It sure has been a long while since I last wrote, my master's defense and then structurally adjusting to a demanding Euro have really zapped my energy. But today I emerged so fresh and so clean from the wonderful Hammam (de la Grande Mosquée de Paris), I can tell you a little about the cultural zeitgeist here. A note about the Hammam first... it's part of the Great Mosque of Paris, one of the last religious edifices built with state funds, way back in 1920. French architects came up with the design, but Maghrebian artisans did the intricate ornamental work. For someone accustomed to militant secularism in France, it is both surprising and reassuring to see the nightmare of "Eurabia" embodied in a towering minaret, 26 meters tall, competing with church towers for the Parisian skyline.
Moving on to Item Number 1... the electro group Justice set the french blogosphere afire with the music video for their song "Stress". You may already know of Justice (seen here at left), part of the resurrection wave of French dance music instigated by Daft Punk, from their hit song D.A.N.C.E, which has been featured in many commercials.
Directed by Romain Costa-Gavras (son of the renowned Greek political film-maker), the video follows a group of rampaging youth from the "banlieue" (the french suburban projects that are akin to the American inner-city) as they venture into Paris to terrorize tourists and other helpless victims. Incidentally, all the young men featured are either Black or Arab, each sporting matching black jackets emblazoned with the Justice Logo, a black cross with white back-lighting. Anti-racism groups and journalists alike condemned the gratuitous violence and reinforcement of stereotypes, while conservative groups saluted the group for bringing to light the unacceptable behaviour of France's Black and Arab urban 'delinquents'.
Justice, who usually never speak to the press, broke from their code and addressed the issue on a music blog. The band members claim to have released the video in the hopes of instigating debate about an ignored social phenomenon, wanting to confront a certain generation of well-to-do French people with images that are both invisible and omnipresent in that they dominate the national psyche. Rarely as fleshed out as in this video, however. Yes, it's ironic and caricatural, but not everyone can see that nuance when the images themselves are so powerful. It's true that the camera works to make evident the subjectivity of these youngsters, with close-ups that dwell on their fresh-faced youth and sweeping shots of the dilapidated housing projects/prisons that would make anyone go crazy. Everyone has a different opinion on the video, depending on whether they like Justice's previous work or not. The group tried unsuccessfully to retrieve all copies of the video and asked any sites or blogs hosting it to take it down. Yet here it is again on Youtube:
Here it is in another location in case the first should be removed.
This video, in my opinion, belongs to the recent trend of electro artists attempting to address France's festering social problems. As a genre, Electro brings in a huge cross-section of listeners because it is so spare and culturally unspecific. Also, it recalls the 1980's and everyone loves that, right?
Dj Mehdi, an artist who has collaborated with Chromeo, the electro-soul band that has every collegiate panty in a tizzy. [Made up of a Jewish Columbia grad-student (in the French department) and an Arab accountant, they bill themselves as a Jewish-Arab milestone in music] Anyway, DJ Mehdi released a very artful music video, for his song Signatune, exploring the white banlieue this time around. Composed of images culled from a bleak Belgian or Northern French town, the video chronicles a souped-up sportscar battle of the decibels. The video stylizes the mundane and featureless into an epic saga, perhaps signaling that the cultural moment resides not in Paris but in the neglected nooks and crannies of the Republic. Here it is:
Zeitgeist news item number two is the controversy surrounding the judicial cancellation of a marriage in Lille, on the grounds that the wife 'lied' about her virginity. Although it is obvious that the subjects are Muslim, no newscast I've seen mentions this fact. Part of French universalism I guess. Rachida Dati, the female Maghrebian justice minister whom President Sarkozy appointed as part of his 'colorful' campaign, initially said she approved of the decision. In the Assembly, she had to then vigorously defend herself before the indignant Socialist ministers shouting her down. She proclaimed that the decision had "liberated" the woman from a kind of social imprisonment, and furthermore blamed the French politics of "Les Grands Frères" (the Big Brothers), dominant in France for a long while, for not taking a pro-active approach to women's problems. 
