Islamic Idol? What the…..??

Sahar

I thought I’d seen it all until I came across a news article on a show called Islamic Idol. I cringed. What next? Muslim Survivor? (probably already happened and I fortunately missed it).  It was bad enough hearing about ‘Afghan Star’ –a pop talent show in Afghanistan. While the country and its people,  ravaged by war and poverty, struggled to survive and make ends meet, the desperately needed dollars for development in Afghanistan were spent seeking untapped talent, as well as untapped resources. Capitalism is thriving in Afghanistan today, when not much else is.

As for Islamic Idol, there are so many problems with this I don’t know where to begin. The show is the creation of Egyptian Ahmed Abu-Heiba who wishes to use the “universal language” of music to spread the values of Islam.  He believes that Islam can also be ‘modern’ and needs to relate to young Muslims.  Apparently, to be modern is to emulate American consumer culture and mould one-self to fit into this ideal. It is not enough for the Arab world to be home to monstrous symbols of cultural imperialism whether in the guise of Mc Donald’s or fashion malls—the music world must too partake in the cultural mimetic festivities.

Capitalising on the trend of American idol, Islamic Idol replaced the original name 4shbab – Arabic for “For the Youth”. The Arab/Muslim world’s own god-like idol was to emerge.  It means little that idol worship is the very antithesis to Islam and its teachings; that Islam’s Prophet, Muhammad (pbuh) was sent to end idol worship.  Uncannily, the revivalism of idol-worship is profitable, like it once was for the Quraysh.

There’s more to it than profit though. Shows like American idol are a symptom of a secular society ravaged by capitalist exploitation needing spiritual fulfilment through the adoration of a figure that becomes, in theological terms, a visible symbol to believe in and draw inspiration from. Observing the American Idol experience, one can notice a religious-esque adoration of the contestants by the millions who vehemently rally in support and the meaning that it brings to their lives. The end result– a god-like idol basking in the glory of success and adoration of millions of hysterical fans.

The strong anti-idol current throughout Islam’s history seems irrelevant to the Arab media network who are keen to capitalise on an untapped audience: religious young Muslims, who apparently need meaning in their lives.   According to Abu-Heiba, there are few “Islamic singers”,

“I don’t have singers, the field is empty,” he said. “So I need a star-making process from the beginning to get my own stars to deliver my own message by my own way”

Is it really Abu-Heiba’s own way or is it the American way? Money can be made from anything in today’s day and age; it’s just a matter of observing trends and riding them. Islam becomes a commodity, repackaged to suit the market, and its teachings are reduced to a trend– to the popularity of a song or an individual. What happens to the teachings espoused by a one-hit wonder? Do they also go out the window and replaced by new ones?  Such are the dangers in commoditizing religious values.

What does Islam look like for Islamic Idol? Apparently, it’s in the guise of rock and hip-hop and only the face of men singing about Islamic values. The young men on the show sing about “leading a virtuous life, going to mosque and supporting their families, from helping their sisters with homework to taking out the garbage”.

However, the channel shows no female singers – or any other women. The justification for this being the mainstream view of women performers are taboo in Islam. I don’t recall there being male performers in Islam, wearing ridiculous makeup, medallions, and open shirts– appreciating a consumer culture, bowing to materialism. It is also problematic that a show, whether I agree with it or not, claims to be addressing the needs of religious youth yet ignores half if not more of its youth population. How are young women represented? Who is telling their story and experiences? Why it’s the clever insight of men who are, we’re told.

I guess Muslim women would have to be represented by the secular pop-music channels which shamelessly show scantily clad women, whose only talent seems to be offering themselves as sex symbols.

Britain, Sharia and Gutter Journalism

Farah

Recently the British have been all up in arms about the takeover of their just and equitable legal system with the oppressive and discriminatory behemoth of sharia law. Initially I wanted to focus on one article I found at the Guardian website but soon found multiple examples of the same gutter journalism. You can read more here and here, and here. And here’s another example of exemplary reporting. There’s nothing sensationalist or bigoted in them at all. Instead of addressing the articles separately, in this post I want to address some of the common arguments against the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) and suggest that they are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Tribunal itself, and the role of sharia within Islamic countries.

The first MAT in England was established in December 2007 and has since expanded to a number of other locations across the UK. MAT is a form of alternative dispute resolution. Instead of going to court Muslims who accept the jurisdiction of MAT can use it to resolve a number of civil disputes. There are two arbitrators present at all disputes: one Islamic scholar and the other a qualified solicitor or barrister. They will determine the dispute with a mix of English law and Sharia law. The tribunal operates within the UK’s existing legal system. This allows any determination of proceedings by MAT to be enforced through higher courts, and also preserves the right of parties to appeal to the High Court for review of an order. From their website the founders say that “MAT will therefore, for the first time, offer the Muslim community a real and true opportunity to settle disputes in accordance with Islamic Sacred Law with the knowledge that the outcome as determined by MAT will be binding and enforceable.”

