TY - JOUR
T1 - Tricksters, cyborgs, and the musalsal
T2 - media movement and infrastructure gaps in Arab television
AU - Jaber, Heather
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 National Communication Association.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - For decades, Egyptian cultural production has adapted the story of Raya and Sakina, the nation's first women to receive the death penalty for murder. In 2017, their story crossed borders as Warde Shamia, a Syrian musalsal, or Arabic-language television drama serial. This project discusses the story's movement across nations and mediums, exploring the way that it illuminates the precarious nature of cultural production in post 2011 Syria. In a space where production is often appropriated by competing nationalist discourses, the invocation of these women as tricksters evades and destabilizes nationalist appropriations. By turning to the way that content is driven forward by polarizing regional forces, this analysis takes seriously the productive nature of media processes in shaping content. It offers that the move from nationally broadcasted programing to regionally broadcasted satellite programing mirrors the transformation of national uprisings into proxy wars, reflecting a loss of sovereignty over nationalist articulations. It examines the trickster's role in occupying multiple positionalities, working to dismantle appropriative narratives of cultural production as always-already identifiable with a dominant nationalist discourse. Rather than asking how Syrian drama reflects reality, this paper examines how this adaptation reflects the conditions for producing that reality.
AB - For decades, Egyptian cultural production has adapted the story of Raya and Sakina, the nation's first women to receive the death penalty for murder. In 2017, their story crossed borders as Warde Shamia, a Syrian musalsal, or Arabic-language television drama serial. This project discusses the story's movement across nations and mediums, exploring the way that it illuminates the precarious nature of cultural production in post 2011 Syria. In a space where production is often appropriated by competing nationalist discourses, the invocation of these women as tricksters evades and destabilizes nationalist appropriations. By turning to the way that content is driven forward by polarizing regional forces, this analysis takes seriously the productive nature of media processes in shaping content. It offers that the move from nationally broadcasted programing to regionally broadcasted satellite programing mirrors the transformation of national uprisings into proxy wars, reflecting a loss of sovereignty over nationalist articulations. It examines the trickster's role in occupying multiple positionalities, working to dismantle appropriative narratives of cultural production as always-already identifiable with a dominant nationalist discourse. Rather than asking how Syrian drama reflects reality, this paper examines how this adaptation reflects the conditions for producing that reality.
KW - Musalsal
KW - Syrian war
KW - drama
KW - infrastructure
KW - trickster
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U2 - 10.1080/15295036.2021.1884276
DO - 10.1080/15295036.2021.1884276
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85101217562
SN - 1529-5036
VL - 38
SP - 155
EP - 168
JO - Critical Studies in Media Communication
JF - Critical Studies in Media Communication
IS - 2
ER -