As with any elegant female politician, much more attention seems to be paid to the way she does things rather than to the substance of her actions. Her personal style has been endlessly analyzed by 'experts' in the nation's tabloids, which promise every week that this is the time she's really done it! Dati is a symbol of bizarre integration: the political Right stepping up to the plate before the disoriented, aging Left. At a time when the term "visible minorities" is just starting to infiltrate the political vocabulary, Dati offers a striking dose of visibility, albeit one that also makes visible how much she stands out as a person of color, with her own issues and grievances, in a sea of white faces.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Postcard from Paris: Justice and Rachida Dati
Monday, February 25, 2008
Nader, Obama, and... Can I get a "Palestine" up in here?!
Think what you will of Ralph Nader (here's the Lebanese-American in his good-looking days) ... I think we can all agree that what he had to say on Meet the Press about Obama's flip-flopping on the Palestine issue is spot-on:
"But Senator Obama is a person of substance. He's also the first liberal evangelist in a long time. He's run a brilliant tactical campaign. But his better instincts and his knowledge have been censored by himself. And I give you the example, the Palestinian-Israeli issue, which is a real off the table issue for the candidates. So don't touch that, even though it's central to our security and to, to the situation in the Middle East. He was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois before he ran for the state Senate, during he ran--during the state Senate. Now he's, he's supporting the Israeli destruction of the tiny section called Gaza with a million and a half people. He doesn't have any sympathy for a civilian death ratio of about 300-to-1; 300 Palestinians to one Israeli. He's not taking a leadership position in supporting the Israeli peace movement, which represents former Cabinet ministers, people in the Knesset, former generals, former security officials, in addition to mayors and leading intellectuals. One would think he would at least say, "Let's have a hearing for the Israeli peace movement in the Congress," so we don't just have a monotone support of the Israeli government's attitude toward the Palestinians and their illegal occupation of Palestine."
Compare this to Obama's policy papers on the Mid-East conflict, which conspicuously make no mention of the word "Palestine", or even "Palestinian Territories". The section is merely called "On Israel", as if that was the be-all-and-end-all of the electorate's interest in the Middle East.
This morning, I was excited to see that the news-program Democracy Now! interviewed professor Samantha Power of Harvard University (who has a good chance of being appointed Secretary of State in the event of an Obama presidency). I was looking forward to a more substantive discussion of Obama's Mid-East positions. But again, the word "Palestine" was conspicuously absent. I really think it's odd that a journalist of Amy Goodman's caliber and aggression would not seize this opportunity to nail the Obama campaign on one of its most glaring about-faces.
See here, for the transcript and video.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Memories of Rami Kashou
...So there I was on Santa Monica Boulevard, walking my miniature Jack Russel Terrier and trying my hardest to finish my Mocachino soy latte hold the sugar, when I saw a face that looked distinctly Palestinian beaming through the cover of a magazine.
Granted, this was the gay-interest LA publication Frontiers, known to about 150 West Hollywood boys and their coked-out friends, but still, it was a great step forward for the representation of Arabkind.
From "Jerusalem", it said. "Proud of his heritage", it said. "Appreciates greco-roman art", it said.
The next time I saw Rami, it was at Club Lazeez, the raucous Arab dance night in the heart of Little Armenia. He looked different in person... how should I say... more Falcon-like (I hope only a few of you will catch the fullness of that reference). I remember him having the most upright posture, a quality which really makes a person stand out. Maybe he has a background in dance? It made him seem alert, ready to pounce on any prey or sub-par designer that might cross his path. 
Next thing you know, my clubbing posse and his clubbing posse converged, and we found ourselves late one night, in that palace of flour known only as IHOP. I'll bet you that, right now, there is a publicist out there willing to pay me double my T.A. salary so that I never again utter the words "Rami Kashou" and "IHOP" in the same sentence.