Unfortunately for the campaigners against Sharia legal pluralism isn’t a brave new world. In the USA Native American tribes exercise exclusive criminal jurisdiction over crimes committed in tribal territory by tribal members (see here). Similar courts institutionalising indigenous justice operate in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Appearance before an indigenous court applies in strict circumstances and only to indigenous offenders. For England their experience with legal pluralism comes not with sharia but with Jewish Beth Din courts. The Jewish courts have been operating for close to 100 years and resolve a wide variety of civil disputes, including divorces. This prior experience however hasn’t restrained the sensationalism in the debate on the role of sharia within British law. Most notable of the backlash is the “One Law for All” campaign. You can read their petition here. (All I have to say is if Ayaan Hirsi Ali supports the cause then you should definitely get behind it).

Assumption 1: Discrimination (aka BUT THE WOMEN! THE WOMEN! THINK OF THE MUSLIM WOMEN WHO WILL SUFFER!)
The first reaction people typically have to sharia is that it discriminates against women. Such a system should not be established in the UK because it ‘clashes’ with women’s fundamental human rights. In her reaction to sharia in Britain Anjum Ahmed-Mouj states “Religious law, used without due regard to the relative powerlessness of women and children in society and without proper and transparent monitoring can be and is used to strengthen and extend the control and abuse perpetrated by individuals.” The problem is that this position presents sharia as a monolithic, static entity. However the development of sharia and women’s experience under it are more complex than that. Sharia differs greatly from country to country, interacting with influences like culture, globalisation and Westernisation which transform its practice and codification in different countries. This isn’t to deny that disempowered women suffer under sharia law; but solely blaming the religion undermines the fact that discrimination in the application of sharia is sourced from other areas which influence and drive the development of sharia in a certain direction. Within the context of MAT it is important to note the tribunal operates within English law. Parties have right of review and the decisions will be made with a mix of Islamic and English law.

With that in mind it becomes difficult to maintain that it is solely sharia, and MAT by extension, that presents the biggest hurdle to the empowerment of British Muslim women. Additionally, jumping to the worst case discrimination scenario denies the empowerment that MAT provides to all Muslims by providing avenues of cultural and social development. Such a move increases social cohesion by acknowledging the Muslim community and the role that such a large minority plays within the UK.

Assumption 2: The extremes of punishment under Sharia (aka LOOK AT WHAT THEY DO OVER IN [INSERT MUSLIM COUNTRY HERE] TO THEIR CRIMINALS! IT’S SO BARBARIC! WE’RE BRITISH! WE DON’T TORTURE!)
The second assumption a number of the articles make is in relation to how wrongs are punished under sharia law. One article above states that “In some Muslim countries punishments handed out under the legal system have included beheadings, public floggings and thieves’ hands being chopped off.” Well if they do that in some Muslim countries then you certainly can’t allow sharia in Britain! While the author doesn’t attempt to define the ‘some’, the point is that sharia is brutal and unjust in the punishment meted out to Muslim offenders. It is worth repeating here that such representations of punishment under sharia law again present it as a static construction, and a particularly violent one as well.

Within the context of MAT, such representations distort the power of the tribunal over what it can and cannot do. The tribunal cannot hear criminal law matters, nor can it impose any form of corporal punishment. It states this quite clearly on their website. Its power is limited to hearing civil disputes only, and issuing orders for compensation. The tribunal can adjudicate on cases of domestic violence within the context of family disputes. However, it is required to pass all details to the police who will then decide whether to take the matter further. Such a blatant oversight on the part of the journalists can only be deemed intentional, in order to further sensationalise the matter and present sharia law (and Islam and all Muslims by extension) as diametrically opposed to British mores.

Assumption 3: The growing influence of Islam on society (aka THIS IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG! THE MUSLIMS ARE GOING TO TAKE OVER ENGLAND ONE TRIBUNAL AT A TIME!)
Though this assumption is less overt than the others, it does underlie a number of the articles above. In particular one writer goes so far to state “there are several radical Islamist movements that are working hard to spread Islamic supremacy through the use of terrorism, intimidation, litigation and disinformation campaigns… A parallel legal system utilizing Sharia courts is likely to constitute one step toward expanding political Islam, rather than serving as the final request for a religious accommodation.”

Firstly, MAT is not a “parallel” legal system but rather could at best be described as a subordinate one. Secondly, its not even a “legal system” but rather an alternative dispute resolution tribunal which utilises sharia law and English law to determine disputes. Additionally, considering it can only determine civil disputes and also operates within the ambit of English law it is difficult to see how it is the so-called first step in expanding political Islam. The writers’ position is also at odds with official statistics of the Muslim population in Britain. 2001 data suggests Muslims make up 2.8% of the population in the UK. Unless the Muslim community has seen exponential growth in the past 8 years to figures that overtake the Anglo population it is difficult to see how exactly the Muslims will take over and where the support for a religious theocracy in Britain will come from. At another point in the article the same writer states that the ultimate goal of sharia law is “to replace democracies with Islamic theocracies”. Last time I checked sharia was a system of law, not a coup de tat.

