Arabs & The City

Arabs and the city: challenging stereotypes
FARID FARID
July 8, 2010
The Age - http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/contributors/arabs-and-the-city-challenging-stereotypes-20100707-100fh.html

A scene from the film City of Life, part of the 2010 Arab Film Festival.
Ghassan Hage opens his book Against Paranoid Nationalism with an astutely funny but true observation that "in 2001 a considerable number of indigenous people and Arab and Muslim Australians felt demeaned, inferiorised and excluded from the rest of society — Asians were breathing with a sigh of relief, at least they'd have time to replenish for the next round".

He follows this statement with a provocative question: Does being demeaned inferiorised, treated insensitively and excluded mean you are being subjected to racism?"

It is especially timely after new Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared her lifting of the cultural ban on political correctness. Hage's answer, "It's no longer easy to answer this question" is telling of the current malaise of race politics.

The existential crisis that haunts Arabs and other racialised minorities in Western societies, is, of course, nothing new but it has clearly intensified in the nearly nine years after the September 11th attacks. It emanates from the constant barrage of dehumanising parlance and imagery that characterises Australian vernacular — be it liberally cloaked or purely xenophobic — when it comes to Arabs. Arabs are either seen as exciting exotic commodities readily available for public consumption — think of the useless Sex and The City 2 — or as morally depraved beings with patriarchal proclivities and misogynistic mores animating their seemingly libidinal lives (Sex and The City 2 again). It has been 10 years since the infamous gang rapes in western Sydney by a group of youths of Lebanese backgrounds as well as other nationalities. There is still rhetorical currency for the lazy but automatic linking of ethnicity with criminality as Cindy Wockner, author of Evil in the Suburbs, casually made repeatedly during a recent interview on National Nine News. The pejorative title belies what Wockner and her co-author Michael Porta aim to present. They recycle centuries-old skewed representations of the Arab world about Arab men being lascvisious and inherently violent and market them as cultural truths. As Dr Paula Abood notes in her blog, Race & The City "in tracking the emergence of this racialised character over the past decade in newspaper stories and on tabloid television, it seems this cinematic construction is precisely what the market wants".

Not to be outdone, in his satirical blog for The National Times author and self-declared book pimp John Birmingham, attempts to inject caustic humour and social wit when he quips about mundane events in everyday life. He describes how recently he was contacted via Facebook by a money laundering scammer from the United Arab Emirates. Troubled by the trivial request he muses: "The thing is, though, I've never met this Ahmed Khizer Khan, citizen of the United Arab Emirates, and I'm not entirely sure as to how I might proceed with someone who is very obviously a foreign Johnny." He ends his blog post with the enticing offer of free copies of his new book "to be sent out to the commenters who provide me with the most amusing suggestions as to how I might respond to Mr Ahmed Khizer Khan, citizen of the United Arab Emirates. Bonus copies for anyone who can actually a get a quid out of him. Or a Youtube vid of him dancing naked with a goat. That works for me too."

I may not be able to fulfill Birmingham's ambiguous fantasy of seeing an Emirati dance with a goat, but, to make sure I'm in for the running for this life-changing prize, I suggest going along to watch the Arab Film Festival of Australia, which is currently touring all major centres. One of the films screening, City of Life, by up and coming young British Emirati director Ali Mostafa, details the cosmopolitan complexities and intricate social layerings of Dubai.

Constructed as a series of intersecting plot lines in the tradition of recent Hollywood movies such as Crash and Babel, the film follows the messy and real lives of a vivacious Romanian air hostess, an Indian cab driver aspiring for Bollywood fame, a narcisstic British advertising agent, and an Emirati youngster who does not have access to the riches of this booming metropolis and instead lives on the marginalised outskirts of the city with his grandmother and sister.

Other films such 12 Angry Lebanese and The Time that Remains, provide viewers with a diverse panoply of images and feelings that Birmingham and other viewers might not have access to in the over-saturated media language of always picturing Arabs as problematic.

The diverse Arab filmmakers capture the affective and creative dynamics of the Arab world on screen through delicate montages and thought provoking dialogues. These visual narratives are moved by an intimate melange of beautiful and ugly self-representations, but that are ultimately real in their artistic expressions. I understand Birmingham's blog is supposed to generate some form of social commentary with his enlightened and critical jesting but what I am suggesting for him and for viewers around the country to be exposed to another language. And by the way, the festival organisers also send out messages via Facebook!

The Arab Film Festival opens in Melbourne today. For further details please visit www.arabfilmfestival.com.au. Farid Farid is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney.