes, this perceived superiority would be legitimised through a linear, evolutionistic, and developmental perspective, in which advancement is represented by European academia, and ideals constructed as western (a concept often overlapping liberal ideals) were considered modern. Since development was seen as linear, it was expected that the rest of the world would follow the same path as Europe and to end up in the same place. In other words, modernisation often translated to westernisation.
Said exemplifies how this schism was upheld, and expand on its colonial consequences, by pointing to one of the earliest works of French impressions of Egypt; Description de l’Égypte. He means to say that this work, despite its name, is not an objective account of Egypt, but a placement of Egypt in the orientalist discourse. This worked to establish the French as the height of civilisation and sophistication, i.e. modern as opposed to traditional (understood in this context as uncivilised, unsophisticated and undeveloped). That way it would be almost an act of charity and humanity to colonise the Egyptians, so that the Europeans can educate them and eventually, if they are susceptible to modernisation, they might one day themselves govern, administer and care for their civilisation and its arts and culture.
Said’s own student and protégé, Joseph Massad, has carried on his legacy, and in the book Desiring Arabs (2007) he explores the “influence and impact that Orientalism has had in shaping the Arabs’ own perceptions of themselves and each other since the Arab Renaissance to the present” (p. 48). Furthermore, the book is an elaboration of an earlier essay, offering a critique of what he calls the “universalisation of gay rights:”
Like the major U.S.-based human rights groups (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International) and many white Western feminist organizations, the Gay International has reserved a special place for the Muslim world in both its discourse and its advocacy. This orientalist impulse, borrowed from predominant representations of the Arab and Muslim worlds in the United States and Europe, continues to guide all branches of the human rights community. (Massad 2002, p. 362)
While Massad’s work is somewhat controversial and has received plenty of critique, for example by Frances S. Hasso and Dror Ze’evi, it provides a framework and foundation for exploring the intersection of orientalism and sexuality studies. Drawing inspiration from Massad – yet staying away from his more controversial arguments about “the Gay International” – I would here like to explore the topic of how Queer Arabs and Muslims are represented in audio-visual media, especially film, as well as how this representation informs the orientalist trope of a sexually repressive Middle East. This paper focuses particularly on the Israeli film HaBuah [The Bubble], directed by Eytan Fox and released in 2006.
HaBuah is a Romeo and Juliet-story (in fact, the original title of the film was Romeo and Julio), depicting the forbidden love between two men: Noam, an Israeli-Jew, and Ashraf, who is Palestinian and Muslim. As such, the forbidden-ness of their relationship is multi-layered, as it deals with forbidden sexuality, religion, nationality, and identity. However, this is in the film made into a point, where Palestine is presented as mostly homophobic, and Ashraf is forced to move to Tel Aviv to live openly. Although it is also made into a point that Ashraf will have to pretend to be Jewish, and flees back to (Palestinian city) Nablus when his true identity is revealed, this is still a typical example of so called “pinkwashing.” This refers to how crimes committed by the Israeli state, as an occupier of the West Bank, are glossed over and justified by portrayal of Israel as a liberal, democratic state and as a sort of safe haven for gays and lesbians. In comparison, Palestinian society is seen as backwards, conservative, and homophobic. This binary portrayal is furthered in HaBuah when Ashraf and Noam are caught kissing by Ashraf’s Islamist brother-in-law, Jihad, who blackmails Ashraf into marrying his cousin. Jihad – now acting as the filmic representation of religious (Muslim) intolerance and homophobia – then plans and executes a bombing in “liberal, gay-friendly” Tel Aviv.
In an Op-Ed in The New York Times, Schulman (2011) writes that pinkwashing is “a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life.” This film is a perfect example of this strategy, and also shows its dual functions; on the one hand prop up Israel and the Israeli society as a protector of human rights, rather than a violator, and on the other hand to portray Palestinian society as anti-gay – and thus anti-liberal. As such, it also acts as an ideological justification for Israeli occupation and militarism, since that is portrayed as in defence of “liberal” values. This can be understood in terms of securitisation – a term from the Copenhagen School of International Relations (see Buzan 2015) – whereby Palestinian presence is deemed inherently dangerous.
The myth (in Barthesian terms) of an Arab security threat is so prevalent in HaBuah that not only is Jihad and other Islamist Palestinians portrayed as threats, but, after his sister is killed in a raid by Israeli soldiers, even Ashraf becomes a potential threat, taking the place of Jihad as a suicide bomber. Ashraf kills himself and Noam. While the audience to some extent is invited to empathise with Ashraf, it is clear from the start that Noam, whom is first introduced doing military service at a check-point, is the “proper” protagonist. Ashraf on the other hand is only favourably portrayed when he is in Tel Aviv, living his life as an Israeli Jew, and him returning to Nablus is an upsetting event for the audience, who by now should want Ashraf to stay in Tel Aviv.