Such representations like this of British Muslims and Islam perpetuate the discourse of the Other. They present Islam and Muslims as a threat to British society which cannot be contained. Similarly, the journalists suggest Muslims are a foreign element to Britain because they want an entirely separate legal structure to the “rest” of society. This distinction infers that Muslims must give up all traces of their religion and culture to assimilate into British society and be accepted by the public.

So does this sound the end of one law for all? It probably does, but “one law” isn’t a term that could be used to describe any legal system for a while. There is ample evidence to suggest that in post-colonial times the colonial powers allowed multiple legal systems based on local custom and religion to operate. In countries like the UK Muslim minorities have had a problematic existence and establishing and retaining a ‘Muslim’ identity has been particularly contentious. Ultimately what the journalists fail to acknowledge is that MAT allows for the recognition of minority groups and operates as a powerful inclusion tool. Recognition of an individual’s personal culture or in this case religion is extremely important. Denying all or part of a minority culture has drastic negative effects for identity and feelings of belonging.

For more information on MAT, see here for an interview with Maryam Namazie from the One Law For All campaign and Aina Khan, a lawyer who argues for Sharia Law. And also here for a 30 min video Judge Qureshi of the MAT giving a speech in Manchester about forced marriages and the role of the MAT.

Beyond The Chador

Sahar

When I began writing my chapter for my thesis on Iran, I was immensely curious  of women’s situation  in  both pre-revolution Iran and post.  Images of chador-wearing women and angry protests on the streets of Tehran are how I visualised the Iranian revolution. Of course I was aware there was  more to it than that.  Though my focus was on the hijab, the hijab debate touched upon various issues affecting Iranian women and allowed me to explore women’s diverse experiences in the past century.  During what was called the ‘modernizing’ period of Iran, Iranian women became a centerpiece for Iranian modernizers (led by the Pahlavis) who saw her as the catalyst for change. Women were encouraged to wear Western dress, remove hijab, and mimic the Western woman. This strategy was employed because modernism had become synonymous with Westernism and Westernism with freedom.  Critics of the revolution have often compared this period to that of the post-revolution, in which they argue the Shah’s efforts to modernise Iran fostered the success of women’s rights and the public participation of women. The revolution, they claim, eroded these achievements. The chador is often deployed as a metaphoric description of the smothering of women’s achievements.  Western media has conveniently depicted the Iranian woman shrouded in a depressing dark chador– the symbol of Iran’s deprivation and women’s subjugation. Anything said in defense of the revolution, is immediately silenced by the ‘sinister’ presence of the chador.

However, after 30 years of the 1979 revolution, recent scholarship on Iranian women has shifted away from what I believe is a flawed dichotomy and looked at how women’s situation has changed dramatically in post-revolution Iran today.

One of such scholars is Janet Afary who will be visiting UCLA to talk about Sexual Politics in Modern Iran. Afary joins the voices of observers like Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Louise Halper who point out that there has been considerable improvement of Iranian women’s experiences since the revolution.

Little is said about the achievements  made by women in Iran.  The criticisms of the revolution are beginning to be unraveled.  Women’s role in the revolution politicized them in ways never seen before. The mass presence of Iranian women in the public streets of Tehran in the late 1970s was a break away from not only the Shah and SAVAK’s despotism and repression, but from the construction of the domesticated traditional Iranian woman.  The women who fought for the success of the revolution could not be told to get back in the kitchen. Ayatollah Khomeini himself was aware of this and encouraged women to join political organizations and encouraged their public participation. What must also be noted is during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, while Iran’s millions of men fought against Saddam’s forces, it was Iranian women who ran the country. This added to the importance of women’s historical role in Iran.  It changed the ‘traditional’ view of the Iranian woman who had ‘earned’ the right to have a place in serving Iran in multiple ways that went beyond domestic contributions.  During this period Khomeini stated,

Islam urges women to strive and reach perfection which has no limits, nor does it stop at any point and therefore has granted them the right to serve society as a scholar, inventor, philosopher, teacher, physician, or even an active politician. (quoted by Eniz Sanasarian, 1990)

As pointed out by Afary, the Shah’s policies towards women lacked real benefits for women who did not belong to the elite class.  Life for women in rural and traditional sectors of society did not change dramatically. For instance, literacy rates remained quite low; by 1976 around thirty five percent of women were literate. Further, by the 1970s, the labour force showed only real improvement in the upper classes.   So it was women of the upper classes who identified more with the Western world than the majority of Iranian society who were the receivers of the ‘modernising’ reforms. Considering the impressive efforts to transform Iran, such trends seem low and exclusive, an indication of an unsuccessful program.

