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By
Leah
Ida Harris and Nader K. Uthman
“Any
work that I do depends on the will of the audience.” (Ibrahim
Nasr, Akhbar al-Nuguum, 433, 1/20/2001)
Introduction
Over the past few years, a growing trend in television is the
seeming willingness to push the envelope of so-called “good
taste.” While this is not a new phenomenon, we are witnessing,
on a global scale, a mushrooming in the number of television
shows that use the transgression of established norms to increase
viewership. America’s local rendition of this global trend
takes either the form of “reality TV” shows such
as Big Brother, Survivor, Fear Factor and The Jamie
Kennedy Experiment, or MTV’s Punk’d
and Boiling Points—all of which test normative
boundaries of socially-acceptable behavior, sex, violence, and
physical endurance to shock and titillate viewers.
Regardless
of their genre (comedy or suspense), these shows often serve
as a vehicle for exploring sensitive social issues. For example,
the South African, post-Apartheid version of the show Big
Brother was able to capitalize on lingering race issues
by placing blacks, whites, and bi-racial participants in the
Big Brother living space. In Turkey, a reality TV show
that aired for the first time in 2001 brought attention to the
country’s massive fiscal crisis by “challenging
two middle-class couples to see who could survive the longest
on Turkey's far-below-poverty-level average minimum wage of
$84 a month.”(1) As noted by Mark Lynch else where in
this issue, reality TV came relatively late to the Arab world,
but has exploded over the last decade, generating a whirlwind
of controversy.(2)
This essay
will discuss the phenomenon of reality TV as a mirror into local
social issues by analyzing Al Camera Al Khafeya (Hidden
Camera), one of Egypt’s most successful television shows
in recent years and one of the earliest manifestations of the
reality TV phenomenon in the Arab world. In particular, the
analysis will focus on the Ramadan 2000 episodes featuring actor
Ibrahim Nasr as “Zakiya Zakariya,” arguably the
most outrageous and subversive character in all of the show’s
various incarnations.
A
Note on the Show’s History
An admitted copy of its American counterpart, the program was
first broadcast in 1983. The show was directed by Tarek Zaghloul
and presented by the established Egyptian comic actor Fouad
El-Mohandess and was initially aired once a week. Over the years,
several actors played the lead role, including Mohammad Gabr
and Ahmad Shouman. In 1996, the comic actor Ibrahim Nasr took
over as both presenter and protagonist, boosting the show’s
popularity to “an all-time high.”(3) An indication
of the show’s success is the fact that it was moved from
a weekly time slot to take the all-important post-Iftaar time
slot during the month of Ramadan, just after the daily fast
has been broken. During these post-Iftaar hours, huge numbers
of households watch television and hence this period has become
a prime marketing time, during which advertising rates rise
precipitously. According to an article in the English-language
Al Ahram Weekly, to pull off his wacky stunts without
being recognized, Nasr had hired an American makeup artist to
the tune of Egyptian LE 500,000 to provide him with a different
character for each taping of the show. Apparently, his previous
acting experience as a professional imitator of the stars allowed
him to “slip into 30 different skins—one for each
night of Ramadan.”(4)
In Ramadan
of 2000, Ibrahim Nasr introduced the character of Zakiya Zakariya,
a portly, garishly made-up woman who first appears to the viewer
through a transformation process: As lighthearted, playful tunes
play in the background, the credits showed Nasr being dressed
as Zakiya in all her finery of synthetic jowls and cheeks, widely-spaced
and protruding upper teeth, heavy layers of outrageous makeup—including
balloon-like crimson lips—a jet-black, fringed wig and
impossibly-thick, Coke-bottle glasses. A Reuters article
described the character of Zakiya Zakariya as “Egypt's
most frightening woman.” (Reuters, September
7, 2001). As a hostess, she wore a modest jacket with a long
skirt; as a beggar in a hotel, she appeared in rags, a scarf
on her head and even black-face. As an “ordinary”
vegetable-stand proprietress, she dressed in baladii
(countrywoman’s) clothing. Her name derives from the word
zakii, or intelligent, and she propelled the plot through
a variety of devices including instigation and distraction,
as well as duping the unwitting people who appeared on the show.