This context provides perfect opportunity to reflect Butler’s (2004) book Precarious Life, in which she discusses how only certain lives are considered “grievable.” In the book, Butler examines the ambiguities of terms such as “terrorist” and points out that this is used by “the Israeli state to describe any and all Palestinian acts of resistance, but none of its own practices of state violence” (p. 4). This, she argues, is a means of precluding historical inquiry and to morally justify retaliation. In HaBuah, the death of Ashraf’s sister is portrayed as a direct result of her husband’s involvement in the Tel Aviv-bombing, thus providing a frame in which her death is less grievable. The same goes for the death of Ashraf, in comparison to Noam. While, as mentioned, Ashraf’s decision to take Jihad’s place is somewhat explained with the death of his sister, the audience is not invited to empathise with this decision; it is seen as a tragedy, the final failure of the Palestinian queer to assimilate in liberal Tel Aviv. In a sense, it is the failure of Ashraf’s gayness, in the orientalist discourse understood as Western-aligned/liberal/modern, exactly because of his Palestinian identity, in the orientalist discourse understood as religious, anti-Western, or even inherently violent. Ashraf’s turn to suicide bombing and his subsequent death is inevitable rather than grievable, while Noam has no part in this bombing, and simply becomes a victim.
Another relevant text here is Boggs’ and Pollard’s (2006) “Hollywood and the Spectacle of Terrorism,” in which they write about portrayals of terrorism in media:
The main political and media discourses stress an epic struggle between (Western, democratic, modern) “civilization” and (Jihadic, Muslim, primitive) “barbarism”—a self- serving, hypocritical grand narrative that frames political violence as a monopoly of cultural/national Others whose modus operandi, mostly local attacks, contrasts with the “legitimate” military actions of powerful governments launching high-tech missile strikes and bombing raids. (Boggs and Pollard 2006, p. 336)
This, in HaBuah, is evident in the contrast between the rationalised, justified, and organised military operations of the Israeli soldiers, as opposed to the emotionally and religiously driven violence of the Palestinian Islamists – whose headbands reveal their association to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. It is worth noting that it is Ashraf who is killed off (by the director), rather than Jihad or any of the other members of the Hamas brigade. Thus, in the film universe, the threat is still alive and well, allowing for continued justification of Israeli military securitisation.
Ashraf, as a queer person, is in HaBuah a victim of his own cultural identity, and the plot could be described as revolving around Noam’s failed attempt to “save” Ashraf. But, his being saved then, is reliant upon two orientalist ideas: one is that Ashraf is without agency and thus cannot save himself, and the other is that his very being, as a queer Palestinian, is an unresolvable contradiction, requiring erasure of the (less favourable) national identity in favour of his sexual identity. In this manner, HaBuah symbolically, through the blowing up of Ashraf, promotes the erasure of Palestine. A counterpoint to this argument could be that the protagonist, Noam, is actively engaged in the anti-occupation movement. However, this fact does nothing to promote the actual anti-occupation movement, but rather only acts to show Noam as empathetic, and nonetheless he is still murdered by a Palestinian, thus making his anti-occupation stance portrayed as naïve at best.
Lastly, it must be mentioned, as is emphasized by Shohat and Stam (2014), that Israel is commonly imagined as a Western country (while Turkey, located to the West of Israel, is usually Eastern). This idea is further perpetuated by the type of pinkwashed binary portrayal as can be seen in HaBuah, wherein Israel is portrayed as modern, liberal, free, democratic, gay-friendly, as opposed to Palestine, which is then portrayed as illiberal, unfree, undemocratic, and most importantly, far from gay-friendly.
Boggs, Carl, and Tom Pollard. “Hollywood and the Spectacle of Terrorism.” New Political Science, 2006: 335–351.
Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, 2004.
Buzan, Barry. “The English School: A neglected approach to International Security Studies.” Security Dialogue, 2015: 126–143.
Massad, Joseph. Desiring Arabs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Massad, Joseph. “Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World.” Public Culture, 2002: 361-385.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.
Schulman, Sarah. “Israel and ‘Pinkwashing’.” International New York Times. November 22, 2011.
Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London: Routledge, 1994.