As I argued in my thesis, under the ‘Islamic’ government, there has been a more productive focus on gender in ways that the Pahlavi regime had failed to achieve because of its inability to engage with grass root voices.  Since the revolution, there have been interesting improvements in the political, economic and social role of women. In 2004, twenty percent of Iranian labour force was women, which has increased by twenty percent since 1980 and more class inclusive.  The literacy rate in Iran has risen to seventy percent for female adults, compared to under fifty percent in the 1970s. In 2006 reports show well over half of Iranian university students were women. A third of all doctors, 60% of civil servants and 80% of all teachers are women. (see Zahedi, 2007 and Halper, 2005).

Those figures don’t exactly fit in with the negative impression Western media gives us of Iranian women.

Armed with the understanding that comes with higher education, contributing to the economy and a history of being part of the revolution, women have driven a reformist discourse in order to influence the state’s interpretation of Islamic gender roles. For example, Maryam Gorji, a representative in the Islamic Parliament is engaged in writing a woman-centered (re)interpretation of women’s images in the Qur’an. Women like Gorji now seek what they call ‘gender fairness’ in the new state.  The achievements of women like Zahra Rahnavard, who has a Ph.D in political science and became the first women to hold the position of university chancellor in post-revolution Iran demonstrates the kind of success that women are achieving in Iran.

This is not to say there haven’t been disadvantages for women in post-revolution Iran.  However, my point is in line with Afary, who sees the importance in shedding light on some positive effects of the revolution. To suggest that the revolution has brought on nothing but catastrophic consequences for women is misleading and dangerous. Such a simplistic analysis contributes to not only the demonisation of Iran, but reinforces the orientalist stereotypes of Muslim women lacking agency against the brute force of Islam’s supposed misogyny.

In reality, Iranian women from all classes have been politicized. Women’s mass contribution in Iranian society in the past two decades has legitimized their role in the future of Iran.  They have founded their own organizations, study groups; associations and publications. They have marked their own space in politics and contribute to the country in ways that women under the Pahlavi regime could not possibly have done so. This is because the Shah’s policies  openly called for a westernisation of Iran and discredited.

So contrary to how they are perceived in mainstream media and even academic scholarship, Iranian women are far from the silent victims of a religious establishment.

Orientalism, Culture and Appropriation: Part 3

Re-Constituting the Orient: Punks, Muslims and harem pants

Farah

The Orient exists, and is created, to be used and consumed through cultural artefacts of mass culture. I’m sure everyone’s noticed the alarming trend of the keffiyeh as a fashion accessory. Now the same thing is happening with harem pants. Its everywhere.

These women think they are fashionable.

Like I said in a previous post I’m all for trends but this is out of hand. Kader Konuk identifies the replication of an ethnic identity through the imitation of clothes, appearance, language or other components of culture as “ethnomasquerade”. It is through ethnomasquerade that mass culture simultaneously exercises and hides its hegemony over the colonised Other.

The idea of ethnomasquerade is closely related to Bhabha’s concept of mimicry. Bhabha identifies a certain phenomenon of identity construction in the colonial context. Mimicry is an imitation that is “almost, but not quite” the same as the original. Colonial mimicry is the desire for a reconstituted, recognizable Other. Harem pants are a perfect example. The modern ‘harem pant’ as marketed to the modern consumer doesn’t actually exist anywhere. It is constructed solely by mass culture to appropriate groups and cultures who threaten its hegemony. Fashion magazines market ‘exotic’ harem pants made by Western fashion brands, and modelled by white women. There is enough ‘exotic’ in the magazine to hint at the Orient, but the context and construction of the representation place it firmly within the colonizers subjectifying construction. The West therefore creates its own version of the “truth” about the Other. Further, the term harem pant is the colonizers creation to label its “interpretations” of the Orient. It is almost, but not quite the same as the original. The Other and representations of it are therefore incorporated into mass culture. The Other is, if not controlled, then at least contained within mass culture’s totalizing sphere of influence.

So consumer capitalism has adapted the most challenging propositions of the Other’s culture and reconstituted it as an empty, fashion shell. But since Dick Hebdidge in Subculture, the Meaning of Style in 1979 it was clear that contemporary audiences use and can subvert mass culture for their ends. Representations can be excorporated into the marginal. The oppressed have always resisted, have ‘poached’ on the domains of the powerful and reworked the dominant culture for their own ends. Popular culture (rather than mass) is always a culture of conflict, it always involves the struggle to make social meanings that are in the interests of the subordinate and that are not those preferred by the dominant ideology. Popular culture is the culture of the subordinate who resent their subordination.