With the
introduction of the Zakiya Zakariya character, the show’s
popularity exceeded even its own lofty precedent. Reruns of
the show were shown during Ramadan and beyond. Through satellite
television broadcasts, Zakiya Zakariya became known throughout
the greater Arab world. In 2000 and 2001, in cities like Cairo,
Jerusalem and Damascus, her mischievous quotations were on everyone’s
lips: “bikh!”(“boo!”) "qalbak
khasaaya” (your heart is a little head of lettuce)
and "inta murtabit?” (i.e., “are you
available for a romantic relationship?” as asked by the
large, male, and frighteningly garish Zakiya-in-drag). In Ramadan
of 2001, a Zakiya Zakariya doll was mass-produced, spouting
these same phrases. Yet another indicator of the character’s
success was the spin-off feature-length film Zakiya Zakariya
fi-l-Parleman, which debuted in 2001 as one of the films
of 'Eid al-Fitr, the holiday of breaking the fast, signaling
the end of Ramadan and the time of year reserved for the biggest
Egyptian blockbusters. The show and its main character became
so popular, in fact, that the original spin-off play Zakiya
Zakariya and the Cruel Gang “has been followed by
yet another, Zakiya Zakariya Challenges Sharon. For
three years, the biggest TV star in Egypt was a drag queen.
What
Will Zakiya Zakariya Do?
During Ramadan
in the winter of 2000, an episode always began with a seated
Ibrahim Nasr, as a man, quickly introducing the show’s
setting and theme, often relying on a piece of folk wisdom.
In one case it was the aphorism, “illi yigrahni wa
yadawiinii ahsan min illi biyigrahn i wa ma yadawwiiniish. Da
sah walla la?/He who hurts me and heals me is better than
the one who hurts me and does not heal me. Right?” Already
there is an implied conflict that the show will heal or resolve
for the viewer. This brief opening scene always ended with the
question “what will Zakiya Zakariya do?” or the
invitation, “let’s see what Zakiya Zakariya does.”
This functioned as the invitation and initiation for the viewer
into the world played by Zakiya Zakariya’s rules. From
the very start, the show was presented as a communal rite, a
process by which the audience was invited to witness, sympathize
with and participate in the unfolding of each show.
The second
and primary portion of the show featured the escapades of Zakiya
Zakariya as she interacted with her unwitting “guests.”
Like its’ American counterpart, Candid Camera, Al
Camera Al Khafeya secretly taped an interaction between
Zakiya Zakariya and ordinary people who happened to stumble
into a specific setting—a hotel, restaurant, clothing
shop, or movie theater. Most often, a conflict was staged between
Zakiya as proprietress/manager and her clientele, such as Zakiya
the ticket seller telling movie-goers that they have to come
back another day to see the end of a film (because only one
reel has arrived at the theater) or Zakiya the pharmacist insisting
on preparing medication from scratch in front of customers in
a pharmacy, only to “accidentally” set fire to the
chemicals while the camera shows everyone fleeing for their
lives. The camera always recorded Zakiya, the mistress of instigation,
pushing the guests of the show to a shouting match or an actual
physical confrontation instead of simply asking for the owner
or registering their dissatisfaction with the service.
Each episode
usually featured four distinct variations on the same skit.
The entire structure was set up in the episode’s first
encounter; in general, successive encounters were shown to the
audience from the point at which the participant’s patience
with Zakiya’s antics had been exhausted. The show functioned
through the audience's sometimes uncomfortable fascination with
how far normative social standards can be challenged for the
purposes of entertainment. The setting of each program was established
in moments, while the plot was propelled by what Zakiya said
or did to her guests and how they reacted to her. In the midst
of a dispute, she would turn to the husband of the couple she
was confronting and ask innocently, “Are you available?”
to prod his wife into a screaming match. Other times, she would
stop a polite complaint from a guest who addressed her as “madame”
and insists “anissa, lau takarramt” (“That's
mademoiselle, if you please!”).
The settings
of the show spanned the diversity of modern Cairene experience—the
boutique, the restaurant, the city street, the kiosk, the flower
shop, the pharmacy and the fakihani or fruit-vendor.
Zakiya was often a brash, overbearing waitress or manager who
was too busy on the phone—talking to her fiancee “Beeso”
or otherwise—to pay attention to her customers’
needs or to resolve the disasters that inevitably occurred.
