Abstract
The following essay analyzes the kinds of desires and commentaries on masculinity, social issues, and family ties that Bab el-Hara, a Syrian television series, evokes. It addresses the relationship between the national and popular media in the region, family relations and notions of femininity, and masculinity. Through content analysis and group discussion, the paper concludes that the series promotes a notion of antimodern masculinity. This anti-modern masculinity is coupled or promoted through nostalgic notions of ideal systems of justice, family, and masculinity/manhood that are in direct contrast to the failures of the nation/state to deliver in the pre-Arab Spring context. In other words, the paper argues that through evoking a sense of nostalgia for a “mythic” past, it links between a nationalist desirable masculine ‘antimodernity’ and particular desires around family relations, femininity, and women, which find broad appeal in the political context of the Arab world today, thus fostering commentary on the difficult current positions of women’s rights struggles in the contemporary gender politics of the region. I argue that the show’s promotion of an ‘anti-modern’ masculinity capable of delivering justice on the national front erodes the possibility of a gender justice future particularly in the context of the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
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Notes
Iftar: Breaking of the day-long fast at sunset.
For more on content analysis as a methodology, refer to chapter 11 in Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences, by Bruce L. Berg (2001).
Rumors abounded about a sixth season that would have aired in 2011, but it did not.
The first season was written by Kamal Mura and Marwan Qawuuq and directed by Bassam al-Mula.
The second and third seasons were written only by Marwan Qawuuq, while Kamal Mura wrote the last two seasons shown in Ramadan 2009 and 2010 consecutively.
For more details on the main characters of the show and their relationships to each other, please refer to the character guide in Table 1.
Um Zaki means mother of Zaki, Um = mother. Abu Issam similarly means father of Issam. The terms Um and Abu of so and so are often used in respectfully addressing older people.
In her book A New Old Damascus, Salamandra (2004) discusses similar practices in Damascus during Ramadan, indicating their significance in establishing a sense of cohesion and status distinction of elite damascene in relation to the none Damascene inhabitants of the city.
In her videotaped speech available online, Asma addresses most of her speech to men or an ‘imagined’ man shaming him in his inability to protect women and the country, basically exposing his lack of masculinity and using that as an incentive to encourage him to change the situation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjIgMdsEuk.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the Arab Families Working Group (www.arabfamilies.org) members in supporting my work and providing feedback on earlier versions of this article. I specifically would like to thank Professor Suad Joseph for her ongoing support. Research for this article was conducted as part of the Arab Families Working Group Project and was funded by AFWG Grants from the Ford Foundation and the International Development Research Center (IDRC).
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Zaatari, Z. Desirable Masculinity/Femininity and Nostalgia of the “Anti-Modern”: Bab el-Hara Television Series as a Site of Production. Sexuality & Culture 19, 16–36 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-014-9242-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-014-9242-5