This approach allows us to look for evidence of counter hegemonic or subaltern voices that may contest and to varying extents transform the power relations of hegemonic discourse. A notion of the Ottoman subject as an agent capable of negotiating different subject positions is seen in the example of painter Osman Bedi’s art. He spent 12 years in France studying art under Jean-Léon Gérôme, but then later moved back to Turkey. On his return he chose not to reproduce nude women in imaginative harems or Arab men about to ravage women, but rather depicted academics, views of the home, and in certain scenes a country coming to grips with Western influence, you know, actual things and people which actually existed. His work was, in effect, a way of “speaking back” to Western artists intent on portraying the Orient in their own image. In “Theologian” there are no naked women, no tribal conflicts, and no sheesha pipes or black slaves. It is merely a scene of a man in quiet study, reading the Qur’an. The man neither engages the audience and nor would he want to. The stillness of the scene suggests it is the audience who is intruding on his time. While the painting is done in the Oriental style Bedi re-casts the Orient man into a realistic setting. Similarly in “Young Girl Reading the Qur’an” Bedi shows us a girl (like the man in the Theologian) sitting (fully clothed strangely enough) reading the Qur’an. In such a simple scene Bedi gives the girl back her thinking and intellectual life which has been erased by the Orientalist painters.

So cultural production and appropriation of artefacts exists more on a continuum rather than being a zero sum game. Later arguments by Fiske and Strinati again show that there are multiple sites of resistance to mass culture which excorporate mass cultural artefacts and imbue them with a different meaning. In the 1970s punk was one of the new and emerging subcultures. Of punk Hebdidge said “no subculture has sought with more grim determination than the punks to detach itself from the taken for granted landscape of normalised forms, nor to bring down upon itself such vehement disapproval.” However since writing in 1979 punk these days has largely been incorporated into mass culture and its aesthetic is more fashion then a subculture. Anyone with black skinny leg jeans (rips optional), heavy black eyeliner and faux-hawk hair can now look ‘punk’. But to a certain extent the punk aesthetic has been excorporated by a number of people, including The Taqwacores, an emerging group of young Muslims who have built a subculture on the re-appropriation of the puck aesthetic. They have re-discovered the elements which made it popular in the 1970s and 80s; and have excorporated a style thus further challenging hegemonic constructs of power and representation of Muslim youth in society.

So what now for harem pants? Mass culture will soon move on, and incorporate something else which challenges its hegemonic control over representations of the Other. Now, I’m not suggesting that we don’t have to do anything about it, or that the appropriation of the Orient isn’t a serious (but slightly inevitable) occurrence. The key is that challenge actually needs to be mounted by us for mass culture to change. There are always objections and contradictions which obstruct the closing of the circuit between sign and meaning. Subcultures provide that hindrance. They challenge and displace hegemony. Osman Bedi consciously decided to challenge dominant constructions of the Orient through his art. Actual people excorporate the punk aesthetic. While the Orient is still a major sight of cultural appropriation it becomes important for us to challenge the use and abuse of such imagery. In the words of Hebdidge, “humble objects can be magically appropriated; stolen by subordinate groups and made to carry secret meanings: meanings which express, in code, a form of resistance to the order which guarantees their continued subordination.”

EDIT: Racialicious has a new series on cultural appropriation available here. There is also a specific post on fashion.

Orientalism, Culture and Appropriation: Part 2

The Translation of Orientalism into the Vernacular

Farah

Unidentified artist, Orient Delights Orient's Most Famous Sweets, c. 1920

How did the high art Oriental depictions of harems, turbans, hyper-sexualised women in transparent veils and sheiks make its way into mass culture? A lot of it has to do with timing. In early 20th century Orientalist fine art was still in its heyday. There was a rapid spread of Orientalist imagery. Victorian suffragettes like Frances Wright were adopting Oriental-style dress to challenge the era’s rigid sexual mores and to advance women’s rights (See Pantaloons & Power by Gayle V. Fischer. It’s a terrible title but the book makes the point.) Everyone who was anyone was going to the Near East to fulfil their own Orientalist fantasies, bringing back and writing about wild stories of naked women in harems and camels and exotic clothing and food. The problem was that high art was (and is still) seen to be bought at the price of the exclusion of the lower classes. But the rise in a mass consumer culture in the 1920’s changed that. It cemented the commodification of Orientalist imagery and suddenly the lower classes were no longer excluded from the Oriental phenomenon. The ‘Orient’ was excorporated from high art, and incorporated into the language of mass culture.

In “The Schema of Mass Culture” Theodor Adorno provides a scathing critique of mass culture. He stated that mass culture was adaptation, its artefacts were ‘pre-digested’ like baby food, and its audience were those who could not appreciate anything but the pre-digested artefacts mass culture offered them. The Orient was adapted and incorporated from its high art leanings into mass consumption. The images presented to the audience were assimilated into its context. By using this imagery cultural producers were reflecting society’s orientalist fantasies back onto itself. In the words of Adorno, “the difference between ‘serious’ and ‘light’ culture is either eroded or expressly organised and thus incorporated into the almighty totality.”