In an episode called “Tabarru`at (Donations)”
a clothing shop customer wanted to pay for an item of clothing,
and Zakiya Zakariya, chatting away on the phone, distractedly
instructs them to place their money in a wooden box, labeled
“Donations for the Exterior Decoration of the Store.”
As the audience, we can see the label on the box, but the customers
cannot. We watch as the customers patiently await Zakiya the
shopgirl to finish her conversation. Zakiya thanks them for
their donation, then goes on to show the customer the label
on the box and insist they pay for their purchases separately.
Zakiya’s
terrible customer service is not merely a reflection of the
exasperating situations that the modern consumer often faces;
it also sets up a kind of “symbolic inversion” which
reverses conventional social codes.(5) The skit inverts the
expectations of the consumer vis-à-vis the provider of
services, and more generally, codes of acceptable social interactions—this
can extend to comedic treatments of class and gender, to which
we will turn shortly. An argument between Zakiya and the customers
often included complicit actors who serve as a foil for the
duped customers. In the “donations” episode, for
example, one such actor wandered up to the counter while Zakiya
insisted that the customers should be proud to fund the store’s
redecoration and proclaimed enthusiastically, “I'd like
to donate towards the decoration.” This is, of course,
a dramatic device designed to increase the intensity of the
exchange between the guests of the show and its star, in addition
to the various quips and comments Zakiya herself made in order
to instigate the customers’ anger.
When the
argument reached its peak, “she” removed her heavy
black wig, revealing the balding head of Ibrahim Nasr, and bellowed
“fii eh?” (in this context, translated
loosely as “You got a problem?”) in deep, masculine
tones. The guests of the show often screamed, backed up slowly
from Zakiya sans wig, or simply ran away. They were
most often horrified because they were confronted with what
they least expected—this was no ordinary woman and they
are unsure what to do with her. Sometimes this is the moment
in which the participants’ righteous anger was neutralized
and the conflict came to an abrupt end; other times, the physical
violence had obviously escalated beyond Ibrahim Nasr’s
control and the scene was abruptly cut off.
The main
portion of the show represented Zakiya’s world as an alternative
reality, one that created a dramatic rift between Zakiya and
her victims. This rift unfolded as Zakiya challenged all the
viewers’ expectations of class, gender, and locality.
The show was not content to hit and run. Instead, it sought
to return to a moral high ground and re-establish the collective
aspect invoked in the opening segment during which the fatherly
actor Ibrahim Nasr, sporting his trademark beret, talked directly
to the viewers and said, “Let’s see what Zakiya
Zakariya will do.”
The rift
was healed after the wig was removed, Zakiya Zakariya became
Ibrahim Nasr once again and cordial relations between victim
and offender were re-established. When this happened the wigless
Nasr was slapped on the back and applauded by the laughing people
he had just duped. He explains that the entire encounter has
been taped and then asks if the show has the permission to air
the skit. Without fail, the answer is “zii`!”
(broadcast it!).
Here we
find not only plot resolution but moral amelioration, for the
ways in which the victim has been “wronged” throughout
the skit are stripped of their confrontational character and
re-cast as harmless props, or all in good fun. What might have
been offensive or shocking now became palimpsest for the entire
skit to be recast not just as acceptable, but necessary. Its
instigations, its duping of innocent bystanders or exploiting
people’s good nature all became comedic devices sealed
with the approval of its recent victims. Formally, these devices
propel the plot and guide and intensify the viewer’s reactions.
In this way, the show could negotiate cultural mores and interrogate
gender and class lines—if it was perceived as stepping
over the line or duping and exploiting people, the signification
of the final scene was one of resolution and the recuperation
of what had been transgressed against unsuspecting “guests”
of the show.
Al
Camera Al Khafeya: A Ramadan Event
The program’s
strategic return to standards of decency and morality is especially
significant because Al Camera Al Khafeya was a Ramadan
program, featured in the highly coveted, post-Iftaar time slot.
During Ramadan, the transition from fasting to non-fasting time
creates a liminal space which Egyptian programmers have long
used to play with conventional standards of social propriety,
as Walter Armbrust has pointed out.(6) It is in this context
that Al Camera Al Khafeya appeared to violate standards
of moderation and propriety associated with the observance of
Ramadan. The program illustrates the contradictory practices
of excessive consumption and modesty that may, in some parts
of the Arab and Islamic world, co-exist with practices of observing
of Ramadan.
