To return to topic:
I've been idly pondering why the coverage (rather than the fact) of
this ME Reality Poetry Show bothers me a little. We wouldn't have
heard about it if the outspoken woman poet hadn't earned herself a
fatwa from nutcase Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia, although it is
broadcast out of the United Arab Emirates.. (I almost typed Saudi
America - take a letter Dr Freud...) The story fits a western
narrative about Islamic fundamentalism and Arabic primitivism without
quite challenging it. And of course in the context of the msm, an X
Factor using poetrybinstead of trash pop is quaint, with a subtext
that this shows how backward these people are. It's reported as if the
Middle East is a monocultural place, a single entity, instead of the
complex mix of cultures and nationalities that it is.
It would be interesting to know what Arabic poets thought about the
show, say, but there's been no coverage of that. Which leaves people
like us guessing, although you can more or less scry what the poetry
is through what's available.But the coverage of Arabic culture here is
monotonal, and always inflected through our politics.
For example, last Saturday an Iraqi friend was here for lunch. He was
involved in Shi'ite protests against Saddam and was forced to leave
Iraq in 1991, after he was shot during a protest and refused a
position at the Iraqi National Theatre. He's ended up in Melbourne
with his wife and two daughters, and is making a life as an actor
here, although of course he is mainly cast as a refugee or a
terrorist. He is, btw, a _very_ fine actor. His wife is studying
social work, his eldest daughter is at university studying philosophy
and his youngest daughter is in her final year of school and wants to
be a diplomat.
He went back to Baghdad last year for three months (he's doing a
documentary on the Jewish contribution to Iraqi music, after he
discovered that a lot of his favourite Iraqi music was in fact
Jewish). To his alarm, his daughters went out all the time (he was
thinking of bombs at ice cream vans), but he said they were having
such a good time he couldn't stop them. Which kind of challenged my
preconceptions about Baghdad... He loves being in Melbourne, but his
wife is homesick. When he left Iraq, his family spent several years in
Lebanon, where he was teaching in an international school of artists.
He said when his children first came here, aged around 10, they found
it difficult, because in Lebanon they had been surrounded by such a
stimulating cultural environment. As, in fact, did he, although he
doesn't say so in so many words. He wants to start a company using a
pool of excellent and underused Arabic actors here that produces
contemporary Arabic plays. Of which, I realised, I know precisely
nothing.
There's a massive complexity there of which most of us know almost
nothing, and media coverage tends to concentrate on stuff that
reinforces rather than challenges our preconceptions. Well, surprise
surprise. Still, I guess that's what bothers me.
xA
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Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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