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By
Marc Lynch
The neo-conservative
Weekly Standard has called it “the best hope
of little Americas developing in the Middle East.”(1)
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman enthused that
it was the closest thing to democracy the Arab world has ever
seen.(2) Sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Suadais, imam of the Grand
Mosque of Mecca, has denounced them as “weapons of mass
destruction that kill values and virtue.” Yusuf al-Qaradawi,
the main Islamist face of Al Jazeera and one of the most popular
Islamist clerics today, has complained that they “are
instruments of cultural and intellectual invasion of the Ummah.”(3)
What could possibly produce such an unlikely consensus? Only
one thing: the threat posed by reality television to the Arab
status quo. The first two commentators, of course, view such
a threat as a good thing. Hotly contested elections and the
casual portrayal of men and women living together—along
with the demand for what the Weekly Standard jokingly
called “the unalienable right to watch bad TV”—posed
a serious challenge to the conservative, repressive Arab status
quo. For the latter two, the challenge of reality TV lay in
its affront to conservative morality, as well as its seduction
of Muslim youth away from politics and prayer.
Sexy singer Haifa Wehbe gets her manicured
hands dirty on the popular LBC reality TV
show Al Wadi (The Farm). |
Whenever
such a consensus appears, it is probably wrong. Reality TV poses
less of a threat to Islamism than the rhetoric of Islamist leaders
might suggest, and its contributions to Arab democratization
are rather more ambivalent than its enthusiasts might hope.
But reality TV, and the extraordinary amount of political commentary
it has generated, offers a window into the cultural politics
of an Arab world in ferment. A June episode of Al Jazeera’s
most popular political talk show, The Opposite Direction,
asked whether reality TV and music video clips should be seen
as an American-Saudi conspiracy to destroy Arab and Islamic
political unity. An LBC talk show debated the choice between
Star Academy and Bin Laden. Dozens of op-eds have filled
the pages of the elite press, with virtually every leading national
and Pan-Arab pundit offering views on the meaning of Star Academy.
Voting results on shows such as Al Wadi (The Farm)
are routinely reported as straight news stories. The liberal
Egyptian daily Al Masry Al Youm took time out of a
contentious domestic political scene to complain bitterly about
the selection process for Star Academy 3 (not even
its outcome, or any show which had aired!) with stories claiming
“inside information” that the producers did not
want an Egyptian to win again after the victory of Mohammed
Attiyah.(4) Even the eminent political columnist Fahmy Howeidy,
not usually known for attention to televised popular culture,
found that the intensity of the arguments on the op-ed pages
about these shows compelled him to comment.(5)
Why so much
fuss over what at first glance would appear to be trashy television
programs? Partly because like sexy music video clips, reality
television has sparked a powerful backlash: Islamists and cultural
conservatives have made it an issue by virtue of their own outrage.(6)
The uniqueness of this backlash is often exaggerated by those
overly focused on the pathologies of Islam. Contra The Wall
Street Journal, it isn’t only the Arab and Islamic
world which “isn’t ready” for reality TV.(7)
Elite and religious criticism of reality TV has been almost
as universal across cultures as has been reality TV’s
runaway success. Pope John Paul II, like Focus on the Family’s
James Dobson, has spoken out against the “degrading”
qualities of reality television. The New Yorker and
Le Monde alike have run scathing denunciations of the
reality television phenomenon.(8)
As for democracy,
the most successful reality TV shows, such as Super Star,
Star Academy, and Al Wadi, use audience participation
and voting to determine the winners of competitions. These methods
have seemed revolutionary to many observers in an Arab world
characterized by repressive, non-democratic governments. The
response has been extraordinary, as millions of votes have been
cast in support of contestants, thousands of contestants have
applied to compete, and major political figures have called
in to express their support for a national champion. Here too,
the novelty is exaggerated. In China, for example, some 400
million people tuned in to the August 27 finale of the reality
TV program Super Girl—virtually identical to
the Arab Super Star. The political discussions have
been remarkably similar, with the state-run daily Beijing
Today asking on its front page “Is Super Girl
a force for democracy?”(9)
A cartoon shows "types of TV viewers!"
From left to right,
viewers of reality TV, video clips and headline news. |
Cultural
destruction and democratic salvation are rather weighty burdens
to place on televised variety shows. Arab reality TV represents
an important and fascinating political and cultural phenomenon,
but expectations that these programs are hothouses of democracy
training a new generation of Arabs in the delights of voting
are wildly overblown. Voting on reality TV does nothing to actually
teach Arabs the hard work of democracy—organizing, defining
interests, cooperating. It is “democracy lite,”
offering the formalities of democracy without the substance:
Democracy is just voting, among pre-selected candidates, with
little really at stake and with none of the discursive will-formation
essential to meaningful participation. The real impact of reality
television lies in exploring the possibilities of new media
technologies, and normalizing their use among a wide swathe
of Arab youth. Reality TV nurtures an already powerful urge
for participatory cultural forms, while indirectly—but
significantly—challenging the Islamist claim to offer
the only viable model for society.
