The Arab video clip conspiracy

Faisal al Qassem channeled the aardvark last Tuesday with an episode of The Opposite Direction devoted entirely to the Nancy-Haifa Culture Wars.  The topic:  are the Arab video clip satellite television stations part of an intentional American-Saudi policy intended to destroy the minds, values, and political consciousness of Arab youth?    ( Yes, Saudi - and Qassem did not fail to point out the bizarre irony of the Saudis simultaneously promoting rigid Wahhabi Islamism and vacuous sex-driven popular culture.)

Arguing the case for such a conspiracy was Salim Azouz, columnist for al-Quds al-Arabi, who offered this irresistable argument:   it was Saudi princes who launched these provocative, entertainment-oriented satellite television stations beginning in the early 1990s, right after Operation Desert Storm - what other explanation could there possibly be for this other than such a Saudi-American conspiracy to transform and destroy Arab and Muslim identity?   He derided the video clip culture as "American ideas with Arab funding" and as an attempt to "impose American culture on the region."   He insisted on the centrality of Saudi funding, even arguing that the opaque nature of finances in Lebanon meant that even nominally Lebanese stations were probably also part of the Saudi stable. 

Arguing against was Ramzi al Najjar, who seemed baffled by Azouz's reasoning and pointed out that things like globalization, technology, and market-driven consumption were transforming the entire world, and that no Saudi-American conspiracy was needed to explain the emergence of these stations.  He also pointed out that you see the exact same arguments in the West about the corrosive impact of sex-drenched popular culture, which makes it hard to argue that such popular culture is an American "weapon against Islam." 

They argued a bit about whether TV was forbidden by Islam (they agreed that it was not), and they agreed that sex was okay.  But the difference, for Azouz, is that stations like Rotana (the leading purveyor of these video clips) are "100% sex stations," pure pornography beamed unstoppably right into everyone's bedroom, which invades our homes and our streets and our very beings and our precious bodily fluids (okay, I made that last one up, but the rest is verbatim). 

Overall, the discussion itself fell a little flat, didn't really live up to my hopes - but the very fact that Faisal al-Qassem devoted a program to the Nancy-Haifa Culture Wars is one more strong piece of evidence for their growing political relevance. 

Comments

[Nur al-Cubicle]

Music and Politics.

You know, in the rave scene in the west, Paul VanDyke has a disc called "The Politics of Dance." As I observed these underground dance parties, it seemed to me that this cultural space was chock full of political content (in addition to the hedonism): anti-Big Brother, anti-racism, anti-corporatism, anti-class wars, anti-militarist, anti-paternalist, anti-authoritarian, pro-feminist, pro-community, pro-gay, pro-socialism, pro-science, pro-technology, pro-secular and mocking of the War on Terror. No wonder the fire marshalls and the police were deployed to shut them down.

As to the impact of the Nancies and the Haifas on the Arab world (only lived in it for while), it looks more like Donna Summer vs. Cher (early 80s) to me, promoted by the music industry. It's not completely genuine, but from what I've seen of the videos, they seem to be pro-youth, pro-technology, pro-feminine, anti-patriarchal and shyly libertine--all of which are political issues nibbling away on authoritarianism. What more they do as they percolate through Arab society, well, I'm in the dark. I'll have to wait for the AA book.

[SP]

What I love about Rotana is the way they stop for prayers - so you have your writhing, eyelid-batting pouty Leb Sluts on one minute, and the next a shot of Makka with the call to prayer intoned in the background.

Did the panelists discuss non-Leb Slut clips on Rotana? What about all those the-path-of-true-love-never-ran-smooth storyline videos, mostly by male singers, where the woman usually ends up crying at some point? And there's one with a self-sacrificing mother storyline, where she weeps for her son in a way that truly supports Arab values :)

[plover]

When I read this, I was reading it aloud to a friend of mine, and halfway through the second paragraph I said, "Would somebody just send them a copy of Dr. Strangelove already, before they start complaining that their precious bodily fluids are being corrupted..." Little did I know, it was already too late!

And of course, now I'm stuck with the suspicion that I think like an aardvark...