26 posts tagged “middle east”
more from suheir who has been keeping busy:
Book Launch for Suheir Hammad’s “breaking poems”
Thursday, October 30, 2008 6-8pm
Bowery Poetry Club, 310 Bowery, New York City $20 (with a copy of breaking poems) $10 w/out
Guests include Paul Beatty, Patricia Smith, Roger Bonair-Agard, Patrick Rosal, Aracelis Girmay, Danny Hoch and others
Suheir Hammad's break introduces English to an Arabic vernacular that startles into being an altogether new language, bridging the archipelago of a Palestine under siege to the diaspora and beyond, breaking through convention, breaking open locks on mind and heart, breaking into a music inspired by the Coltranes, Sun Ra and free jazz, Lee Scratch Perry and Ravi Shankar, a music that is at once a joyous celebration of survival and a poignant cri de Coeur that cannot be ignored and that Mahmoud Darwish should have lived to see. This is a poetry written for people who have endured the winds of hurricanes and invasions What wisdom, energy, joy and poignancy Hammad brings to the page-for all of this, and for teaching me a new speaking, I give her my thanks. – Carolyn Forché
Founded in 2003, Cypher Books, a New York City-based, independent
publisher is proud to present breaking poems, the second collection of
poems from Tony award-winning poet, Suheir Hammad. Consistent with
Cypher's mission to publish innovative and necessary poetry, Hammad
departs from her previous books with a bold and explosive style to do
what the best poets have always done: create a new language. Using
“break” as a trigger for every poem, Hammad destructs, constructs, and
reconstructs the English language for us to hear the sound of a breath,
a woman's body, a land, a culture, falling apart, broken, and put back
together again.
Cypher Books has recently transitioned from being an imprint of
Rattapallax Press to a full-fledged press under the sponsorship of
Bowery Arts & Sciences. This celebration will also serve as a
fundraiser to benefit future publications and programming.
finally got round to watching Persepolis
i enjoyed the simple, stylized animation aesthetic.
however the narrative left me cold. emotionally the film felt as flat as its stark black or white palette. i also felt that the insights into iran the country, the culture, the people and the politics lacked depth. i think we probably made a mistake by watching the english dubbed version which is what i put the dialog's slight clumsiness down to. part of my disconnect could be due to my lack of a sense of nationalism or patriotism which ahmed correctly points out is one of the film's underlying themes - with its corresponding deep disappointment in the ugly realities of 'my country'.
i think this was a case of inflated expectations affecting my enjoyment of the film which was innovative, novel and important in the current cultural context and is definitely recommendable.
the movie certainly generated plenty of buzz (and box office sales >US$22 million worldwide) and i think there is room for much more creative output from the region displaying the various often overlooked subtleties of notions of identity, perspectives of 'the west' and universal humanist concerns. there is a hunger globally and regionally for such fare.
i am always happy to see voice given the the liberal, non-stereotypical, often silent middle east. (this seems even more vital 7 years and a day later).
waltz for bashir sounds like an exciting addition to this new animated genre of middle eastern film. i think we can trace the lineage back to joe sacco (Palestine
Dana El Bataji writing for Arab Media & Society believes that
MTV Arabia "has not only translated a western medium to suit an Arab
audience; it has also translated the western definition of what is and
isn’t cool and made it pertinent to the region. That is, by all
accounts, a laudable feat, especially given the cultural, social and
political divides between the west and the Arab world."
Wow. Really? Unfortunately I have yet to watch MTVa, not for lack of trying, I can just never seem to find it on the box, so I can't really comment directly on its laudable feat.
I was interviewed by the MTV international research team in the pre-launch phase (which in typical, and thusfar successful, Dubai Inc / AMG style was highly-condensed; speed to market paramount, thoroughness and preparation secondary) during their field-tour of the region as they looked to connect with and make sense of the attractive demographic called 'Arab Youth'. Amazingly, youths under the age of 24 now make up 50-65 percent of the population of the Middle East (Brookings Institute).
The MTV researchers (these guys' jobs were to basically travel the world identifying global youth cultures - rad) were obsessing over the conservative values of the 'Arab Street' and its much-trumpeted anti-American sentiment.
Now I admit that my experience working in the Middle East, predominantly marketing and selling American and European brands to
kids in the region (often appropriating regional creative talent to achieve
the task), may have provided me not with a skewered sample, one not totally representative of the region's youth population. Our audiences have usually been in the mid-to-high socio-economic brackets, well-traveled and open to the arts. But surely this is the very same audience MTVa is targeting. I don't see the channel winning over the (definitely present) conservative contingent which in any case probably isn't of great interest to the prospective MTVa advertisers. The fact that the channel predominantly broadcasts in English, playing English-language music videos and MTV's internationally syndicated shows (Cribs etc) will in itself filter out much of the conservative audience.
The power of the MTV brand internationally has always revolved around its anti-establishment credentials and it should be no different to kids in the Middle East. They will see right through a diluted, self-censored, polite MTV.
Kids in this part of the world are no less rebellious, angst-ridden, cynical etc than those in MTV's other markets, and they are certainly no less sophisticated at identifying disingenuous brands. With MTV a much diminished cultural force internationally, this isn't the time for dilly-dathering fence-sitting circumspection, it's the time for bold, confident ground-standing, feather-ruffling, two-fingers to the system type stuff.
And yet this is indicative of the path chosen by both Viacom and their regional partner AMG (the latter's perspective is understandable, it is after all a Dubai-government wholly owned entity):
Al Marzouqi is quick to defend the channel’s decision to openly censor
inappropriate content: “We’re applying the standards of the region to
the channel. We’re not applying global standards. Cutting scenes is
normal, and we’re dealing with it. We want a safe channel that people
can watch with their families.”
All in the fear of offending the mighty Saudi market.
Perhaps even more worrying was the fact that MTVa's online strategy was 'something to be worked out once the satellite channel was successfully up and running'. These kids like kids everywhere are anchored online, looking up at the TV as and when something interests them.
Purely anectodally, MTV Arabia doesn't seem to have hit a nerve yet (it's never on, no one talks about it- although there was some negative buzz about the winner of the VJ competition, facebook + myspace set the pulse), although I admit I am too old to truly be in tune with the target audience.
On the commercial front, it's too early to judge one way or the other on the channel's success. The regional broadcast industry is notoriously secretive and often non-commercially driven which makes assessing the market response that much more difficult. But what other youth-oriented platforms are available to advertisers? There's Rotana, ShowTime etc but it is a niche that needs filling and on that count alone, the odds are MTVa will probably be a financial success in the medium term.
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