It recently emerged that Arab graffiti artists who had been hired to decorate the set of the Showtime program "Homeland" successfully snuck in subversive messages. These included phrases such as "Homeland is racist" and "#BlackLivesMatter." For those of you who pay attention to the world around them, this should come as no surprise.
As the artists themselves said (as quoted by The Washington Post), "‘We knew there wasn’t much research and energy into accurately depicting’ the region."
The show has garnered harsh criticism for its factual inaccuracies and its depiction of both the Arab world and Islamic culture as a monolithic entity of entropic violence and savagery. As Laura Durkay wrote concisely, "'Homeland' carelessly traffics in absurd and damaging stereotypes."
I used to watch the show and have seen enough episodes to appreciate the aesthetic as an invocation of Orientalism, which was defined by Edward Said as "a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, West, "us") and the strange (the Orient, the East, "them")."
It is important to realize the role of "Homeland" as yet another facet of our culture of prejudice and misrepresentation. It is also important to recognize the presence of these entities throughout our history.
The tropes on display in "Homeland" are nothing new, as they easily recall Joseph Conrad’s "Heart of Darkness," in which the natives of the Congo are described as "shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom."
Both the prose of the novel and the cinematography of the show are quite refined. It's aim is nonetheless just as obfuscatory and propagandistic.
In the present, our media is riddled with phrases that identify subjects such as "Arab tyrants," "Islamofascists," "the Arabs," and just last week, Hillary Clinton’s shortsighted invocation of her enemy, "the Iranians."
All of these tokens fuel the notion of one monolithic group of people, who, from birth, are inculcated to "hate us." As Said indicated, in the eyes of the West, the East is fundamentally "other" and as such, inferior.
Granted, the Arab world and the Islamic world are two largely separate entities that exhibit immense demographic, political, and linguistic diversity. But this is never revealed by corporate media or its entertaining dramatizations such as "Homeland" or "The Hurt Locker."
I have lived in the Middle East and can vouch that what we see on TV bears little to no resemblance to the region. The chaotic "reality" of the East, into which Americans have been inculcated by various media, simply does not exist to the degree perpetuated by our news and fictional narratives.
This does not matter much, so long as American viewers — and voters — can be convinced the Middle East is devoid of culture and humanity.
Just look to the beginning of the insurgency in Iraq, when Americans looked on excitedly as Iraq was pillaged and destroyed, heralding our military presence as beacons of democracy and freedom.
None of this would have been possible without the careful and calculated propaganda machines that have systematically manipulated the masses and thwarted voices that spoke out against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As we remember, in the buildup to the so-called "War on Terror," dishonesty and racism became our cultural currency, which is still presently observable in repeated and perpetuated lies about Iran.
According to "Homeland," which was spun out of the Israeli show "Prisoners of War," al-Qaeda was a creation of Iran, which is a bold-faced lie that serves the war hawks who are well-poised to benefit from an attack on Iran.
"Homeland" is emblematic of the West’s ignorance toward the Middle East; rather than write off the exploitation of the Middle East for what it has been, it has become a dramatized, sensationalized form of both entertainment and state-serving propaganda.
Given TV’s immense influence on our society, it should come as no surprise that when the next rhetorical attack is launched against Middle Eastern characters, Americans will sit at their screens and enjoy watching the violence unfold. It is, after all, just a distraction.
Jordan MacKenzie is a second year UF linguistics master’s student. His column appears on Wednesdays.
