Shooting a Revolution: Visual Media and Warfare in Syria (Digital Barricades) - Softcover

Della Ratta, Donatella

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745337147 ISBN 13: 9780745337142

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2018

Synopsis

From ISIS propaganda videos to popular regime-backed soap operas and digital activism, the Syrian conflict has been profoundly affected by visual media. But what are the aesthetic, political, and material implications of this disturbing collusion between war and digital culture?
            Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research conducted in Syria and neighboring countries, Donatella Della Ratta examines here how the networked age shapes contemporary warfare, from conflict on the ground to the performance of violence on the screen. Her findings present a stark parallel to the digital democracy offered by techno-utopians, delving into the dark side of web 2.0 practices, where visual regimes of representation and media production are put in service of modes of destruction.
            A vivid account of the politics of Syria’s visual media, from commercial television to citizen journalism and Daesh propaganda, Shooting a Revolution offers fascinating insight into the media’s role in transforming conflict zones in the digital age. 
 

About this title

About the Author

Donatella Della Ratta is a writer specializing in media and visual cultures in Syria. She has curated many international exhibitions on art and cinema in Syria, and is coeditor of Arab Media Moguls.
 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Shooting a Revolution

Visual Media and Warfare in Syria

By Donatella Della Ratta

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2018 Donatella Della Ratta
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-3714-2

Contents

List of Illustrations, vi, 
Series Preface, vii, 
Acknowledgements, viii, 
A Note on Transliteration, xii, 
Glossary, xiii, 
Introduction, 1, 
1 Making Media, Making the Nation: Syria's Tanwir in Neoliberal Times, 15, 
2 The Whisper Strategy, 35, 
3 The Death of Tanwir in Real-Time Drama, 58, 
4 The People's 'Raised Hands', 79, 
5 Fear and Loathing on the Internet: The Paradoxes of Arab Networked Activism, 99, 
6 Screen Fighters: Filming and Killing in Contemporary Syria, 125, 
7 Syria's Image-Makers: Daesh Militants and Non-Violent Activists, 149, 
8 Notes on a Theory of Violence and the Visual in the Networked Age, 179, 
Notes, 199, 
Bibliography, 226, 
Index, 249, 

CHAPTER 1

Making Media, Making the Nation: Syria's Tanwir in Neoliberal Times

When freedom knocked at the door, and it was just a TV series

It was sometime in April 2011, a glorious Damascus spring morning.

Not that I was fully aware of the warm jasmine-scented air wafting through the open window as I sat at home, huddled over my laptop, obsessively following my Twitter timeline and trying to make sense of what was going on in the country. I was concerned how events would affect friends and acquaintances, not to mention my PhD research into Syrian musalsalat, the highly popular 30-part TV drama series that traditionally entertained audiences throughout the Arab world during the holy month of Ramadan.

The phone rang. It was a well-known director and good friend. 'Come and celebrate!' 'Celebrate what?' I asked, hesitantly. For over a month, images of street demonstrations and other signs of protests in the poor, run-down outskirts of Damascus and in parts of rural Syria had spread across the internet and forced their way into the consciousness of those enjoying the frenzy of consumerism offered by the elegant cafés, gleaming shopping malls and boutique hotels of the residential areas and the city centre where I also used to live. The well-heeled denizens of central Damascus kept repeating their reassuring mantra: 'It won't last', 'it' being the unrest that had been shaking the suburbs of the capital and a few other cities since 15 March 2011, filling the streets with calls for 'freedom' (hurriyya) and 'dignity' (karama). At first ignoring the street protests, Syrian official media began to refer to them as 'the crisis' (al-azma) or 'the events' (al-ahdath). In a sort of unspoken gentlemen's agreement, neither Syrian TV nor the wealthy elites ever used the word 'uprising' (intifada) or 'revolution' (thawra) to describe the growing unrest.