The
Evolution of Arab Reality TV
Reality TV came late to the Arab world. The lineage of reality
television is often traced back to the PBS documentary An
American Family, which tracked the turbulent lives of the
Loud family over 13 episodes in the early 1970s. A second wave
of reality TV dates back to the early 1990s, with the Fox program
Cops presenting supposedly live, raw footage of police
in action. MTV’s The Real World, which debuted
in 1992, showed the lives of a group of carefully selected young
people. The Dutch Big Brother pioneered reality TV
in Europe, with its successful model—part anthropology
experiment, part voyeurism, part ‘competition’ with
viewer participation—setting the standard for much of
what would follow. The breakout success of Survivor
in the United States confirmed the appeal of the reality TV
format. Over the last decade, reality TV in a dizzying array
of formats has swept the world, setting off howls of protest
nearly everywhere it hits.
Given the
globalization of the media, and the satellite television revolution
of the 1990s, it was inevitable that reality programming would
also hit the Middle East. Arabs with access to satellite television
had certainly seen reality TV before, in American and European
flavors; In 2002, every bar in Beirut seemed to be airing Model
Flat, a British variation of MTV’s The Real World,
with a brilliant twist of making the flat-mates supermodels.
But such programs lacked several ingredients which would prove
critical to the success of the new wave of reality TV, above
all viewer participation through various forms of voting.
The forerunner
of the Arab reality television craze was a game show: Who
Will Win a Million? Launched in 2000 by the Saudi-owned
MBC, this Arab copy of the Regis Philbin game show hit succeeded
where many other copies of Western programming had failed. Whether
its success was due to an unexpected Arab hunger for quiz shows,
or to the urbane sexiness of its host George Kordahi, is unclear.
But popular, it surely was. Kordahi himself claimed that 80
percent of Arab viewers watched his show, and that “I
wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that this programme
brings the whole Arab world together.”(10) When he hosted
a Saudi telethon for Palestinians, Kordahi raised $100 million
in one day in April. Faisal al-Qassem, Al Jazeera’s leading
talk show host, claimed that MBC deliberately scheduled Who
Will Win a Million? against his Opposite Direction
in an attempt to cut into his audience.
Who
Will Win a Million? provoked some backlash, as when a top
Egyptian cleric, Nasr Farid Wassel, denounced “high-stakes
games” as a form of gambling. But Sheikh Mohammed al-Tantawi
of Al Azhar demurred, saying that “these competitions
address a series of useful religious, historical, cultural,
and scientific questions and their goal is to spread knowledge
among the public.”(11) The program’s rather high-brow
and topical approach, with questions ranging over Arab and Islamic
history and culture, and its overt homage to Pan-Arab political
concerns such as the Palestinian issue (one of Kordahi’s
most popular taglines was “greetings to our steadfast
people in Palestine”) insulated it against political and
cultural criticism. Who Will Win a Million? was a game
show which almost all sectors of the Arab political realm could
embrace. It promoted useful knowledge, it had the “right”
politics, and it used its popularity to promote the “right”
causes.
Who
Will Win a Million? sparked some imitators, such as The
Mission (an Al Manar game show in which contestants competed
to be the first to reach a virtual “Jerusalem”),
with varying degrees of success. An LBC version of The Weakest
Link died quickly, with some complaining that its host,
who modeled herself closely on the original caustic British
host, was “too masculine.” While quiz shows will
never go away—Kordahi himself is set to host Who Will
Win Two Million? in his grand return to MBC this November—the
future lay elsewhere in reality TV.
Arab reality
TV had a bit of a rocky start. The first Arab-produced reality
TV show, Ala al-Hawa Sawa (On the Air Together),
adapted a mix between The Dating Game and The Bachelorette
to an Arabic cultural environment, with female contestants sharing
a house and surveying a variety of suitors with the end goal
of an arranged marriage. While this generated some controversy,
it seemed to galvanize more critical commentary than viewers.
MBC was so careful to avoid offending conservative sentiment
that it drained the show of much of what viewers might find
appealing: the women complied with a strict dress code (no halter
tops, mini-skirts, bra straps, or revealing outfits) and rules
governing personal conduct (no tatoos, no smoking). At least
one contestant reportedly left the show because she was bored.
In its controversial finale, the winner refused to marry her
designated groom. While this may not have reached the absurd
levels of Fox Television’s Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?—whose
centerpiece turned out to be less wealthy than advertised, and
have a police record for abusing women, leading the unlucky
‘winner’ to quickly annul the televised wedding—it
did little to generate enthusiasm for a second round the next
year.
MBC had
another high profile misfire with Al Ra’is, the
official Arab adaptation of the globally successful Big
Brother franchise. Filmed in Bahrain, it brought together
12 young men and women to live under one roof, with 24 hour
surveillance capturing their boredom and their contrived contests
alike. Like Ala al-Hawa (also an MBC progamme), Al
Ra’is had no nudity, no filming of bathrooms or bedrooms,
and an elaborate attempt to respect conservative values which
included religious supervision. Nevertheless, Bahraini Islamists
launched a campaign against the programme, including large demonstrations
and a parliamentary inquest. A welcoming kiss by a Saudi man
on a Tunisian woman’s cheek on the first episode became
the rallying point for a denunciation of the show’s depravity
and indecency. MBC canceled the program after only a few episodes,
explaining that it did not wish to be the cause of cultural
tensions.
Undaunted
by these failures, Arab television stations looking for the
next big thing experimented with dozens of other formats. Among
the more notable were Soccer Stars, adaptations of
Fear Factor and Road Rules, a show sending
young teenagers to an African nature preserve, Dubai’s
Green Light (solving real social problems, such as
how to help Iraqi children), and an Iraqi version of Extreme
Home Makeover in which participants had their war-damaged
homes rebuilt.