In fact,
critics of the program have accused Ibrahim Nasr of “harassing
and mocking Egyptians for 30 days every Ramadan.” Nasr
responded:
We have something called April Fool and that has existed
in Egypt for a long time. It’s funny, right? Is it harassment,
or is it just for laughs? It’s the same thing with Hidden
Camera. It’s just for laughs. And I also ask people’s
permission before I broadcast the thing. This year over ten
people said no, and I didn’t include them. And aside from
this we’re a very friendly people. We love joking around
with each other. People joke around with you in the street all
the time and they don’t even know you …the Egyptian
sense of humor is unique, you won’t find it anywhere else
in the world …” (7)
Thus Nasr
rhetorically deployed the popularity of the show to address
and reconcile the so-called manipulation or exploitation of
innocent Cairenes. The ultimate indication that everything was
right with the world was the consent of those who had just been
abused and manipulated. The victimizer, Nasr as Zakiya, was
then vindicated once again as a “good guy.” One
letter to the editor, printed in Al Ahram Weekly, praised
“Nasr's insistence on having his guests' permission before
broadcasting the episode.”
Class on Camera
Al
Camera Al Khafeya cleverly exploited the very deep class
conflicts in Egyptian society. Such conflicts are by no means
new but have grown particularly protracted in the era of globalization—more
specifically since the days of Sadat and his infitaah
(open door) policy. The economist Galal Amin and others have
analyzed the gradual disappearance of the Egyptian middle classes,
leaving an ever-widening gap between the fabulously wealthy
and the destitute.(8) In Al Camera Al Khafeya, therefore,
the show's setting could be a posh restaurant or a street corner
fruit-stand, giving the audience a microcosm of class interaction
in Egypt. Zakiya duping a fabulously-dressed, upper-class woman
was a hailing gesture for the poorer classes who may feel exploited
in a society where less than half of one percent control the
country's wealth. It was also a chance for the upper classes
to see themselves lampooned. As one man told Zakiya, “You
think you can take advantage of me because I'm wearing a suit?”
Zakiya's
interactions with poorer classes and with people from the countryside
did not spare them from her ploys, but such an interaction was
a device that hailed those viewers while simultaneously placing
them on the same footing as wealthier Egyptians, at least within
the context of the show. In one episode, a man tells Zakiya,
in the midst of their confrontation, that he is a factory worker,
that he works with his hands and cannot afford to be cheated.
At the end of another episode, after removing his wig, Nasr
reveals that he is from Assiut, in Upper Egypt and tells a man
from the country “ihna garaayib” (“We're
related”), placing the star and the guest in the same
sphere, inviting them to laugh at themselves and each other
as if they were equals because of their common background.
An episode
titled “The Beggar in the Hotel” was an illustration
of how the show used class irony as a humorous device. In this
episode, Zakiya Zakariya was a shehhaata (beggar) in
blackface, who had somehow gotten into an upscale hotel and
proceeded to go door to door with two filthy children in tow,
who cry and scream on demand. There is a double irony here:
first, that such a person would be able to gain access to the
hotel and second, that she did not take “no” for
an answer from the annoyed guests. She even used her bulk to
bar the guests from closing the door on her and her children,
turning established class roles upside down. To make matters
worse, when the guests try to solicit assistance from a hotel
employee (a complicit character) he acts of course as if nothing
is wrong with such behavior. One young woman duped in the scene
nearly explodes with anger, screaming “Are we in the street
or what?!” What made such a scene funny for the average
Egyptian was the revenge that Zakiya Zakariya inflicted on the
upper crust. When the hotel guests ask her how she can beg in
a hotel she replies that she has bought the rights to be “the
only beggar in the hotel.” When asked what she is doing,
she replies in an educated register of Modern Standard Arabic,
rather than colloquial, that she is “seeking alms.”
The amazed woman she is duping screams back “You're speaking
standard Arabic?” Zakiya thus exploited the various registers
of the Arabic language to highlight class divisions and the
sense of appropriateness or class-entitlement that accompanies
such divisions in society.
An interesting
manifestation of class became apparent in the final segment
of this particular show, when we witness the interaction between
the famous actor Ibrahim Nasr and the “guests.”
