Mediating the Uprising: Narratives of Gender and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama shows how gender and marriage metaphors inform post-uprising Syrian drama for various forms of cultural and ...political critique. These narratives have become complicated since the uprising due to the Syrian regime's effort to control the revolutionary discourse. As Syria's uprising spawned more terrorist groups, some drama creators became nostalgic for pre-war days. While for some screenwriters a return to pre-2011 life would be welcome after so much bloodshed, others advocated profound cultural and social transformation, instead. They employed marriage and gender metaphors in the stories they wrote to engage in political critique, even at the risk of creating marketing difficulties for the shows or they created escapist stories such as transnational adaptations and Old Damascus tales. Serving as heritage preservation, Mediating the Uprising underscores that television drama creators in Syria have many ways of engaging in protest, with gender and marriage at the heart of the polemic.
Mediating the Uprising: Narratives of Gender and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama shows how gender and marriage metaphors inform post-uprising Syrian drama for various forms of cultural and ...political critique. These narratives have become complicated since the uprising due to the Syrian regime’s effort to control the revolutionary discourse. As Syria’s uprising spawned more terrorist groups, some drama creators became nostalgic for pre-war days.
While for some screenwriters a return to pre-2011 life would be welcome after so much bloodshed, others advocated profound cultural and social transformation, instead. They employed marriage and gender metaphors in the stories they wrote to engage in political critique, even at the risk of creating marketing difficulties for the shows or they created escapist stories such as transnational adaptations and Old Damascus tales. Serving as heritage preservation, Mediating the Uprising underscores that television drama creators in Syria have many ways of engaging in protest, with gender and marriage at the heart of the polemic.
Syrian miniseries engage in multifaceted discourses of fatherhood inherently linked with the rise and fall of the
(tough man). Before the uprising, while the avowed focus was on gender constructions, ...in truth, politics lay at the heart of the messages. With the gradual construction of the new
, screenwriters shifted to an anxious focus on absent father figures and a more emotionally connected fatherhood ideal that surpassed the father as protector and financial provider. The fall of the
and the cessation of yearning for a protective masculinity in Syrian melodrama connoted the rise of more equal gender relations, which symbolized a pluralistic political order. Amid the uprising, those outwardly embracing the regime narrative insist that they are focusing on societal norms rather than politics. This study is based on analysis of miniseries from the 1960s to the present and interviews with screenwriters in Beirut, Damascus, and Paris.
This article examines sketches from the Syrian television show Buq'at Daw' (Spotlight). Once considered indicative of changes many hoped for during the early days of the Bashar al-Asad regime, Buq'at ...Daw' remained popular through the reform process's failure and the beginning
of the recent Syrian uprising. While scholars have cast critical programming as an "airing" of public frustrations permitted by the regime in order to stave off popular protest, this article argues that focusing on government intent robs intellectuals of agency. Instead, this article looks
at productions like Buq'at Daw' as part of a continual attempt by drama creators to challenge limits of what is permissible through innuendo, stratagem, and word artistry.
...his conservative mindset wins. According to a wide range of Syrian drama creators, however, very little appears on screen due to the stipulations of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of ...the Gulf (Gulf Cooperation Council or GCC).7 Alongside the escapist narratives were domestic Syrian productions, like Nisa' min Hadha al-Zaman, which dismantle conventional gender norms against the background of war.
This article discusses the Syrian media industry and the effect that the recent conflict has had. It focuses on the musalsalat, miniseries produced for Ramadan, and explains how these miniseries ...often acted as a form of political critique of the Syrian government. It discusses the history, themes and production quality of these series, and how due to the conflict, increasingly large numbers of these productions are being moved outside of Syria.
Samia, a university professor, implores her son Rashad to stay away from Hisham, an opposition activist. Soon after, Rashad slams Hisham’s door on her when she insists that a movement that ...disrespects women and is stained with blood will never bring about freedom. At home later that day, Samia blames her husband, Safwan, for his disengagement from family life, saying, “You were always chasing after money, cars, and business deals. You neglected your relationship with your son, and that’s why he’s now involved with Hisham. You can’t convince him to come home since you don’t have a normal father-son relationship
Another power outage. Screenwriter ‘Imad sleeps in a small room lit by candles, his laptop on the table in front of him. He awakes to the ring of his cell phone: a call from ‘Adil, a Syrian producer ...who lives in Dubai and awaits his new musalsal. The screen shifts to focus on ‘Adil. “I want you to reflect on the hard lives of four women amid these difficult conditions,” orders ‘Adil, surrounded by four Syrian actresses dressed in tight, provocative outfits. “You mean, they’re living in our country, and you want me to show their strug gles?” ‘Imad asks