But Arab
reality TV finally found the winning formula when producers
embraced the rise of Rotana TV and the overwhelming popularity
of sexy music video clips. Super Star, Star Academy,
and Al Wadi embraced the video clip revolution in a
symbiotic relationship. Video clip stars like Haifa Wehbi, Wael
Kfouri, Nelli Maqdassi, and Elissa appeared on Star Academy
to sing with the hopefuls, while the winners were seamlessly
absorbed into the pop music playlists. Unlike the Saudi-owned
MBC, Lebanon’s LBC and Future TV had no compunctions about
showing female skin—and lots of it (it would probably
take a dozen of Haifa Wehbi’s outfits on Al Wadi
to stitch together one outfit deemed suitable for Ala al-Hawa).
Celebrating in the "Winners' Circle"
of Star Academy. |
These music-themed
reality programs proved extraordinarily popular. Bilal Labban,
coordinator of Super Star, claims that the second season
received some 80 million calls. One commonly cited statistic
is that 80 percent of Lebanese between 18 and 35 watched the
second season of Star Academy. Super Star’s
contests, and Star Academy and Al Wadi “primes”
(the weekly, multi-hour combination of competition and variety
shows) became region-wide events, emptying the streets and dominating
popular conversation. According to the Arab Advisors Group,
advertising rates on Arab satellite channels skyrocket during
reality TV programs, up to 130 percent of regular prime time
rates. Woe unto the casual cell phone user who tried to get
an international line during a Star Academy prime or
a Super Star showdown! And when Al Arabiya TV’s
Website reported on Al Wadi, those stories were almost
always the “most viewed” and “most e-mailed”
stories of the day.
The first
big hit was Future TV’s Super Star in 2003. This
was a pure variety show modeled after American Idol
and Pop Idol, with viewer participation and voting
but without the “reality TV” accoutrements of later
programs (round-the-clock surveillance, concocted ‘games’
and competitions). Super Star operated as an elimination
tournament, pitting contestants against each other in contests
determined by audience voting. The survivors advanced round
by round, culminating in a final showdown. In the first season,
Jordan’s Diana Karazon defeated Syria’s Rwaida Attieh
with 52 percent of the vote, sparking the first wave of enthusiastic
press commentary about the novelty of a close, contested Arab
election. In the second series, Palestinian champion Ammar Hassan
lost a bitterly contested final to the Libyan Ayman al-Attar,
sparking bitter denunciations of Arab abandonment of the Palestinians
(“They [Arabs] sold Jerusalem … it’s no surprise
they now sold out Ammar.” )(12) and dark grumblings about
the machinations of Moammar Qaddafi to ensure a Libyan victory.
By this time, Super Star had become a major international
event, with coverage of its voting ranging from the rapturous
to the bemused on a wide range of Western television stations,
newspapers, and magazines. Its third season was postponed with
the assassination of station owner and former Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafik Hariri, sparking a rather fierce debate over
whether popular entertainment should be held hostage to political
events.
LBC’s
Star Academy pushed the envelope considerably further,
marrying the pop music aspect to the Big Brother genre
of reality television. Beginning in December 2003, 16 contestants
of both genders were sequestered in a house under 24-hour camera
surveillance (available by subscription on a dedicated satellite
channel) and bi-weekly “prime” episodes on LBC featuring
musical performances (often starring famous Arab pop singers)
and edited highlights of the week. Once a week, two contestants
chosen by the class teachers faced off in an elimination match,
with the winner chosen by viewer calls. The eventual winner
got $50,000, a record deal, and a guaranteed entry into Arab
pop stardom. When Egypt’s Mohammed Attia defeated Kuwait’s
Bashar el-Shatti 55.1 to 44.9 percent in the first Star
Academy, he was mobbed at airport on return to Cairo. The
Saudi Hisham Abd al-Rahman’s triumph over the Tunisian
Amani Swissi in the second season sparked a national—indeed,
regional—debate over the meaning of such a pop culture
spectacle for a putatively conservative society; Hisham himself
was arrested by the Virtue Police after being mobbed by young
women and men at a shopping mall after his return.
Finally,
the 2005 LBC reality TV show Al Wadi represented a
perfect storm of popular culture synergies. In its format, Al
Wadi (based on the French original The Farm) was
no different than any number of other similar programs. Fourteen
“celebrities” (of varying celebrity) came to a farm
north of Beirut, where they lived like any other farmers: milking
cows, tending crops, and putting on a weekly singing and dancing
variety show. Once a week, two contestants were nominated by
the instructors to compete, with one to be voted off the farm
by the viewers. Al Wadi loved to pull stunts such as
reuniting guest Jacqueline Khoury with her brother for the first
time in four years (he lives in Australia) on the air, or allowing
another guest a few tearful, joyous minutes (on the air) with
her two children. But what made Al Wadi special was
its permanent host: the hyper-popular video clip star, buxom
Lebanese Shia sensation Haifa Wehbi. With Wehbi on board, Al
Wadi emerged as the perfect synthesis of the two hottest
trends in Arab entertainment: video clips and reality TV.