On the linguistic level, guests of all classes refer to Nasr
with the honorific “hadritak,” establishing
a relationship of respect with the star that had just duped
them. In all cases, the recent victims behaved with gushing
admiration toward a rich and famous television star.
Gender and Locale
The following
quote by Ibrahim Nasr, the comic who plays Zakiya Zakariya,
explains how he played on particularly Egyptian stereotypes
based on class, gender and region in creating the drama that
is Hidden Camera:
I have to know how to talk to every different type of person.
You can’t speak to a person from above, you have to speak
as an equal. From the clothes you’re wearing, the colors,
the jewelry, I can tell where you’re from, what sporting
club you’re headed to, whether you’re originally
from Giza but are now from Heliopolis, meaning that from your
composition and your smell, I can tell you’re from two
places. Someone might be wearing a very chic suit but I’ll
be able to smell that he’s from outside Cairo …
It’s to the point that I can say so and so is from Zagazig,
Mansoura, Damanhour, or Beni Suef. And I know exactly when each
region’s character gets upset. And that the women of Beni
Suef have short tempers. And the men have long tempers. And
the women of Beni Suef are stronger than their men…”(9)
The show
depended on a variety of Egyptian stereotypes, those that have
been historically portrayed in film and television and those
identified by anthropologists such as Sawsan El-Messiri, who
describeds the concept of ibn al-balad, and bint
al-balad (native sons and daughters) as constructs of “authentic
Egyptians,” juxtaposed with fellahin (peasants)
and the upper class, the latter traditionally seen as part of
a foreign ruling class.(10) In particular, the show mobilized
a variety of popular stereotypes of the bint al-balad,
with Zakiya Zakariya displaying a particular mix of class and
gender that was familiar and symbolized a particular notion
of authenticity. As Armbrust notes, the “authenticity”
of the bint al-balad is only salient by virtue of its
contrast with other notions of identity; Nasr as bint-al-balad
Zakiya Zakariya uses a time-honored device for creating a contrastive
language that works to emphasize class differences through the
social diacritica of dress, speech, and mannerisms.
In one episode,
Zakiya would wear a typical baladi dress of colorful
pattern, the sheer black headscarf (malaaya laff),
topped off with a brightly colored scarf festooned with jangling
coins. Another of Zakiya’s character inspirations was
the middle class working woman with upper-class pretensions,
dressed in a suit with sparkling trim and sporting long, red,
dagger-like fingernails. Her makeup and clothing as well as
her actions were all meant to foreground and interrogate female
social roles. She could compare her jewelry to that of the ladies
with whom she interacted or talk about her boyfriend—satirizing
women's roles, pushing them to their breaking point, and beyond.
Notably, she never actually assumed the role of an upper-class
woman, thus preserving the widest possible appeal, especially
among the Egyptian audience.
Drag is
a comedic vehicle used to exploit a variety of social roles
to catalyze the confrontation between Zakiya and the show’s
“guests.” According to Nasr, “the producers
of Al Camera Al Khafeya noticed my ability to emulate
different kinds of women. They decided that I should play a
woman's role, and I was struck by the desire to appear onscreen
that way and alhamdulilaah, I succeeded.” The
character of Zakiya lampooned a feminine concern with youth,
beauty, and dignity—not only was her garb a sarcastic
rendition of these concerns, but so were her hyper-feminized
movements and gestures and her sugary sweet, affected voice.
She also attempted to humiliate obviously younger women by saying
“inti zayy ukhti al-kabiira” (you’re
like my older sister). Not only would Zakiya interrupt a customer
who had just called her "madame", to scream that she
should be called “mademoiselle, bleese!”
She would also scream at men who attempt to restrain her from
running away or taking their belongings, saying “A man
touching a woman? Oh horrid day!” and “I never!”
On the other hand, she would behave in a flirtatious or sexually
aggressive manner towards the males with whom she interacted,
often launching into a prolonged monologue on her dating history.
In one episode, she kissed a man on the cheek while helping
him try on a jacket, leaving a massive red lip-print, and then
feigned ignorance of any offense. She would distract men by
asking if they were engaged or married, especially in front
of their wives. When they cursed or screamed, she admonished
them that they should not scream at a lady. When she screamed
absurdities such as “bikh!” (boo!) at people
or told them to hush by saying “ta-ta-taaa-ta!”
they were unsure how to react to a woman in a service profession
who broke social norms of politeness.