Orientalist imagery proliferated through artefacts including photographs, colour prints, pictorial advertisements, and movies. The advertising business in particular used Orientalism to sell everything from tobacco to pulp fiction magazines. And who can forget Disney’s Aladdin? In the ad below for “Fatima Turkish Blend Cigarettes”, the Oriental woman is shown holding a pack of cigarettes.

Unidentified artist, Fatima Sign (advertisement) c.1920

In a clear continuity with Orientalist fine art (see “Almeh with Pipe” in the first post), the women is simultaneously veiled, and not veiled. Though turbaned, the veil over her mouth is transparent, leaving the viewer to see her seductive smile. This imagery complicates the interpretation of the text accompanying the image. In the top right corner, the audience is asked; “Have you had the pleasure?” The ambiguity is clear: the pleasure of what exactly? Coupled with the Oriental woman smiling at us through her transparent veil, somehow I doubt they are referring to just smoking cigarettes.

The pulp fiction magazine cover below operates within the same discourse. The image on the left shows a ‘typical’ Arab man in the background with scimitar in hand; ready to ravage the helpless Western woman.

Unidentified artist, pulp fiction magazine covers, c.1920

She in turn is being protected by her Western man. It therefore operates dually; both to demonise Arab men and to subjectify the western woman. Similarly, the cover on the left is just as titillating as any of the fine art pieces explored previously. Like the image of Fatima Turkish cigarettes, the woman is hyper-sexualised; kohl-rimmed eyes, ruby lips, gaudy jewellery. Again, her transparent veil serves to both cover her and uncover her. The veil is there, but beneath the veil she is naked, giving the viewer a glimpse of the forbidden.

These advertisements and mass culture goods are marketed and produced for the Western gaze, further subjectifying the Oriental woman. They operate as fantasies and as imaginings of what women and life is like “over there”. In this way they are much like Gerome’s depiction of prayer or Ingres’ portrayal of harem life and continue the endless re-production of imagined Orientalist imagery. With most cultural artefacts, they then lend themselves to re-appropriation by high art. Matisse’s “Odalisque with Magnolias” was produced during the height of the mass culture boom (see below). Matisse is considered to be a fore-runner of the modernist movement. He experimented with colour, composition and perspective. His style was less realist (realist as in technically realist, not socially) than previous Orientalist paintings but like Gerome and Ingres one can see a repetition of Orientalist imagery; in this piece it is the fabled odalisque. The problem with Matisse was that when he first travelled to Morocco in 1912 he could find no women to pose for him. In Feminism in Contemporary Art, Isaak observes that Matisse found that “Nice on the sunny Mediterranean could provide the voluptuous sensuality he had desired from the Orient without the strain of an actual encounter with a foreign culture.” He re-created an experience with the Orient as he wanted it to be by decorating his house with souvenirs brought back from North Africa, and employing suitably dark-skinned models to pose for him. Matisse claimed that he was working from ‘reality’; he had supposedly seen naked women but as Isaak again notes he was claiming an authenticity over what he actually saw. Like the artists before him Matisse never stepped foot in a harem, let alone met an odalisque. He was to a large extent re-creating assumptions based on the Orientalist paintings produced in the late 19th century, and the imagery produced in booming mass culture which appropriated and re-produced the imagery of the sexualised Oriental woman. Echoing Said’s criticisms, Isaak states that “Matisse’s harem paintings were part of a fashionable colonial discourse in which the erotic management of human subjects in cultural production thinly disguises a collective assertion of control over human subjects, territory and property.”

Orientalism surrounds us. Harem pants as fashion. Middle-Eastern inspired bars and clubs. The appropriation of the keffiyeh. Its images are constantly imported, incorporated, appropriated and re-invented for the mass market. The big question therefore is whether any authentic cultural form can exist for long without being transformed into self-annihilating simulations or mimicries of themselves for mass consumption.

Next week I will look at the consequences of cultural appropriation and commodification, and the inherent danger both processes pose in replicating the colonial project through mass culture.

Orientalism, Culture and Appropriation: Part 1

Portrayals of the ‘Other’ in Fine Art and Mass Media

Farah

This is the first in a 3-part series discussing the portrayal of the ‘Other’ through Western cultural artefacts. In this post I will establish the theoretical framework, and discuss the role of the Orient in fine art during the first wave of colonialism in the late 1800’s.

All images sourced from the Orientalist Gallery, run by American artist Enzie Shahmiri.

Harem girls, merchants smoking sheesha, lavish clothes, harem girls, odalisques bathed by African slaves, mosque interiors….harem girls, spice merchants… and some more harem girls; a (wide) array of figures and images were employed by the West to represent and know the Oriental Other. The Oriental ‘period’ in fine art rose during the late 19th century and involved artists from a number of countries including America, Britain, France, Italy and Spain. However, since Said’s Orientalism critics have re-engaging with Oriental art. Said drew on Foucault’s ideas of power and argued that the knowledge production process of the Orient and the process of its subjection by the colonial power were processes that were intimately connected. In light of Said’s work it is asked therefore whether Oriental art was (in the words of art historian Gerald Ackerman) a “wonderful, direct, immediate response of one civilisation to another”? Or was the western desire to represent the Other intimately connected with the colonists will to power?

