"Homeland" racist?

Forums: Homeland, Television, Showtime, Graffiti Art
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I think this is really funny. The makers of "Homeland" were building a set which represented a refugee camp in Lebanon on the Syrian border. They decided to hire graffiti artists to write stuff on walls in Arabic to add authenticity. According to the graffiti artists, the set designers were way too busy getting the hideous Middle Eastern refugee dump to look just right to bother paying attention to what was being written in … Arabian, is it? … on their set walls. The artists took a chance to air criticisms of show’s depiction of Muslim world. Slogans such as “Homeland is racist", “Homeland is a joke, and it didn’t make us laugh” and “#blacklivesmatter" were painted.

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Type: Question • Score: 8 • Views: 3,539 • Replies: 70

@Tes yeux noirs,

That's sweet! But I can't discuss the show because I'm several seasons behind. I think I'm on season two or three.

1 Reply

@tsarstepan,

Some background information by one of the artists (Heba Amin) >here<

They are still filming for the fifth season in and around Berlin, until the end of November.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Are there any major plot spoilers there?

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@tsarstepan,

No, just the same photos (plus a few more) as we've seen here since yesterday

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@Tes yeux noirs,

I saw that, thought it was brilliant.

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@tsarstepan,

There's no spoilers here. This is what annoyed a lot of them.

Quote:

The artists said in a statement that they were initially reluctant about the commission "until we considered what a moment of intervention could relay about our own and many others' political discontent with the series".

"It was our moment to make our point by subverting the message using the show itself," they said.

They said that no-one working on the show checked what it was that they were actually writing, with the set designers "too frantic to pay any attention to us" and the Arabic script treated as "merely a supplementary visual".

Caram Kapp, one of the artists, told the BBC: "In this graffiti we are trying to call for a more differentiated view of the region, and we're also trying to say that things aren't as simple as they seem on this show."

In the second series of the show, its depiction of the Lebanese capital Beirut sparked criticism with many pointing out that its portrayal of the city's central Hamra Street thoroughfare bore little relation to reality.

Some Pakistani viewers were also irked by the way the Pakistani capital Islamabad was depicted in a later series, as well as the fact that a terrorist character's name was almost identical to that of a previous Pakistani ambassador to the US.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34536434

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

Accepting a job with the intent to **** your employer is a character flaw. Were these low lifes Muslim perchance?

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Accepting a job with the intent to **** your employer is a character flaw.

Babelsberg Studios, their employer, didn't complain. Actually, they admired this art of sabotage ( "diesen Akt künstlerischer Sabotage").

hakeye10 wrote:

Were these low lifes Muslim perchance?

I don't know from where you got the information that they are "low lifes", but religion is a private thing in Germany.

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@hawkeye10,

If your lot had got away with sabotaging a Democratic election broadcast you'd be cock a hoop.

Read the news article, I don't know any more than that.

Their grievances appear valid, and the production company couldn't be bothered to check out what had been written first. Hubris, they couldn't conceive that anyone would take the piss out of their imperialistic production, so the graffiti artists had no difficulty at all. What's telling is that it's taken so long for this to come out. Clearly Arabic speaking viewers didn't want to spoil the joke.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Not only the studios ...

Quote:

Homeland showrunner Alex Gansa tells Deadline of the incident, “We wish we’d caught these images before they made it to air. However, as Homeland always strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can’t help but admire this act of artistic sabotage.”

Source

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

hawkeye10 wrote:
Accepting a job with the intent to **** your employer is a character flaw.
Babelsberg Studios, their employer, didn't complain. Actually, they admired this art of sabotage ( "diesen Akt künstlerischer Sabotage").

Maybe they dont feel free to say what they really feel because of the massive controls on speech in that exist in Europe , worse than what we have in the USA, but it was still wrong either way

hakeye10 wrote:
Were these low lifes Muslim perchance?
I don't know from where you got the information that they are "low lifes", but religion is a private thing in Germany.

They are lowlifes as proven by their acts, and I'll bet they are

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Not only the studios ...

Quote:
Homeland showrunner Alex Gansa tells Deadline of the incident, “We wish we’d caught these images before they made it to air. However, as Homeland always strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can’t help but admire this act of artistic sabotage.”
Source

Morally reprehensible. Using that logic then they need to support the ruining of canvas because someone decides that they dont like what is on it. This is more of the ends justify the means Bullshit. And more excuse making for destroying stuff that others do.

2 Replies

@hawkeye10,

An amazingly weak attempt to justify the sabotage is here:

http://www.hebaamin.com/arabian-street-artists-bomb-homeland-why-we-hacked-an-award-winning-series/

I have never watched the show but from the sound of it this is that last project that militants should go after as a political act of war. Maybe that is why no attempt was made to check their work, because only a fool Arab would try to harm this show.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

You seem to be taking this to heart. I think you've had quite a bit of experience of people in your employ ridiculing you. It's hubris in your case too. Don't take yourself so seriously, nobody else does.

The production was so badly destroyed it took about two or three years for anyone to notice. Don't be such a bloody drama queen. If anything it may keep Homeland in the public consciousness long after it would have faded from memory. You never know, scholars a hundred years in the future may only be aware of Homeland because of the graffiti.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

That's the link I gave two days ago ...

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

Quote:

The production was so badly destroyed it took about two or three years for anyone to notice

The scenes were shot last summer, the show aired in the US last week.

So you get this fact wrong, and then you make a bunch of claims that you can not possibly be in a position to know the facts. How typical of you.

I love Claire Danes and would like to watch this show, but given the wifes PTSD from Iraq I would need to do it when she is not around.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

That's the link I gave two days ago ...

Cool. THis is likely to become part of the drip drip drip to the realization that you Germans have been played for fools by the Arabs, that your trust has been poorly placed. Let make a date to in five years come back and talk about the German crime rate and the breakdown of German society.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

You're right, I thought it was previous seasons. It's still a few months, and let's face it, you wouldn't notice anything anyway. I bet 99.99% of the audience wouldn't spot it.

Come to think of it what sort of anti American graffiti would you find acceptable? Donald Trump blows baboons? Bush really is a monkey?

0 Replies

This episode of The Clangers wasn't "destroyed" by the voice actors swearing, because the audience, like Homeland's never noticed.

2 Replies

"Homeland" racist?

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