Political
Context
It is notable
that the show first aired in the Ramadan following the start
of the second Intifada—a period characterized by an enormous
public outpouring of sympathy for the Palestinian cause. It
seems that the show’s producers bound Zakiya Zakariya’s
popularity to Egyptian anger towards Israeli prime minister
Ariel Sharon. This is most explicitly seen in the play Zakiya
Zakariya Challenges Sharon, which was a huge hit with Egyptian
theatre-goers. The play’s chief antagonist is Haroun,
who persecutes an orphan named Nidal (which means “struggle”
in Arabic)—killing her parents, destroying her home and
finally sending her out to a shelter for street children. Zakiya
emerges as the savior of the protagonist Nidal and leads all
the children in a battle to defeat the evil Haroun and regain
Nidal’s rights.
Playwright
Shamekh Al-Shandawayli made a conscious decision to change the
play’s characters and elements of the plot to reflect
the Palestinian issue, and even added in new scenes and dialogue
based on the daily developments of the Intifada. According to
Raed Labib, director of the show and the play, the play proved
that “a comedy can not only make people happy through
humor, but also solve some of the most dangerous issues in their
lives and could be more convincing than resounding political
statements.”(11) We see this in the context of a specifically
Egyptian cultural space that simultaneously embraces an absurd
and serious treatment of the Palestinian cause. Zakiya Zakariya
Challenges Sharon is part of a larger sha’abi
or popular trend in Egyptian “Intifada” inspired
culture, comprising everything from the Abu Ammar brand
of potato chips which features Arafat’s visage (for each
bag sold, a donation is made to the Palestinian cause) to the
wildly popular anthem by sha’abi musician Sha’ban
Abd Al-Rahim entitled “Bakrah Isra’iil/I Hate Israel.”(12)
No one considers these cultural productions to be high art.
Zakiya Zakariya Challenges Sharon and songs like “I
Hate Israel” can be seen as part of a sub-genre of “political
exploitation” works, the seriousness of which can vary
considerably. Works such as Zakiya Zakariya Challenges Sharon
rarely, if ever, overtly criticize official Egyptian policies
towards Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Egyptian
political commentator Mohamed al-Sayed Said speculated that
the Egyptian government probably saw Zakiya Zakariya Challenges
Sharon as “as healthy Sharon-bashing and a release
valve at a tense time.”(13) Reality TV in general does
little to challenge the social, political, or economic status
quo—as Mark Lynch rightly points out in this issue of
TBS, “Cultural destruction or democratic salvation are
rather weighty burdens to place on televised variety shows.”(14)
Conclusion
After several
years of overwhelming popularity, however, the Zakiya Zakariya
character ran her course with Egyptian audiences. Subsequent
iterations of the show have preserved the reality TV show genre—in
which duping the unsuspecting is the main plot vehicle—while
Zakiya has made way for a whole new assortment of protagonists.
After Zakiya’s run, starting in 2002, audiences were introduced
to the new show, Hussein Ala El Hawa (Hussein Live)
starring the “distinguished and suave” comic Hussein
El Imam. El Imam returned in 2003 with a new show, Hussein
Fe El Studio (Hussein in the Studio). According to the
show’s official Web site, for Ramadan 2003, El Imam “combined
the sitcom and ‘prank show’ in one” to form
the program Hussein Ala El Nasia (Hussein on the Corner).