My director friend – famous for producing edifying TV dramas focusing on taboo-breaking issues with the aim of dragging Syrian society into the present and eventually 'curing it of its own backwardness' – wanted to celebrate the end of filming on his new musalsal. I shut down the computer, got ready and took a cab to the location in the countryside around Damascus. On the way the car was stopped at a checkpoint. I was nervous: this had never happened to me before, but the ruthlessness of mukhabarat, the Syrian intelligence service, was legendary. The security officer just checked my papers, broke the tension by making a joke about Italian football – my emergency exit in several tough situations in the Middle East – and then waved us on.

The location where the crew had been filming was right outside the city, but was not a typical rundown suburb like those in which the protests were escalating – Duma, Harasta, Jobar in the area of Eastern al-Ghouta. It was just a small green area of calm next to a stream, the silence broken by the trill of birdsong. One of the characters in the TV drama, a teenage girl fleeing the injustices of the city where the fictional narrative was set, was supposed to be hiding in this peaceful place. In a previous scene, seized by a fit of adolescent rage, she had scribbled slogans and doodles in large crayons on a wall near the stream. The director was about to shoot a close-up of the writing on the wall, while all around the cast and crew were merrily roasting meat and preparing other food for a celebratory barbecue. The atmosphere was festive. Everyone was enjoying the spring weather, thinking about how much money they had earned and how they were going to spend it, or making plans for their future and that of their families.

As I glanced at the wall I saw the slightly faded Arabic characters that formed the word 'freedom' (hurriyya). Then I silently ran my eyes over the whole sentence the young protagonist had written in pink: 'we want ... freedom' (bidna ... hurriyya). Possibly guessing what I was thinking, the director, who was making the final preparations for the close-up, suddenly said out loud, in a kind of solemn, almost prophetic way, as if he were talking from a sacred place: 'What those marching in the street are asking for is not freedom. Freedom is something you practise every day; something you obtain gradually. Unfortunately, our society isn't ready for it yet.' Then he swung round to his crew and shouted 'Action!', while I sat down and kept my mouth shut.

The close-up of the word 'freedom' written on the wall lasted less than 20 seconds. Then the director declared a wrap and everyone cheered: the party could finally begin.

* * *

After several years of fieldwork on Syrian TV drama, and countless hours of passionate discussions over coffee and cigarettes with its socially engaged makers, this episode struck me as an epiphany, as if it were the first time I fully realized that all those debates about citizenship, gender, religious freedom and the like were, in fact, merely Television. If it were not so, how then was it possible that one of the most prominent, provocative and smart Syrian directors, shooting a TV drama revolving around the quest for freedom of the Syrian youth, had not even stopped for a minute to think about what was happening in the streets in terms of a genuine, homegrown movement? Why was he so quick to dismiss it as a foreign conspiracy rather than a grassroots phenomenon? Why, after decades of pedagogical TV series like those he had himself produced in the belief that they would contribute to society's progress, was he absolutely convinced that the Syrian people were not ready for freedom yet?

My director friend's reaction hints at a widespread attitude among the wider community of Syrian TV drama producers. They describe it using the Arabic word tanwir, which indicates a morally edifying process connected to the firm belief that Syrian society has to be healed of its alleged social backwardness (takhalluf ijtima'i) in order to progress and develop. This process, in their view, cannot be initiated by the people, but has to be gradual, engineered and managed from the top down by an enlightened minority uniquely capable of guiding the country towards progress and development. In order to lead this 'enlightening' process, Syrian musalsalat inspired by the tanwir ideology have adapted all sorts of taboo subjects for the TV screen: from religious extremism to gender discrimination and sexual violence, from terrorism to corruption and the abuse of power among state officials. They have provided their audiences with ideas on how to be a good citizen, what constitutes proper religious behaviour, and how to think about tolerance, piety, gender and freedom. They have debated everything that could possibly be deemed taboo by a largely conservative-oriented society, including highly sensitive political issues such as the ubiquitous presence of the mukhabarat in citizens' daily lives, and other topics unlikely to be publicly discussed by any other media in any other context, not only in Syria but in the wider Arab region.