Historians generally assume that “modernity” jump-started in Afghanistan in 1919 with the crowning of Ghazi Amanullah Khan as emir and later as king in 1926. Succeeding his father, Habibullah Khan, who had been assassinated while on a hunting trip, Amanullah launched a campaign similar to Ataturk in Turkey and Reza Shah in Iran to create a “European” style modernity with the moderated trappings of Islam. All three Islamic countries were being reborn after the disaster of World War I, even though only Ottoman Turkey had been directly involved. In 1919 Afghanistan was one of the least “modern” countries in the region, long buffeted by foreign invasions from its neighbors but never fully controlled by an outside power.
When history repeats itself, it does so with a vengeance. In 1842 Great Britain suffered one of its major defeats when in a retreat from Kabul some 16,000 British troops and civilians were annihilated. In 1989, after losing more than 15,000 troops, the Soviet Union pulled out of its decade-long attempt to make Afghanistan a Marxist ally. Today NATO, led by the United States, is ending its attempt to democratize the Afghans against terrorism after two decades and a loss of over 2,300 American servicemen and another thousand from NATO member troops.
The case of Amanullah is well worth revisiting. The flamboyant American journalist, Lowell Thomas, who made his claim to fame by glorifying Lawrence of Arabia, was able to cross the Khyber Pass in a Buick at the invitation of Emir Amanullah. He describes his visit in Beyond Khyber Pass (1925). Well aware of the dangerous and uncharted territory he was entering, he quoted lines from the British Raj poet Rudyard Kipling:
“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.”
Driving up to Jalalabad and Kabul in his motocar, a sight to behold at the time, Thomas paints a time-machine Orientalist picture of a land filled with brigands and fanatics, sprinkled with an occasional positive note. On women in this Islamic realm, he writes:
But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is what Thomas shows of the typical Afghan woman:
Like his adoration of Lawrence during World War I, Amanullah becomes a local icon resurrecting a backward society into a Westernized future. Thomas writes:
One of those “good things in life” was tennis, which Amanullah loved, just as he did the new American silent cinema. And just as he loved his wife Soraya, who threw off the veil (which Amanullah considered not essential to Islam) and wore stylish Western clothing of the time.
In 1929, after a decade that benefited elites, the masses of Afghanistan had little to show. It seems that Amanullah though that all the country needed was modern dress. He even convened a loya jirga of tribal leaders who were forced to dress in suits. After a rebellion, not unlike the Taliban started in the early 1990s, Amanullah abdicated and spent the rest of his life in luxury in Europe, dying in Italy in 1960.
Thomas was hopeful about a new nation of Afghans, but was aware that it would not be easy.
In an assessment of the fall of Amanullah, the writer Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah in 1932 summed up what doomed the king:
The blame game for the messy withdrawal of American troops and the host of Afghan supporters is now in full swing. If two decades of outside support was not enough to transform Afghanistan into what the neocon architects dreamed of for it and Iraq, it is hard to see what staying any longer would have accomplished. The swift takeover by the raggle-tag Taliban apparently took the Pentagon intelligence by surprise, but it also shows that little would be accomplished by maintaining any military presence. Whether Biden made the right decision or not (and history, rather than partisan congressional committees, will be the best judge), it is obvious that the majority of Afghans have chosen the Taliban rather than the puppet government paved with good intentions but as corrupt as all the previous ones.
It is too early to tell how the Taliban will govern. As an opposition they were demonized, but taking on the responsibility of running a country with a population of some 38 million divided into numerous ethnic and tribal enclaves will be a full-time job. Spending the winters in neighboring Pakistan is over with. The “buck”, as they say, now stops with a group that has a dubious record with the potential for continuing human rights abuses. Either the Taliban will be reborn with a slight nod to moderation, not as much as Amanullah of course, or will themselves fail so miserably to bring peace and economic prosperity, that they too will be toppled.
As Thomas noted almost a century ago:
“The swaggering Afghan has good reason to swagger. The independence of his wild mountainous country, placed squarely between two jealous rivals, the Bear to the north and the Lion to the south, has remained intact… Yet the freedom-loving mountaineers —hiding in ravine and cave- later waged incessant guerilla warfare on all who passed their way.”
Afghanistan redux.
The online event “Under the Sails – Maritime Conversation on Trade and Seafaring. Perspectives from Iran and Kuwait” held on May 26, 2021 is now available to view on Youtube. This is a fascinating set of interviews with both Kuwaiti and Iranian ship captains of the past. It is well worth watching.
Music videos in the Arab world, and not least in Egypt, are at the same time widely viewed, popular and relatively understudied. They can reflect pressing contemporary issues, controversial political topics, and, which I aim to explore here, express idealised forms of gender performance. Evoking the literary character Si Al Sayed, created by Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, artist Tamer Hosny aims to reproduce a traditional masculinity, marked by a patriarchal position of men as “head of the household.”