The show starred four regulars in addition to the familiar Al
Camera Al Khafeya format.(15) The format varied again in
2004, when the show took on the name Taxi, a more G-rated
version of the sexually explicit American (Home Box Office)
Taxicab Confessions. Taxi featured an actor
picking up unsuspecting passengers, supported by a crew of instigating
regulars; scenarios ranged from radio announcements that aliens
had landed in Egypt's main square to the driver getting driving
lessons via his cell phone.(16)
The latest
rendition of Al Camera Al Khafeya was broadcast during
Ramadan 2005 and features an “unknown prankster”
by the name of Ismail Farghali. It promises “the best
and worst of our funny city”—treating Cairo as a
microcosm for all of Egypt.(17) According to a plot synopsis
available on the show’s Web site (where video clips and
other treats are available to the viewing public by dialup subscription),
the intended hilarity is consistent with the show’s predecessors,
again spanning the modern Cairene experience with episodes taking
place at the dentist’s, the dry cleaner’s and the
cinema. The show even brought back, almost verbatim, the Zakiya
Zakariya “Hotel Beggar” scenario—although
this time, the beggar is the mustachioed Farghali, exploiting
stereotypes by wearing a Sa’idi (Upper Egypt)
style gallabiya. According to the show’s Web
site:
You
are staying in a nice hotel with your wife. Someone knocks on
the door. You answer and are amazed to find a beggar asking
for money. You can't believe that the hotel management would
allow such a thing to happen. You tell the beggar that you are
going to the management. Imagine your surprise when he knocks
on your door once again but this time with hotel management!(18)
For those viewers who missed the post-Iftaar broadcasts during
Ramadan 2005, complete episodes of the show are also offered
on the Web site via a free dial-up number. The variety of materials
available online, as well as the Internet’s potential
to reach ever-increasing swathes of the population (via the
Internet café and the sharing of computers) can only
mean more exposure for the Al Camera Al Khafeya and
its manifold reincarnations.
In the final
analysis, the show Al Camera Al Khafeya and its outrageous
characters are a local manifestation of a global trend in TV
that pushes the boundaries of good taste. Such breaches in social
convention are regularly decried as part of a generalized assault
on Arab culture conveyed through globalized media. However,
each of these shows in fact illustrates important currents in
popular and consumer culture, all of which can, on the contrary,
help us to understand local concerns at their very source.
Nader
K. Uthman studies and teaches modern Arabic language,
literature and culture in New York.
Leah
Harris received an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown
University in 2000. Her poetry has been published in Mizna:
Prose, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arab America, and she was
a recipient of the American University in Cairo's Madlyn Lamont
Literary Award for the Short Story in Arabic in 2001.
NOTES
1. John Cooley. “Cold Turkey: Turkish Reality TV Show
Reflects Country's Minimum Wage Woes.”
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/turkish_reality_010905.html
(Accessed October 27, 2002)
2. Mark Lynch, “Reality is Not Enough: The politics of
Arab Reality TV.” Transnational Broadcasting Studies
(Volume 2).
3. From the Camera Khafeya website: www.camerakhafeya.com/history.php
(Accessed 9 October 2005).
Tarek Atiya. “Ibrahim Nasr: Braking for Love.” Al-Ahram
Weekly On-line 14-20 January 1999.
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/1999/412/people.htm (Accessed
December 18, 2001).
5. 5 Barbara Babcock describes “symbolic inversion,”
as “expressive behavior that inverts, contradicts, abrogates,
or proposes alternatives to commonly held cultural, linguistic,
artistic, religious and political codes.” See Barbara
Babcock, Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and
Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978.
6. Walter Armbrust, “Synchronizing Watches: The State,
the Consumer, and Sacred Time in Ramadan Television.”
In Birgit Meyer and Annaleis Moors eds., Religion, Media
and the Public Sphere. Indiana University Press, 2005.
7. Tarek Atiya, “Ibrahim Nasr: Breaking for Love,”
Al Ahram Weekly On-line 14-20 January 1999.
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/1999/412/people.htm (accessed
December 18, 2001).
8. Galal Amin, Whatever happened to the Egyptians? : Changes
in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present. Cairo;New
York: American Univ. in Cairo Press, 2000.)
9. Tarek Atiya, “Ibrahim Nasr: Breaking for Love,”
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 14-20 January 1999.
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/1999/412/people.htm (accessed
December 18, 2001).
10. Sawsan El-Messiri, Ibn al-Balad: A Concept of Egyptian
Identity (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978),
pp. 2-3.
11. Seif Nisrawi. “New Comedy Reflects Anti-Israel Mood.”
Middle East Times (August 17, 2001).
12. It is worth noting that Sha’baan Abd Al-Rahim lampoons
Al Camera Al Khafeya on the same album.
13. Hammond, Andrew. “Play Pits Cross-Dresser Against
‘Dr. Evil’ Sharon.” Reuters. September
8, 2001.
14. Lynch, Mark. “Reality is Not Enough.” Transnational
Broadcasting Studies (Winter 2005): pp??
15. See http://www.camerakhafeya.com/history.php (Accessed 9
October 2005)
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. See http://www.tareknour.tv/programs/camera2005/episode/?id=1751.
(Accessed 9 October 2005)
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