One could legitimately ask why an enduring authoritarian regime in a country that has been firmly ruled by the same family for more than 40 years, and that appears so resistant to change, would not only allow but actively encourage such seemingly progressive media content to be produced and publicly broadcast. At the same time, one might also wonder why these cultural producers would dare to raise such taboo-breaking topics without fearing sanctions or imprisonment. That the Syrian regime decided not to prevent TV drama from discussing these sensitive subjects in the public sphere – including directly political issues connected to its own authoritarian character – certainly seems paradoxical at a first glance. Yet, after coming to power following the death of his father in 2000, President Bashar al-Asad had always staunchly supported Syrian TV drama by hosting public hearings and debates, and by praising cultural producers for their courage in breaking social and political taboos. For more than a decade, the Syrian president had met with actors, directors, producers and writers to discuss how to move society forward through a process of gradual reform that media and culture would help politics to implement. In the 'era Bashar' (Perthes 2004: 110), political power and cultural producers seemed to be in tune regarding tanwir, with a unified vision of Syria's need for a top-down, elite-engineered path towards careful reform.

The rise of tanwir and of the nation state: packaging reformism into 'enlightened' TV drama

Tanwir as a political ideology informing cultural production did not emerge with Bashar al-Asad. The belief in media and culture as key factors in shaping the nation's identity was originally conceived by former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser when building the post-colonial state, after overthrowing the monarchy and ending British occupation of Egypt in 1952. A few years later, the charismatic president became the leader of the United Arab Republic (UAR), a political union between Egypt and Syria which lasted only briefly (1958–61). Yet Nasser's fascinating ideological blend of modernist values, progress and mass indoctrination had a long-term impact on Syrian political elites, cultural producers and in particular the nascent TV drama industry. Strongly influenced by their Egyptian peers, Syrian drama makers saw it as the quintessential tool to build shared ideas of nationhood and identity, and help develop and educate the wider population. 'Discourses of enlightenment' (Abu-Lughod 2005: 43) forged a solid bond between state powers and the elite of cultural producers, and served to shape a common view of how to make the nation progress.

Yet it was only after 1963, when the socialist-inspired Ba'ath party seized power in a coup, and especially after Hafiz al-Asad took leadership of the party and of the country, that Syrian cultural producers were finally offered a robust ideological platform as the basis for an agreement with the emerging regime over a shared commitment in the name of progress, development and modernism. The Syrian elites' view of culture as a potential catalyst for social change and national progress was in alignment with the Ba'ath party's desire to centralize all cultural practices under a government-controlled apparatus. As film critic Rasha Salti has pointed out: 'The immediate impetus for the establishment of the institution came from the demands of a politicized intelligentsia and groups of artists who expected their state to foster artistic production. Their aspirations and expectations were organically embedded in the prevailing ideological mindset of the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party that had seized power that year' (Salti 2006: 4).

Finally, tanwir was shaped as a regime-backed cultural ideology and materialized into state-sponsored cultural production. During Hafiz al-Asad's presidency (1970–2000) this bond was fully institutionalized. If its immediate advantage consisted in freeing cultural producers from the imperatives and constraints of the market, at the same time it created an interdependence that subjected them to negotiations and compromises with various components of the regime apparatus, whether government officials or secret services. Nevertheless, as miriam cooke has noted, this was a mutual interdependence: 'The state that controlled them and sometimes silenced them also needed them' (cooke 2007: 4). A two-way mechanism has regulated the relationship between Syrian cultural producers and state powers since the beginning of the Hafiz al-Asad era, where one needs the other, while at the same time being constrained by the other: 'Just as culture needs the state for support and distribution, so the state needs culture to legitimate and extend its power' (cooke 2007: 29). This bond has kept state powers and cultural producers in a permanent state of mutual dependence, which has pushed the latter to fight for wider margins of freedom, and shaped a generation of intellectuals torn between the desire to criticize the regime and the obligation to compromise with it. Cooke (2007) calls it 'commissioned criticism', i.e. a condition in which even the work of intellectuals who see themselves as engaged in a critique of the regime is appropriated by the latter as a political strategy, and eventually turned into official propaganda.

