By Erin DostalThe Daily Northwestern
Experts from around the world tried to dispel misconceptions about Middle Eastern media at a conference held on campus Friday.
The symposium on Middle Eastern media was sponsored by the Center for Global Culture and Communication.
“We were trying to hear from some very exciting scholars who are thinking about media from the Middle East in a different way,” said Brian Edwards, a professor of English and comparative literary studies. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding about Middle Eastern media – what it might be, what it’s like in the general public.”
Edwards, one of the co-directors of the event, said the symposium was intended to educate people about the variety of Middle Eastern media, including film, cartoons and audio recordings. The event drew scholars from the U.S. and abroad, including Yesim Burul Seven of Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey and Ramez Maluf of Lebanese American University in Beirut.
Faisal Devji, author of “Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity,” spoke about media coverage of terrorist acts, using the 2005 London bombings as an example.
“What kind of communication do visual media make possible when one or more of the speakers is dead?” said Devji, a history professor at New School University in New York.
Devji said many terrorists hope to attain long-lasting notoriety with spectacular attacks that will be reported by global media outlets.
Elizabeth Thompson, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, discussed how Western movies were absorbed by the cultures of many Middle Eastern states during the 1940s. In a speech titled “Scarlett O’Hara in Damascus: Cinema and Arab Politics of Late Colonialism,” she used showings of “Gone With the Wind” in Syria and Egypt as case studies.
“(Western films) were so popular with 1940s (Egyptian) audiences because their exploration of marriage politics refracted about a desirable post-independence future,” she said.
Thompson said Western films offered Middle Eastern audiences a glimpse of a different cultural perspective.
For example, Middle Eastern women who watched “Gone with the Wind” often saw a contrast with their own culture. Scarlett O’Hara had three husbands, which would be unheard of in the Middle East, Thompson said.
Edwards said he thought the event was successful.
“A lot of people in the West talk about Middle Eastern media … without actually watching it or having experience of it,” he said. “All of these people have experience of this, and that’s why we’re interested in hear what they have to say.”
Reach Erin Dostal at [email protected].
