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February 25, 2004
The Oddness that is Sex in the Arab world.... [edited formatting - corrected]
[edited 26 Feb for formatting]
Many comments to write up - including some chilling convos re Americans from some old and previously pro American contacts of mine, however, in the short term:
Taken from the The Jordan Times website,
Gyrating singers belie stereotype of cloaked Arab women
By Donna Abu-Nasr
The Associated Press
BEIRUT — There's the video clip showing Haifa, the sultry Lebanese shimmying in the rain in a clingy red dress.
And it is, I must say with admiration, clingy.
Quite yummy for those who have this idea the entire region is Saudiyah.
And the clip featuring Roubi, the Egyptian singer belly-dancing in a public square. And scantily dressed dancers aplenty without whom no male singing act seems complete.
How terribly unsurprising, if one knows the region, how surprising if one gets ones views from the overheated commentary in the Western Press (in grosso modo) on the region and its values.
But let us be fair, note the following:
The blitz of dewy looks, pouting lips and suggestive dance on Arab satellite TV stations is outraging some critics.
Noting new in a way, but who are the critics? Let's see, and even better their incoherent comments:
One has dubbed the new crop of performers “weapons of singing destruction”. Another says some women are so offended that they are praying to Allah to smite the seductresses.
Well the fat ugly ones are.
However, the oddity is that one can very well understand from the historical and indeed modern media representations (since the 1950s) that sensuality has a long and deep place in the Islamic Arab world - which once upon a time had sex manuals. Yes, sex manuals. Not good ones, but hey.... this was when Europe thought maggots were demons and sex was a sin.
In the largely conservative Arab world, where many women go veiled and cloaked in public and government censors determine the length of an on-screen kiss, the video clips seem out of place. So why are they permitted to air? Competition, answers Abdo Wazen, a Lebanese art critic at the newspaper Al Hayat.
Well enough, and Abdo is right.
But the conspiracy world is alive here, from the reasonable:"“It's an attempt to divert the attention of youths away from the political and financial frustrations at home,” offers Ali Abu-Shadi, an Egyptian who was a government censor.
Ali is not, probably wrong.
...
To the stupid: “It's part of an American policy to strip Arab cultures of their values,” says Hussein Abdel-Qader of the Egyptian newspaper Akhbar Al Yom.
What does he think of the singers? “They're driving men crazy!” he exclaimed.
Okay Hussein, you're frustrated, and as an Cairene Egyptian your wife is probably a fat ugly cow.
However, as a less than enthusiastic viewer of Egypto-pop videos, and a moderate if not enthusiastic fan of Libano-pop (Rai is far better but not seen on the Arab Sats), the bloody styles and imagery have nothing to do with American values or imagery - except in a wide sense, and very much play to Arab values and imagery (even when Western in setting). No, they're just not pretending in the quasi faux puritan manner of the modern Wahhabi.
Abdel-Qader said women in Egypt go to the shrine of Zeinab, the Prophet Mohammad's granddaughter, “to pray that Allah take Haifa, Roubi and Nancy”. Nadira Omran, a prominent Jordanian actress, said the clips are “very cheap and vulgar”.
Yeah right. Zeinib's shrine prayers have a lot more to do with the price of a tamihay than Nancy (who is fairly hot I should say).
Although it is hard to argue that the Eastern Arab pop video scene is not vulgar and cheap, but that's across the board, not just in sex. Hey, market taste.
“They have turned a woman's body and its superior qualities into a commodity,” said Omran, who bans her children from watching them.
Sure. Sounds familiar. And not credible.
Finally:
Dalal Al Bizri, a Lebanese sociologist living in Cairo, blames male-dominated societies for making women cover up.
“When the condition of women on the street is unnatural, the demand for vulgarity and nudity increases,” she said.
“That's what viewers want and television stations have to cater for that demand.” Nancy — full name Nancy Ajram — is best-known for a clip that shows her swaying her hips and shaking her shoulders while serving customers at an all-male cafe. In an interview with the Associated Press, she denied it contains any sexual innuendoes.