As Linda Nochlin notes, “for… artists [the Near East] existed as a project of the imagination, a fantasy space or screen onto which strong desires – erotic, sadistic, or both – could be projected with impunity.” In Jean-Léon Gérôme’s “Almeh with Pipe” (1873) (below) the Orient woman stands seductively. Gerome visually seduces the viewer to fulfil the role of the ‘client’; her head tilted is upwards but her gaze is directed to us.
Perhaps more important is his depiction of her veil; she is simultaneously veiled and not veiled. In this way the transparent veil operates as a dual discursive construct; it both ‘covers’ her but allows us to gaze upon her as a hyper-sexualised being. Rudolf Ernst’s “The Favourite” (1872) (below) operates within a similar context. In it he shows a timid, (pale) girl, juxtaposed with a tall, standing (dark) man. The man is an active participant within the scene and is (tentatively) removing the girl’s veil. She is seated, hands folded in her lap, passive and compliant. The man is in charge of the scene and is unveiling the Orient women to fulfil his sexual fantasy.
This depiction juxtaposes the man’s power over the girl’s powerlessness. Ernst has also drawn his subjects out of proportion to emphasise the power relationship. Note I also refer to them as ‘girl’ and ‘man’ because he has clearly painted them with a significant age difference – her face is youthful, fresh and bright, whereas he is tall and commanding.

We are enticed into thinking that these images function as realism because (as Ackerman suggests above) such images seem to record the interactions between one civilisation and another. It’s clear however that these images serve an alternative and an almost opposite function. These painters were satisfying the public’s curiosity for the unknown and the exotic by depicting forbidden spaces of the mosque and the harem, and in many instances doing so inaccurately. Consider Jean-Léon Gérôme’s “Rustem Pasha Mosque” (date unknown) (below). He was clearly captivated by Islamic art and architecture and somewhat faithfully depicts its style. However, as a non-Muslim he would not be allowed inside the mosque and can only re-create what he thinks is inside. This, along with his inaccurate depiction of prayer further undermines the piece as a ‘historical’ image. Gerome’s work can only be understood with reference to France’s colonial operations in North Africa. France reduced the Orient to a concubine, an indolent heathen and ready to be colonized. The Orient was depicted by artists as a feminized and exotic entity, waiting to be conquered.

Similar inaccuracies plague the artists’ depiction of the harem and life within it. Traditionally operating as a women’s space, men would not have been granted access to them. Depictions of the harem therefore operated as a fantasy through which artists imagined the lives of the women they could not see. What was projected was a voyeuristic, hyper-sexualised setting. In “La piscine du harem” (1888) (below) Gérôme’s women are casually seated in a marbled, carpeted environment. The African slave offers them both sheesha. A woman in the background turns her head to the scene with interest. Gerome depicts these women as almost casual about their nakedness. Both are removed from the viewer, their heads turned with interest to what the slave has to offer. Jean August Dominique Ingres’s “Turkish Bath” (1863) (below) also operates within the same context. The viewer is again detached from the piece but he provides us with a titillating, voyeuristic view of the harem. Again, these harem girls are engaged with casual, light entertainment, aided by two dark slave women.
What is even more surprising (well, not really surprising given the context of our discussion) is that all women in both works are also surprisingly pale for women who should technically be North African.

The above has largely focused on French Oriental art. A number of academics note that American and British Oriental fine art was less overtly imperial and political than its French counterparts. Holly Edwards notes that American Frederick Bridgman eschewed hyper-sexuality and instead depicted more domesticated scenes of beautiful women, no less desirable than Gerome’s but less obviously so. In “The Siesta” (1878) (below) Bridgman presents us with a woman reclining in a lush, opulent setting. Her ‘role’ is more ambiguous than in the art noted above (the title does not suggest her status, nor does her surrounding or clothing), but still there are suggestions of danger.
The half-open doorway hints at voyeurism (though less so than Gerome’s work) and the monkey suggests debauchery, but this element is removed from her and presented in animal form. For a further discussion on British and American Oriental fine art I’ll direct you “Visions of the Harem” by Ahdaf Soueif and Emily Salcedo’s brief introduction on the subject. Another excellent discussion by Linda Nochlin is in her book The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth Century Art and Society, Chapter 3 – “The Imaginary Orient”.

There are many ways to represent the Orient, and each is subject to conditions of time and place. Ultimately, this period sparked the creation and consumption of a fabled, exotic and imaginary world. And while the artists themselves may not have believed in the colonial powers ‘civilisation’ mission, they are nevertheless intimately bound within this framework and must be understood as such. Artists like Jean-Léon Gérôme, Jean August Dominique Ingres, Frederick Arthur Bridgman, and later into the 20th century, Henri Mattise and Pablo Picasso appropriated cultural artefacts and re-produced them for the colonial high art gaze, helping to create and solidify perceptions of the exotic Orient.