Where other
forms of reality TV were burdened with serious problems of cultural
translation—what is the point of a Big Brother
with no chance of “accidental” nudity or an illicit
peek at two house-mates engaged in “secret” sexual
activity? How could Ala al-Hawa, where the women were
forbidden to wear revealing clothing, compete with the barely
dressed pop singers on Rotana TV? The musical variety programs
faced no such problems. Their youthful exuberance and infectious
joy captivated even cynical viewers. The oft-aired complaint
that Arab reality TV is nothing but a blind copying of Western
forms breaks down here. While Star Academy, Super
Star, and Al Wadi all adapted Western programs,
they developed strong Arab identities of their own. Few American
reality TV shows can match the infectious joy of the musical
performances and variety skits of Star Academy or Al
Wadi. And the music—like the pop music of the video
clips—is very much Arab.
There is
no guarantee that this relatively high point represents the
highest stage of evolution for Arab reality TV. One trend has
been towards more locally oriented programs like an Iraqi version
of Super Star, for instance. Another has been towards
further adaptation of Western forms. The latter trend is rather
troubling. In the US, the networks’ search for something
new in reality TV tended towards the freak show: from the relatively
tame Bachelor and Bachelorette to Joe Millionaire
(where the bachelor pretends to be a millionaire but he's really
dirt poor), to Temptation Island (where sexy mercenaries
try to seduce married couples on camera), to the spider-eating,
the dwarfs and the freaks. It is no accident that "reality
TV" has become globally synonymous with poor taste. Will
that be the trajectory of Arab reality TV? If so, will the celebratory
applause fade even as network profits rise?
'Democracy'
Many enthusiasts have argued that the participatory nature of
reality TV offers Arabs their first real taste of democracy.
Thomas Friedman was only the first of dozens of Western pundits
to declare that the hard fought, close victory of Super
Star’s winners contrasted with the typical 99 percent
victories enjoyed by Arab leaders. And there is certainly something
to marvel at in the heated, fervent embrace of voting on these
programs. Contrary to popular American belief, however, voting
in elections is not new to Arabs. Most Arab states have held
contested Parliamentary or municipal elections, even if—like
reality TV—those elections produce no significant political
results. Ultimately, the kind of "democracy" promoted
by Arab reality TV is of such a superficial, misleading variety
as to actually undermine moves towards a more politically significant
model.
Actual voting
behavior offers some pause. These programs in some ways encourage
the worst kind of mass bloc voting: Libyans vote for Libyans,
whatever the qualities of the candidate. Candidates became national
champions, with votes becoming something of a regional census
rather than a measure of talent. And those national competitions
reflected uncomfortable realities of class and wealth. Palestinians
could only complain enviously against the well-funded publicity
directed by the Libyan regime. Everyone complained about the
dominance of Saudis, or the deference shown to Kuwaitis by networks
who wanted to keep Gulf interest (see below).
Then, consider
the shenanigans. King Abdullah of Jordan allowed every Jordanian
to phone free of charge to vote for the Jordanian candidate
in Super Star Diana Karazon (she won). Egypt’s
MobiNil offered every person who voted for Attia a free minute’s
call. Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi was accused of spending
millions to ensure the Libyan victory—he backed a nationwide
publicity campaign and arranged for free phone calls to vote
in favor of Ayman al-Attar. Palestinian officials cut costs
of phone calls by 20 percent and set up 150 special channels
to make sure callers got through in support of Ammar Hassan.
That Arab dictators so enthusiastically support the interest
of their citizens in these programs should immediately give
pause to those inclined to see voting on Super Star
as a challenge to the authoritarian status quo.
All of this
could discredit democracy rather than inculcate it. In response
to Lebanese complaints that their candidate on Super Star
had lost because of Syrian and Jordanian intervention, one Jordanian
mused that “the riot and Future TV’s emphasis that
there was vote-rigging just support our Arab regimes’
claims that we are not ready for democracy yet.”(13) When
the Tunisian Amani lost to the Saudi Hisham in the second Star
Academy, the Tunisian press could talk of nothing else
for days, with the most prominent complaint being that she lost
not because of less talent but because larger numbers of wealthier
Saudis voted more often.(14) Some complaints went even farther,
questioning whether the votes had been counted honestly. For
these Tunisians, her rightful victory was "stolen"
from her because LBC wanted a Saudi to win for economic reasons.
In response to such complaints, Super Star contracted
with a British company to manage the voting process—a
step towards international monitoring of elections which does
compare favorably with, say, the September 2005 Egyptian presidential
elections, which blocked international monitors.
LBC’s
Al Wadi took the open manipulation of the voting process
to new levels, according to Assafir columnist Riyadh
Qabisi, as the “veiled professor” announcing the
results threw out votes deemed “not credible,” granting
the nominee with fewer votes (Farah Bin Rajab) the victory.(15)
For Qabisi, this moment suggested that LBC had always manipulated
the results, creating a “democracy of worthiness [dimoqratiya
jidara]” as decreed by the management rather than
a democracy honoring the will of the voters. “Why is the
‘professor’ unable to just say that we do not want
this voting because it conflicts with our media agenda and our
future plans to have a showdown between two women from the Gulf
and their supporters?” Because this would remove the charade
of democracy from a program built on consumption, i.e. the commercial
interest in attracting viewers from the wealthy advertising
markets of the Gulf. Qabisi concludes by linking the dishonesty
of reality TV to the reality of Arab political elections: “the
reality is that regimes cook the results of elections if they
aren’t satisfied with them, with the argument of worthiness
... or terrorism!”