Si Al Sayed is a reference to a literary and cinematic character, created by the late Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. The character is known for his controlling and tyrannical demeanor, thinking that his position as “the man of the house” means absolute authority, and because of this he is also a respected and revered character by many men. In fact, as odd as it may sound, the unequal marriage of Al Sayed is often seen as a model marriage. An example of this is the eponymously titled “Si Al Sayed” by Egyptian artist Tamer Hosny, who compares himself to Mr. Al Sayed, and featuring American rapper Snoop Dogg.
In an analysis of Egyptian actor Farid Shauqi, Walter Armbrust (2000) writes that the tough guy ideal took ultimate form as family patriarch and as national hero, and concludes that “it was a short step from defending the honor of one’s woman to defend the honor of the nation.” While conducting field studies in Egypt in 2014, aimed at exploring men and masculinities in Egyptian media, I reached a similar conclusion. In that study, the respondents associated masculinity as much with family obligations – men as providers and protectors – as they did with a national obligations – men serving the nation – emphasised through ideas of strength, courage, and honor. The position of “the patriarch”, as such, relates to both the family and the nation.
In the song and music video for “Si Al Sayed,” Tamer Hosny makes use of the literary figure, visually attempting to evoke this form of masculinity. As such, he also reproduces and reinforces an enactment of masculinity that relies on marital inequality, male dominance and female oppression.
The music video begins with a text explaining the title: ‘An Arabic term referred to an old movie character that likes to control everything in his life.’ This is followed by a camera panning down on Tamer Hosny sitting in an egg chair suspended from a high ceiling, swiping on an iPad, in front of a huge window overlooking Beverly Hills. Cut to a woman painting her toe-nails in bed, in another part of the house. She is wearing big bracelets, and the bed is covered with jewelry and fashion magazines. She yells loudly at Hosny, using a high pitch, scolding him for inviting a friend over, saying that she wanted them to go out to have sushi. Hosny answers by saying “sushik? Allah yiraam!” literally meaning “sushi? God have mercy!”
After dismissing his partner as crazy, he gets up to let in his friend, Snoop Dogg. They greet, and the woman, still in her bed, yells “TAKE YOUR FRIEND AND LEAVE RIGHT NOW!!!” Hosny goes through a series of facial expressions, beginning with a sort of shock, followed by embarrassed confusion. He looks at Snoop who nods at him in a way that asks “what are you going to do about this?” She yells again, and it is captioned: “TAMERRRR!!!!!!!!” He looks at Snoop again, who points and nods towards her room. Hosny raises his eyebrows, as if to say “I guess I need to do something,” and goes to speak with her.
In Egyptian cinema, there is a common trope of “masculinity in crisis,” wherein the protagonist has his masculinity challenged in some way, either through harassment from corrupt authority officials, an inability to provide for his family, or being controlled by his partner. This acts as a set-up for the protagonist to reassert himself, “as a man.” This introductory scenario in Hosny’s music video functions in the same way, portraying a masculinity in crisis.” Hosny is portrayed as a man without control of his partner, thus propping him up to reassert himself and “earn” his masculinity, by taking the role of the ultimate, authoritarian patriarch, symbolised through the character of Si Al Sayed.
There’s only one man in the house, baby. And he wears the pants, so dance. (Snoop Dogg, in “Si Al Sayed”)
Hosny repeats his claim that she is crazy, following it up by asking how she can talk to him “that loud in front of the guy?” She responds that she will talk to him however she likes, and that he should not act like he’s Si Al Sayed. The music starts playing and Hosny thinks for a short while, before the camera cuts to him locking the door to her room, leaving her inside. This is immediately followed by several shots showing a house party, apparently hosted by Tamer Hosny.
The music video reveals that behavior and expression can be used to assert a social position, or at least evoke a characteristic (authoritative masculinity) that was not there initially. This does not mean that masculinity can be reduced to behaviour and expression, but that they functions to reproduce popularly held ideas about what it “means to be a man.” In some ways, Hosny alludes to the already established role saayia’, meaning “bad boy,” or “tough guy.” On the one hand, his claim to masculinity is based on the control of his partner, which is not saayia’ since it means he is not independent, but on the other hand, he appears to represent himself as a womanizer, which definitely is related to saayia’. In the party scenes, he is surrounded by women, who are seemingly only there to affirm his sex appeal and heterosexuality, although his direct engagements with the women of the music video are few. He rarely touches anyone, and most of the attention is presented as one- sided, as admiration of Hosny from the side of the women. This could be a way of both highlighting the sex appeal of Hosny, while portraying him as an honest, faithful and monogamous man.
