Sheikhs Batmobile: In Pursuit Of American Pop Culture In The Muslim World - Softcover

Poplak, Richard

3.62

66 ratings by Goodreads

9780143056553: Sheikhs Batmobile: In Pursuit Of American Pop Culture In The Muslim World

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143056557 ISBN 13: 9780143056553

Publisher: Penguin Canada, 2009

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What happens to our pop culture when it meets another culture head-on—especially one that according to some is completely at odds with our own?

In The Sheikh's Batmobile, pop-cultural commentator Richard Poplak sets out on an unusual two-year odyssey. His mission is to see what becomes of his, and North America's, obsessions—pop songs and sitcoms, Hollywood movies and shoot-em-up video games, muscle cars and punk music—when they make their way into the Muslim world.

Over the course of his journey, Poplak is body slammed by WWE fans in Afghanistan, hangs out with hip-hop artists in Palestine, head bangs to heavy metal in Cairo, discovers a world of extreme makeovers in Beirut, bowls with the chief of police in small-town Kazakhstan, and encounters a mysterious Texan building rocket-propelled batmobiles for a clientele of sheikhs.

With uproarious humour and keen cultural insight, Poplak asks some vital questions: How is American pop culture consumed and reinterpreted in the Islamic world? What does that say about how we are viewed by young Muslims? And can Homer Simpson bridge the differences that are tearing our world apart?

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About the Author:

Richard Poplak was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1973 and immigrated to Canada with his family in 1989. A co-founder of the successful Canadian music label 2wars & A Revolution Records, Richard is also a trained filmmaker and has directed numerous music videos, earning five nominations at the 2005 MuchMusic Video Awards. Richard has written for various publications in Canada and South Africa, including Toronto Life, Canadian Living, and CBC Online. He is the author of the acclaimed Ja, No, Man: Growing Up White in Apartheid-era South Africa and most recently The Sheikh's Batmobile: In Pursuit of American Pop Culture In The Muslim World.

Review:

Praise for The Sheikh's Batmobile

"With insight, humor, and compassion, The Sheikh's Batmobile puts a nail in the coffin of 'Clash of Civilizations' theory. The author and subjects are equally human. If you see Ayaan Hirsi Ali, throw this book at her." Michael Muhammad Knight, author of The Taqwacores and Journey to the End of Islam

Poplak’s expertly-researched and beautifully-written book is one of the most important documents of the post-9/11 world.” The National Postt

I would read Poplak if he wrote about watching paint dry. He is a gifted addition to the exploding and increasingly sloppy literary non-fiction genre. Dark, funny, self-deprecating and poetic, Poplak is a punk Graham Greene both exploiting and being exploited by the cultures he inhabits.” The Globe and Mail

A heroic feat of research, analysis, and on-the-ground reportage . . . At the very least, The Sheikh’s Batmobile should shatter the Western stereotype of the Muslim world as repressive and stagnant.” Quill and Quire

Poplak avoids making easy connections . . . his de-embedded journalism is always open-minded and captures the uncanny perfectly.” Eye Weekly

Humorous, astute and vivid . . . The Sheikh’s Batmobile will leave you itching to travel, giggling and glued to YouTube, looking up references. The book is less about how Muslims view Americans as it is about discovering a shared lexicon between two cultures. Poplak’s view of popculture is nuanced, as it emerges as a mutating entity crossing national and ideological boundaries.” The Coast

This is a great book and despite its lighthearted title and subject matter it’s a serious book. It’s an important book too, because it promotes understanding and leaves the reader with hope that at a human level, and at a creative level, the kids are all right.” Winnipeg Free Press

If . . . you’re willing to join the author on his irreverent excursions to dictators’ palaces, blaring Egyptian heavy metal sessions, concerts preempted by Kalashnikov fire, and secret Batmobile laboratories (yes, the book does live up to its name), then you will doubtlessly ease right into Poplak’s narrative . . . The book is not a magnifying glass searching for Western brushstrokes on an Islamic canvas, but rather a kaleidoscope that bounces the reader's assumptions and expectations off the colorful mirrors of zestful narrative and impressive legwork.” Wiretap Magazine

A fast-paced and culturally savvy look at a section of the Muslim population underrepresented, if not entirely ignored, by Western media.” Open Book: Toronto

In the riotous, fearless, and very funny tradition of Hunter S. Thompson and Jon Ronson, Richard Poplak takes us through the looking glass and into an upside down, funhouse mirror pop culture universe where Homer Simpson drinks juice out of a beer can, batmobiles are custom-designed in a desert lair and Islamic children spontaneously recreate the video for Lionel Richie’s Hello.’ In the process, Poplak gives us a mantra that unites the West and the East, the secular and the sacred: Fuck you, Shrek, you big green motherfucker.’” Nathan Rabin, Head Writer, The A.V Club, author, The Big Rewind and My Year of Flops

Whether dissecting Indonesian punk bands or the eternal wisdom of Magnum, P.I., Poplak is everything you want in a cultural interpreter funny, frank and utterly incapable of spewing mass market pabulum. Poplak gets beyond the cheap, superficial observations lesser writers bring to his subject, revealing himself as a genuine thinker who delivers original insight and laughs in every chapter.” Chuck Thompson, author of Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer

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