The praise
for Super Star or Star Academy as an example
of Arab democracy perfectly exemplifies the shallowness of much
American thinking about democracy: form without substance. Yes,
Arabs vote… but for what? And how? The democracy of reality
TV offers a perfect metaphor for the kind of "democracy"
being pushed by many current democracy promoters: the formal
mechanisms without the ingredients which make the act of voting
significant. Elections alone do not make for a robust democracy.
There is no element here of discursive will-formation, as citizens
deliberate over matters of collective concern. There is no element
of accountability or oversight, where policy makers might be
made responsive to citizens through a need for popular support.
Above all, there is no challenge to the continued dominance
of an entrenched political and economic elite. Voting on reality
TV creates the illusion of participation and of popular sovereignty,
without demanding any parallel sacrifice or personal investment,
without the very real risks faced by real democracy activists:
beatings, lost jobs, arbitrary arrest, torture, threats to family
members. Like Al Jazeera online polls, reality TV gives the
illusion of participation and democracy, but is easily manipulated
and has no real impact on the world. As Badria al-Bishr pointed
out in Asharq Al Awsat, the “democracy of Star
Academy”—in which votes actually count—should
show the citizen that his vote has value, and perhaps inspire
greater participation in the Saudi municipal elections.(16)
But what if those votes do not in fact have any value? Is Star
Academy only setting Arab youth up for another round of
disappointment?
The
Islamist Backlash
What about the challenge to political Islam? Does reality TV
offer a profound challenge to the conservative norms of Islam,
or to the political agenda of Islamist radicals? The backlash
is real, as is the challenge, but both need to be contextualized.
An anti-reality TV poster reading
"Satan's Academy" |
Criticisms
of reality TV by prominent Islamists are plentiful. Sheikh Abd
Al Rahman Al Suadais, imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, most
famously called reality TV shows “weapons of mass destruction
that kill values and virtue.” Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the popular
host of Al Jazeera’s Al Shariyah wal-Hayah (Religious
Law and Life), similarly complained in the spring of 2004 that
“reality TV and Star Academy especially are instruments
of cultural and intellectual invasion of the Ummah.”
For Qaradawi, Star Academy and its like distract the
youth of Islam from their religion and from real political issues:
“these imported programs do not embody the personality
of the Ummah and do not represent its true face.”
A popular Saudi campaign denounced Star Academy as
“Academiat Al Shaytan (Satan's Academy)” in the
talks and recordings of the “Mashayekh Al Sahwa”
(The Awakening Clergy).”(17) These cheap cassettes, according
to Faisal Abbas, urge the boycott of such shows, which help
“an alliance of infidels and promoters of lust”
in their mission to “target the nation.” The publisher
claims to have sold a million copies of “Satan’s
Academy” in a week as part of an Internet-based group
called “Vice Busters.” An Al Arabiya TV report suggested
that a good number of the cassettes denouncing Star Academy
and its like contained clear incitements to violence.(18)
Talk has
at times progressed to action. In March 2004, the Saudi-owned
MBC ceased production of an Arabic version of the reality program
Big Brother in the face of intense protests by Bahraini
Islamists. Islamist members of Parliament in Bahrain marched
in protest against what they considered to be a major threat
to religious values, taking their campaign to heated debates
in Parliament, Friday sermons, and dozens of newspaper articles.
In January 2005, Kuwait’s Minister of Information Mohammed
Abu al-Hassan was forced to step down in advance of Parliamentary
hearings over his allowing "immoral" concerts in the
country. This followed a May 2004 fatwa by the ministry
of Islamic affairs prohibiting music shows with female entertainers
such as Star Academy, and a successful campaign spearheaded
by Islamist MP Walid al-Tabtabai for a government ban on holding
a Star Academy concert in Kuwait. The next month, Kuwait’s
liberal Minister of Information was forced from office by Islamists
enraged that he had permitted a concert by the stars of Star
Academy in the Emirate. All of these protestors claimed
to fear that reality TV shows—with their portrayal of
the everyday lives of young men and women, combined with region-wide
voting for the winners—posed a real threat to cultural
and political values.
But many
observers miss the point of these Islamist objections to reality
TV. For most Islamists, this is only one front among many in
a wider culture war. The popularity of Star Academy
and Super Star works to their advantage by giving them
a powerful wedge issue. Just as the James Dobsons of America
need a “Sponge Bob” to galvanize the rank and file,
to drive fund-raising and to push their political and cultural
agenda (as in the Focus on the Family leader’s attack
on the alleged homosexuality of the PBS cartoon in January 2005),
Islamists need resonant issues to help make their case. The
over-the-top Islamist rhetoric denouncing Star Academy
resembles the denunciations of popular culture issued by the
Family Research Council, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Dobson.
Because their political fortunes rest on fanning the flames
of outrage among culturally conservative citizens, they will
seize on whatever might be popular among youth—and alarming
to concerned parents—to press their case. The rallies
and protests over Star Academy come from this process
of cultivating a mobilized conservative public through manufactured
outrage over popular culture, rather than anything specific
to Arab reality television.