The typical crisis of masculinity, at least in Egyptian sha’abi cinema, is the inability for a man to support a family. Unemployment, poverty and the inability to make a living is used to represent this crisis. It could therefore be argued that the extravagance of Hosny’s party is meant as another confirmation of his masculinity, represented through economic power, and thus his ability to provide. His masculinity, in other words, is far from challenged in this regard, making the many signs of wealth into deliberate indices of social, masculine status, meant to counteract the initial crisis. Furthermore, this casts his partner as greedy or ungrateful for not appreciating his ability to provide for her economically. But, it also means that Hosny is clearly separated from sha’abi, blue collar masculinity. Instead, he chooses to aim for an upper class masculinity, part of a capitalist culture placing value in material things and an urbane or suave character.
Usage of English and the fact that the video is set in Beverly Hills are signs of cosmopolitanism, further separating the enactment from the Egyptian public, although the music video is clearly meant to address an Arab audience. Si Al Sayed is a decidedly Egyptian cultural reference, the dialogue is almost entirely in Arabic, even between Hosny and Snoop Dogg, and the lyrical references are more Egyptian than American. It is primarily in the Egyptian context that Hosny’s performance becomes meaningful, not least because of the reference to Si Al Sayed. As such, there seems to be an internal struggle, between the mass appeal of popular, sha’abi, low brow culture, and the flair, extravagance and idealisation of upper-class cosmopolitanism.
It could also be argued that the collaboration with Snoop Dogg, the setting in Los Angeles, and the mixture of English and Arabic (although with a clear preference for Arabic) can be seen as a struggle between an aim for a globalized audience while keeping the massive popularity and following amongst an Arabic-speaking audience. The alternative interpretation would be that these aspects appeals to an Americanised music scene, or acts to highlight Hosny’s successes, which in turn also works as an indexical sign of masculinity. Beverly Hills and Snoop Dogg, after all, do represent the very elite of the music industry, and what better way to highlight one’s economic/material power than to associate oneself with the elite?
In this manner, the representation of Hosny and his reiteration of the masculine ideals portrayed in the video also work within a cultural reproduction of class society. There is a relation between power and cultural ideals, as pop culture can work to naturalise power relations and making inequality seem normal, or even desirable. The association of Hosny’s material gains – which are shown off in the party thrown in his big LA mansion – with the success in resolving his crisis of masculinity, works to make the strive for a certain high-power social and economic position an essential part of him “being a man.” His position and status is reduced to cultural ideals of manhood rather than politics.
While Si Al Sayed, as a character, originally comes from the so-called Cairo Trilogy by Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, he is in the music video introduced as a movie character. Furthermore, there are few actual and direct references to the character in the music video, either visual or lyrical. Two things could be interpreted as references; the locking of his partner in her room – Si Al Sayed rarely let his wife leave the house – and the party itself – Si Al Sayed himself indulged in things he taught his family were forbidden, such as music and alcohol. However, the genre of the music video does not lend itself to the same structure as the literary genre, nor the cinematic genre to which the Cairo Trilogy movies.
While Si Al Sayed, as a character, originally comes from the so-called Cairo Trilogy by Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, he is in the music video introduced as a movie character. Furthermore, there are few actual and direct references to the character in the music video, either visual or lyrical. Two things could be interpreted as references; the locking of his partner in her room – Si Al Sayed rarely let his wife leave the house – and the party itself – Si Al Sayed himself indulged in things he taught his family were forbidden, such as music and alcohol. However, the genre of the music video does not lend itself to the same structure as the literary genre, nor the cinematic genre to which the Cairo Trilogy movies.
Therefore, Si Al Sayed could be seen as nothing more than a trope, a narrative tool that is used simply to drive forward the storyline of Hosny resolving a crisis of masculinity. But, as Si Al Sayed is associated with a certain type of authoritarian, patriarchal family-role, the usage of his character can be seen as a part in a larger process. Hosny associates himself with ideals and expressions considered connected to masculinity, which in turn makes it possible for him to make the claim ‘ana Si Al Sayed,’ meaning ‘I am Si Al Sayed.’ This, then, becomes the penultimate assertion of masculinity, being able to claim the same role as Si Al Sayed. This also means an approval and legitimization of this enactment of masculinity, which relies on the socially powerful position of men, both in public life and, more importantly, in private relationships with women. The result, of course, is a celebration of gender inequality.