Syrian TV drama producers are no exception to this pattern. The musalsalat released under Hafiz al-Asad were all aligned to the Ba'ath party's developmentalist rhetoric and used to promote social progress in the country, dealing with issues of Syrian daily life in a rather daring way, in line with the beliefs of the common ideology of tanwir. Al-Wasit ('The Mediator'), a TV series directed by Haytham Hakki and produced by state television in 1978, offers a compelling case study on this matter. The musalsal touched upon several critical issues related to the transformation of Syria from an agricultural to an industrial society, and was so bitterly criticized by the Union of Peasants that the minister of information in person had to defend the show in front of the Syrian parliament. Obviously, the series had touched a nerve in a conservative society that the elite of cultural producers was trying to shake up and push towards economic, social and cultural progress. The official conclusion was that 'the censoring power of society is sometimes bigger than any government censorship', as Fuad Ballat, General Manager of Syrian Television at the time, publicly declared.

Haytham Hakki's alignment with Syrian TV's modernist values – and the Ba'ath Party's ideology – parallels the case of Fathiyya al 'Assal, a feminist musalsalat writer whose progressive politics were perfectly in tune with President Nasser's modernism. A general attitude of 'knowing what is good for society' (Abu-Lughod 2005: 42) – together with a slight disdain for its alleged primitiveness – has united Egyptian and Syrian cultural producers and pushed them to commit to the state's seemingly progressive ideology. As anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod – author of the first comprehensive study of the role of TV fiction in the process of nation-building in Egypt – has noted in discussing the cultural producers' alignment with the regime's ideology:

those in authority ... are there to ensure social justice, to help those in need and generally to improve society ... And it is this message, with its moral framework, that is probably the most powerful means through which television contributes to the hegemony of the state and the bourgeoisie, despite the claims to oppositionality or social criticism of so many of the finest writers and directors. (Abu-Lughod 2005: 91)

In the Syrian case, this ideological alignment also came as a natural result of the process that nurtured the formation of a domestic TV drama production sector. Unlike Egypt, Syrian state TV had neither the financial means to develop its own musalsalat production line, nor a domestic market large enough to absorb the costs of manufacturing TV fiction. To solve these structural problems the private sector was encouraged to grow within certain guidelines carefully designed by the regime. The main criteria was to encourage state TV employees – people like Haytham Hakki – to start their own production companies without leaving their public sector jobs. State TV would allow them to use its studios and equipment to produce their own musalsalat for sale to the Gulf market, on one condition: that it could keep one copy of the final product to be aired free of charge on the domestic channel. This way it managed to retain talented employees, while encouraging the growth of an informal yet carefully managed private sector without the need to invest state resources.

Thus, the birth of private production in the TV drama field was the result of the state's need to acquire a national product for its media outlets and to become more competitive on a promising regional media market that was just beginning to expand. At the same time, by engineering it from the top, political powers could better exercise their influence and control. On their side, talented state employees had the chance to develop their own businesses and invest in the rapidly growing and wealthy Gulf market, which enjoyed a healthy flow of capital thanks to increasing oil revenues. This process took shape at a moment in which Syrian cultural producers, whether formally affiliated to the Ba'ath or not, were engaged in spreading the values of tanwir, perfectly in tune with political powers. Moreover, many TV directors and scriptwriters from the first generation of Syrian drama makers were given the chance to enjoy government-sponsored scholarships to study in the former Soviet Union or Eastern bloc nations. Here, they became acquainted not only with the 'aesthetics' (Salamandra 2011: 284) of Soviet cinema's social realism – which would later become a distinctive trait of Syrian TV drama – but also with its ideology of serving the development of the nation and bringing progress to the masses.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Shooting a Revolution by Donatella Della Ratta. Copyright © 2018 Donatella Della Ratta. Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0745337147
• ISBN 13: 9780745337142
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288