Jordan,
Bahrain, and Kuwait—the countries with some of the strongest
Islamist campaigns against reality TV (and video clips)—are
also three countries with relatively Western-oriented governments
faced with an Islamist Parliamentary opposition which is largely
stymied from pressing serious issues of foreign or domestic
policy. Big Brother and Star Academy offer
a "safe" area of cultural critique which allows Islamist
politicians to hold marches, demand Parliamentary inquiries,
and flex their muscles without violating any of the real "red
lines" governing politics in those countries. In Kuwait,
the Islamist campaign against Star Academy, which toppled
Information Minister Mohammed Abu al-Hassan, focused on his
failure to protect social values, but the real issue may well
have been that he was the only Shia member of the Cabinet. Even
Saudi Arabia fits this general profile, as conservatives opposed
to proposed political reforms—and threatened by the passions
for pop culture among Saudi youth revealed by the voting on
these programs—can publicly rail against a topic without
triggering the regime’s newfound sensitivity to radical
Islamist terrorism.
The gender
norms and the infectious joy of the variety shows do offer an
appealing and strong contrast to the puritan Islamist aesthetic.
Like the music video clips with which they have such synergies,
they offer role models for ways of life different from local
norms, while breaking down regional and national stereotypes.
I’ve argued elsewhere that sexy video clips offer an alternative
to Islamism in terms of personal behavior, dress, and gender
relations. Do reality TV shows offer such an alternative? Some
claim that they do. Zahra Mara’ai argues, for example,
that reality TV shed light for the first time on the reality
of gender relations in Arab societies.(19) Conservatives retorted
that the reality programs did not offer an accurate picture,
as in one Bahraini Islamist MP’s complaint about Al
Ra’is: “this program showed an abnormal way
of living, which is totally opposed to our thoughts, culture,
everything. It is not reality TV at all, especially in our part
of the world.”(20)
The surveillance
and portrayal of routine, daily behavior on the Star Academy-
style programs poses a distinctive challenge in the Middle East.
Arab and Islamic cultures have traditionally had very different
conceptions of the public/private divide than in the West. While
Americans and Europeans were certainly titillated by the raw
footage of young contestants brushing their teeth, watching
TV slumped on a couch, or cooking dinner, the less rigid boundaries
of the private sphere in the West more easily tolerated such
transgressions. Televised portrayals of such intimate private
moments resonated quite differently in societies founded on
very different notions of privacy. For example, Kuwaiti star
Zahra al-Kharaji came under fire from Kuwaiti Islamists for
appearing on Al Wadi, not so much for the singing and
dancing but for allowing herself to be filmed changing clothes,
cooking meals, and cleaning. As one Islamist Kuwaiti MP complained,
televising such activities demonstrated “Western values,
foreign to our conservative Gulf societies.”(21)
The challenge
posed by reality TV might be seen not so much as one to Islamism,
then, but to a wider notion of cultural patriarchy. The values
embodied in these programs—relaxed gender relations, personal
meritocracy, infectiously joyful music—are youth values.
The contestants on Star Academy and Super Star
are not waiting to be appointed to a government job, they are
putting themselves forward in pursuit of a very individual dream.
Such an affirmation of the virtues of youthful ambition necessarily
challenges some of the most deeply held norms of patriarchal,
conservative societies—independently of specific Islamist
political agendas.
There is
no obvious reason that reality TV could not be used in the service
of Islamist messages, of course. Assafir columnist Ghassan Razaq
recently wondered why Islamic television had not appropriated
the reality TV form in the way that Sami Youssef did the video
clip form.(22) As TBS Managing Editor Lindsay Wise suggests
in this issue, such an adaptation may not be far away. Egyptian
televangelist Amr Khaled has frequently discussed plans to create
such an Islamic reality TV show, and even held a contest of
his own asking viewers to write religious song lyrics to be
recorded by “repentant” Super Star contestants.(23)
The
Politics of Reality TV
Arab reality TV has often been asked to carry a remarkable political
burden. It isn’t easy for a musical variety show to carry
the democratic hopes of the Arab nation, or to win the day against
al-Qaeda, after all. What are two aspiring pop singers to do
when their rivalry is analyzed in the pages of the Pan-Arab
daily Al Hayat as “a rivalry between armed resistance
and Realpolitik, with SMS messages either supporting the Palestinian
cause or the Libyan opening”?(24)
Nationalist sentiments come to the fore
in Star
Academy and other reality shows. |
For much
of the Arab political elite, the real threat posed by reality
TV is that it distracts Arab youth from the issues which really
matter. Al Quds Al Arabi editor Abd al-Bari Atwan bitterly
complained that “the most important victim is this generation
of Arabs, whose intellect is being shaped by Super Star
and the culture of Star Academy and the dancers
on Rotana (the leading Arab music video station), and getting
their news of the world and the progress of events from the
news briefs on Radio Sawa! The stars of our age won't be poets
and intellectuals and politicians and preachers, but rather
the stars of Star Academy and the video clip singers."(25)
When Hisham Abd al-Rahman won the second Star Academy,
Mohammed Abdullah al-Sayf asked pointedly: “What did we
profit from Hisham’s victory?”(26) What does it
say, he wondered, that large numbers of Saudi youth voted for
Hisham despite strong opposition from the official clergy class
and an official ban on voting on Star Academy by the
main Saudi cell phone provider, at a time when Saudi youth show
no interest in the municipal elections? (27) More directly,
the Palestinian runner-up in the second Super Star,
Ammar Hassan, was forced to end a concert in Nablus after masked
gunmen surrounded the hall and shot in the air. One Hamas activist
explained to The Independent (London) their message
to Hassan: “Don’t dance on our blood, we lost a
lot of martyrs and friends, and this is not appropriate.”(28)
It is not
entirely clear that these skeptics are right. Fahmy Howeidy,
for example, observes with dismay how Egyptians mobilized in
support of an Egyptian contestant but can't be mobilized to
complain about corruption or incompetence or sham democracy.