For more images from the artists mentioned above visit Shahmiri’s blog. Next week I will be looking at the boom of consumer culture in the 20th century and the uses of Orientalist imagery by marketers and manufacturers, marking its transition from high culture to mass culture.

Nahid Persson’s “Prostitution Behind the Veil”

Farah

Mina and Fariba (top right) and Nahid Persson (bottom right)

Iran has always been a country I’d love to sit down and read up on. When I first started uni I wrote a (terrible) essay on the causes of the Iranian Revolution and I got too caught up in names, dates and places and I never really learnt anything. So my knowledge of the area is a little limited, but I try to read/watch/listen when I can. A couple of months ago I read about documentary film-maker Nahid Persson, an Iranian exile who fled from Iran to Sweden after the Revolution. I *cough* downloaded *cough* a documentary called Prostitution Behind The Veil with the intention of posting my thoughts, but watching it made me a bit…. ambivalent. Alicia over at MMW has posted up her thoughts, so I thought maybe it was time.

My first problem with the documentary is the title. It really wasn’t necessary to perpetuate the public/private orientalist discourse, and neither is the music that the documentary opens with. There other problems that I have with the documentary are how Persson has chosen to construct her subject matter and her voiceover.

Initially we are introduced to Habib, a man who sells fortunes using birds. The story then follows two heroin addicted prostitutes who live in the same bedsit, Mina (20) and Fariba (24). Both their husbands are in jail and have to support children. Persson’s documentary follows Mina and Fariba through their daily routine; we are shown around their homes, introduced to their children, watch them getting high, and follow them onto the street and watch clients pick them up. My main issue with the documentary is the lack of information we are given regarding their situation. Fariba shows us photos of her life six months prior to shooting the documentary; it is clear she was living a middle class lifestyle. Later on it is suggested that she was involved in prostitution while she was still married to earn money for the family. Similarly, Mina tells us that her husband got her addicted to heroin and was jailed when Mina was two months pregnant. Considering her daughter is still a baby that wouldn’t have been that long ago. Now, prostitution and sex trafficking is a big issue for a lot of countries. A number of factors contribute to its perpetuation including lack of social welfare, continuous warfare, lack of employment opportunities, weak government, but Persson does not address this. Instead if you rely on her voiceover alone she suggests that the whole problem can be boiled down to the Revolution. She tells the viewer that

“the Iranian Revolution started as a dream for a better society. The enormous oil wealth would be distributed. Democracy and freedom of speech would be implemented. But it didn’t happen. Instead, a new religious hierarchy developed. And a bureaucracy fuelled by bribes. Today, 25 years later, there are no dreams left.”
(at 10:02 – 10-23)

Persson’s voiceover simplifies the social and economic conditions of women both prior to and after the Revolution. She pushes the viewer to make a number of unhelpful assumptions about the contemporary state of Iran by framing her documentary solely within the scope of the Revolution. This includes assuming the negative impact on women under Islamic law and undermining the strong role women played in outsing the Shah. Indeed, the Revolution did change the social, economic and political make up of Iran. However, a number of other events have occurred since then which probably haven’t helped to improve the status of women. The Iran-Iraq war, sanctions (which have further isolated the country economically), and the spate of anti-Islamic rhetoric in recent years further marginalised the government. All these contribute to the current situation of Mina and Fariba, and other women in the same situation.

My second major problem with the documentary is that she has structured her subject matter around an obvious Orientalist discourse. I’ve already mentioned the title (and the music) above, but it goes beyond that. The way certain scenes are presented really plays into a public/private dichotomy. Inside the house, Mina and Fariba are shown as sexual beings, laughing and joking with each other about sex and condoms, they get high in the privacy of their house, and they dance and sing for their husbands. On the outside of the house they are demure, head bowed, wearing a chador and hijab. In an early scene Mina takes off her hijab laughing as she says “Damn veil.”*If this reflects the way in which women live in Iran (which it probably does), then say so. Identify the power structures women are subjected to and tell us the wider problems that women face. Don’t just tell me unhelpful generalisations like “men and women can’t shake hands.” And above all don’t let your own documentary participate within the same structures which subjugate women to being with.

I am acutely aware that I am the same age as Fariba and live in circumstances totally removed from her life. And even with its faults Persson did highlight a major issue in Iran, the extent of which I didn’t know about. But at the end, the documentary leaves you with really nothing to grab onto (well, it does have a very poignant close up of the ladies only entrance at the airport). Yes, there are marginalised and disempowered women in Iran but I would have appreciated both a fuller discussion of the reasons behind their descent into the sex trade and maybe toning down the Orientalist assumptions.

*Note when Mina says “Damn veil” she is referring to her hijab, I watched a sub-titled version which translated “hijab” as “veil”.