Well, since I had to watch this, and still do every day in the Gym (even during women dominated hours, she's popular [Ousebek leh? for example] and stylish), I have to say the sexual innuedoes are there, although what can we say? She's not an alien, but what is she going to say, yeah I am fucking with your peeps?
The remainder of the article as it is not avail online:
“My clip is bold, but it doesn't go beyond feminine appeal. I don't sing with my body,” she said.
The clips air on several satellite stations, mostly based in Beirut or Cairo, where society tends to take a more liberal view of these things. But they reach all over the Arabic-speaking world.
One broadcaster is Rotana Television, a music channel inaugurated last month in Beirut. It belongs to a production company owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Ben Talal, famous in the United States for having his $10 million donation to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks rebuffed by Rudolph Giuliani, then New York's mayor.
Michel Murr, who heads the Beirut operation, was not available to talk about the impact the videos are having on viewers. But at another network, Cairo-based Dream TV, general manager Osama Al Sheikh told AP: “We don't broadcast any video clip unless we are sure it is morally acceptable.” He said the station has an in-house “censorship department” of station employees that has banned some foreign and Arab videos, and the Roubi and Haifa clips almost didn't make it onto the air.
“We were not very enthusiastic in broadcasting them. We do broadcast them, but less frequently compared to the rest of the songs,” he said.
Some Arab government TV channels refuse to air the videos, but governments can't shut out satellite signals, and bans on dish ownership are widely ignored. Besides, some of the clips can be viewed on the stars' Web sites.
Several mosques and TV programmes in Saudi Arabia are urging youths to avert their eyes, said Abdullah Al Rufeidy, a 34-year-old Saudi government worker. But the clips remain highly popular.
Many Yemenis also are ignoring clerics' anti-clips edicts.
Some Yemeni hotels with satellite TV rent out rooms for the evening just for people wanting to watch the videos.
In the island state of Bahrain, a few hundred protesters trying to stop people from going to a Nancy concert Wednesday night threw rocks, set fires and smashed car windows. Police reported several arrests and the concert went ahead uninterrupted.
Muslim conservative lawmakers had earlier proposed banning the concert but were rebuffed by the liberal majority in parliament.
Mohammed Khaled Ibrahim, a lawmaker who supported the ban, noted that the Holy Month of Ramadan was about to begin. “We should spend our time repenting and engaging in religious activities rather than engaging in activities that are un-Islamic,” he told AP.
The Bahrain Tribune quoted the singer as saying that she was in Bahrain to “put a smile on the faces of my fans”. “I sing to take people away from politics that separates people and causes chaos in society,” she said.
The videos have spawned a huge demand for salacious celebrity gossip. Newspapers and magazines are filled with bizarre rumours of orgies in which jaws are broken and silicone implants rupture.
Abdullah Al Qobei, who came up with the term “weapons of singing destruction,” sarcastically suggested in the newspaper Asharq Al Awsat that the singers do “veiled videos” for Ramadan.
Wazen, the art critic, had another explanation for the clips' popularity: The stars are Arabs, doing the things that in most Arab countries are seen only on Western TV shows.
“In such suppressed societies, people enjoy watching Arab nudity,” said Wazen. “It's a kind of voyeurism.” Not everybody, however, is happy about that.
Watching a music video channel at home in Cairo one night, Hisham Khalil, 30, and his friends muttered insults when Roubi, the belly dancer, appeared on the screen, a glittering star in her navel.
Such singers are “trying to Westernise their approach to art and entertainment”, Khalil complained. “It means that the Eastern culture has no more to give.” But sexy videos by Western stars draw no such disapproval.
“Westerners have their culture; we have our own culture and we're supposed to preserve it, respect it,” said Khalil, who works in finance. “When people go out of line in terms of their own culture, especially in the Muslim world, others start viewing them disrespectfully.”
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Khalil is full of shit, I may add.
Posted by The Lounsbury at February 25, 2004 12:35 AM
Filed Under:
Jan-Jul 2004
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