But what of the enthusiasm and mobilization Egypt witnessed
throughout 2005? Is it possible that the anti-regime Kifaya
(Enough) movement, with its decentralized networks, young base,
and Internet drew inspiration from their reality TV experiences?
In Lebanon, activists in the Cedar Revolution used Star
Academy language in their chants, while Future TV producers
claim that their reality TV experience trained them well to
cover the spontaneous mass rallies in Beirut after Hariri’s
assassination.(29) Despite an official Saudi ban on voting on
Star Academy, the young Saudi Hisham Abd al-Rahman won the 2004
Star Academy, presumably on the strength of Saudi votes, setting
off a furious national debate. What if such a national debate,
instead of only attacking Star Academy, actually led
Saudis to recognize the manifest shortcomings of the municipal
elections and to seek ways to create more meaningful political
participation?
Another
complaint focuses less on political misdirection than on reality
TV promoting the wrong values. As Jordanian columnist (and Al
Jazeera correspondent) Yasir Abu Hilala complained, Star
Academy and Super Star grant Pan-Arab fame to
young people with little education and with few talents to offer
their nations. Jordanian children who have done amazing things
remain unknown: “Why are we satisfied with Star Academy
… which celebrates those with no learning or ambition?”(30)
This complaint echoes across cultures, as cultural elitists
everywhere bemoan the celebration of the banal and the talentless.
While it would be easy to dismiss such complaints as the eternal
grumbling of an elite never satisfied with the popular culture
of the day, the criticisms take on more weight in the context
of the urgency for comprehensive economic, social, and educational
reform identified by successive Arab Human Development Reports.
Arab nationalists also complain about the role the reality TV
shows play in stoking nationalist (watani) passions.(31)
The examples are legion: the Tunisian government keeping four
free long-distance phone lines to encourage its citizens to
vote for the Tunisian finalist; the Saudi prince who sent a
private jet to ferry the winner from Beirut back to Jiddah;
Lebanese rioting about their champion’s loss in Star
Academy, and Palestinian rage at the Arabs for not voting
for their candidate; the vast popular enthusiasm in Damascus
for a Syrian contestant in an earlier program (if only they
could muster such energy to demand political reforms, muses
Fahmy Howeydi). Consider the headlines of the regular reports
on Al Wadi in the Pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat: “The
stars of Kuwait open fire on their colleagues participating
in Al Wadi” (September 9); “Did the Gulf
masses expel Ghassan because of his differences with his Kuwaiti
rival?” (September 16). Contestants are always identified
by their nationality, regardless of how they might personally
identify themselves. This cuts in numerous directions, however.
The Pan-Arabist might celebrate that the common spectacle of
a Pan-Arab competition is inherently unifying, in the sense
of involving an entire Arab world in a single, common endeavor
and public dialogue in real time. And the rallying power of
a nationalist champion might be rather heartening for those
political forces favoring a territorial (watani) nationalism—not
only the populist ethnic nationalists inflaming local conservative
tribalism in Jordan, but also the liberal reformers seeking
to focus the attention of the domestic public inward.
But the
passions aroused by Arab reality TV may be a symptom rather
than the disease. Fahmy Howeydi speculates that the intensity
of those passions suggests that many people might be in search
of "an issue" to motivate them.(32) He sees the passions
aroused by Star Academy as in part an indictment of
domestic civil society—people are so detached from their
local circumstances, and distanced from the political system,
that this disembodied television phenomenon is the only thing
they can latch on to. As evidence, he cites a survey by a local
democracy NGO which found that 88 percent of people have nothing
to do with a political party, and 98 percent don't participate
in any kind of public affairs. A wide sector of Arab youth,
he argues, feels marginalized and neglected, and is searching
for some purpose to grab on to: “For some, that will be
Islam. For others, Star Academy.” Should an attractive
cause arise—the Kifaya movement’s demands for change
in Egypt, for instance—these free-floating youth may surprise
those who see their passions for Star Academy as evidence
of their political apathy. Is it only a coincidence that Bahrain,
the location of one of the most politically successful campaigns
against reality TV, has also been one of the Arab countries
where politically-minded young bloggers have had the greatest
political impact?
The real significance of reality TV, it seems to me, lies in
the marriage of the satellite television revolution with participatory
forms of programming. A Freedom House study of Egyptian women
found that programs like Super Star and Star Academy
were extremely popular with respondents, who regularly reported
that “the two attractive features of the new media options
are that they are interactive and participatory, a quality lacking
in Egypt’s politics.”(33) Many observers have been
surprised at the sudden emergence of Arab bloggers, and the
creative uses of the Internet by young political and civil activists.
Like the Kifaya movement in Egypt, or political bloggers in
Bahrain, reality TV fans have been innovators in the use of
technology to organize and mobilize across distances. As Marwan
Kraidy told an NPR interviewer earlier this year, “fans
of different contestants organized, they set up Web sites, they
set up all kinds of chains, using mobile phones to mobilize
each other and mobilize others to vote for one contestant as
opposed to the other.”(34) Without claiming too much for
reality TV, it is worth suggesting that Super Star
and Star Academy fandom might have provided early inspiration
and opportunities for these young people to experiment with
online and networked organization. The skills may be more transferable
to the political realm than some realize.
These indirect
effects are all more significant than the formal element of
voting which has attracted the most attention from Western enthusiasts.
The democracy on these programs is purely formal, devoid of
essential qualities such as deliberation or influence over significant
outcomes. Compared to the September 2005 Presidential elections
in Egypt, or many of the other uninspiring elections which have
dotted the Arab political calendar, Star Academy, Super
Star, and Al Wadi come off rather well: real competition
among multiple candidates, official neutrality, some transparency
in voting. But this attention to the formal process of voting
distracts attention from real political and economic issues.
As democracy training, it thus seems less than ideal. If anything,
it might drive dissatisfaction and even despair with elections.
Nobody expects Star Academy to deliver real political
or economic change. Presumably, citizens—and analysts
of the prospects for Arab democracy—should expect more.
Marc
Lynch is associate professor of political science at
Williams College. He received his PhD from Cornell University.
His second book, Voices of a New Arab Public: Iraq, al
Jazeera, and a Changing Middle East, will be published by
Columbia University Press.
NOTES
1. Matt Labash, “When a kiss is not just a kiss,”
The Weekly Standard, October 18, 2004. Also see James
Robbins, “Reality Bites: Fatwas vs. Freedom.” National
Review Online, April 5, 2004.
2. Thomas L. Friedman, “52 to 48.” New York
Times, September 3, 2003, A19.
3. Ali Mohammed Taha, “Qaradawi: Reality television inflames
the youth of the umma and is an instrument for cultural invasion.”
Asharq Al Awsat, April 28. 2004.
4. As reported in Assafir, August 1, 2005
5. Fahmy Howeidy, “Don’t accuse Arab youth, provide
them with a better alternative.” Asharq Al Awsat,
May 4, 2005.
6. See TBS Journal 14’s special section on video
clips.
7. Melik Keylan, “Reality Check on Arab TV: the Muslim
world isn’t ready for Big Brother—or even the Dating
Game.” Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2004.
8. See Sam Brenton and Reuben Cohen, Shooting People: Adventures
in Reality TV (New York: Verso 2003), chapter 1, for these
and more condemnations of the genre.
9. As quoted in “Democracy Idol”, The Economist,
September 10, 2005, p.42.
10. As quoted by Nadia Abou el-Magd, “Arab world’s
‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ adds politics to
the formula,” Associated Press, May 30, 2002.
11. Abou el-Magd, op.cit.
12. A Palestinian student quoted on al-bawaba.com, September
6, 2004.
13. Quoted by Dalal Saoud, “Arab rivalry sours song contest,”
United Press International, August 14, 2003.
14. Al-Hadi Za’im, “Angry Tunisian reactions to
Star Academy,” Elaph.com, April 19, 2005.
15. Riyadh Qabisi, “Reality TV kills elections…
the democracy of ‘worth’ and consumption in Al Wadi!”
Asafir, August 20, 2005.
16. Badria al-Bishr, “The democracy of Star Academy,”
Asharq Al Awsat, April 19, 2005. Also see al-Bishr,
“The masses of Star Academy” Asharq Al Awsat,
April 28, 2005.
17. Faisal Abbas, “Satan’s Academy,” Asharq
Al Awsat, June 8, 2005.
18. Al-Arabiya, “Cassettes combat reality television,”
September 4, 2004.
19. Zahra Mara’ai, “Digressing on the air,”
Al Quds Al Arabi, June 23, 2005
20. Quoted by Neil Macfarquhar, “A kiss on the cheek doomed
Big Brother,” New York Times, March 6, 2004,
A2.
21. As quoted in Asharq Al Awsat, September 9, 2005
22. Ghassan Razaq, Asafir, July 2005,
23. Lindsay Wise, “Amr Khaled: Broadcasting the Nahda.”
Transnational Broadcasting Studies Journal 13 (fall
2004).
24. Bissan al-Shaykh, “Super Star 2 puts Libya and Palestine
in confrontation,” Al Hayat, August 24, 2004
25. Abd al-Bari Atwan, “Assassination of the Arab media,
Al Quds Al Arabi, June 3, 2005
26. Mohammed Abdullah al-Sayf, “And the question remains:
what did we gain from Hisham’s victory?” Asharq
Al Awsat, April 24, 2005.
27. “Saudis ban voting for Super Star 2,” Al
Arabiya, January 11, 2005.
28. As quoted by Donald MacIntyre, “Pop concert halted
by gun-toting militants,” The Independent (London),
July 7, 2005, p.35.
29. Kevin Peraino, “Life as a ‘Reality Show.’”
Newsweek, March 21, 2005, p.25.
30. Yassir Abu Hilala, “Star Academy, Super Star…and
cultivating enlightenment.” Al Ghad, July 17,
2005
31. Tyler MacKenzie, “The Best Hope for Democracy in the
Arab World: a Crooning TV “Idol”?” Transnational
Broadcasting Studies 13 (fall 2004).
32. Howeydi, op.cit., May 4, 2005.
33. Brian Katulis, “Women in Egypt,” Freedom
House, October 2004
34. Marwan Kraidy, interviewed on On the Media, NPR,
June 3, 2005.
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