We were ten Arabs eating pancakes. It was like a scene from a Renaissance painting. A serene image that Rami might have used as inspiration for one of his drapings.
Cut to last week-end, when I saw Rami at the G Lounge, where the over-dressed and gold-digging fabulosos of NY come out to play. The music had been on-point that night-- all the requisite house classics and 90's dance hits. I was sweaty from dancing, unshaven, and most importantly, not wearing anything designer. How could I walk up to him, looking like that?
I'd rather meet Rami on equal terms, now that I am famous in my new profession as Kabobfest blogger.
I just now perused his Myspace and found out that, like me, he is an idolatrous Bjork fan! More reasons to be friends, right Rami?!
No?
Ok, well then, stop following me around then, gosh!
Monday, October 01, 2007
The lies are starting to smell
There was an incident at the Obama rally that none of the mass media reported, which means this is a KABOBfest exclusive:
A one Maytha XX-XXXXXX, female, gorgeous and curvacious, upon hearing the Senator from Illinois utter that "We should build schools! In the Middle East! Where students can learn Maths! and Science! Instead of hatred!", said female individual then belted out like a siren, to the confusion and consternation of all those surrounding, the words: "THAT'S A LOAD OF BULLSHIT!!!!"
Thanks Maytha, good that you spoke up for the ones who were too cowardly to react, like yours truly.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
The Bubble, a Film by Eytan Fox
I've just returned from seeing Israeli director Eytan Fox's new film The Bubble. You may have heard of his previous films Walk on Water, and Yossi and Jagger, which has been ridiculed in a previous posting on this site (I thought that snow cavorting scene, notwithstanding the problematic Lebanese backdrop, was very sweet!). A hugely popular director in Israel with a lot of crossover success, Fox's films have been getting increasingly political on the Palestinian issue. From an absent enemy status in Yossi and Jagger, to the introduction of a major Arab character in Walk on Water (Yousef Sweid, who plays the role of Ashraf in The Bubble), to finally tackling the conflict head on in this film.
The plot recounts the story of an Israeli reservist disgusted with the occupation, who notices Ashraf the Palestinian love interest being degraded at a checkpoint. Their lives intersect again in Tel Aviv, where Ashraf escapes to for work. He becomes part of the Israeli leftists social circle, before political events and murder in the West Bank drive events toward a fiery climax. Eytan Fox is openly gay and makes many connections between the oppressed status of homosexuals and Palestinians. He is a critic of the violent culture of masculinity which he believes, much like the Lebanese scholar Evelyn Accad, to be responsible for war in general.
The film, which tackles the subject of Israeli-Palestinian relationships, indulges in many of the clichés one would expect: cultural relativity, Arab wedding fading into Israeli beach ecstacy rave, tears followed by sex, and finally, whowuddathunkit?!, a suicide bombing. But beyond this, the film makes many important and sometimes touching statements: about the impermeability of cultures that paradoxically causes enemies to love each other more, about the naiveté of peace movements and how they get crushed, about wounded masculinity and what it must do to avenge itself. This last theme is one that was tread in Paradise Now (which I though was infinitely inferior to Divine Intervention, the only Palestinian art-house film worthy of the name!), what with the main character having to atone for his deceased father's collaboration and dishonor via the most forceful of methods. Homosexuals in Israel and Palestine are not assumed to be of the same kind, and much time is spent telling, without judgment, how each negotiates their own space.
Of course the film won't pass a radicalism test, but I think it's notable already for the stir it's caused in Israel and the connections it makes between machismo and war, in a way that doesn't subsume gender to nation or vice versa, but shows how one is integral to the other. The film is called The Bubble in reference to the bubbles that many bystanders to conflict find themselves in, capable only of seeing and caring about what's inside their sphere.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Shameless exploitations of 9/11 for commercial advantage
While commuting to the Barack Obama rally today, Maytha and I took a detour through American Apparel, just to 'look'.
While I was ridiculing the designs and casting aspersions on the company's porny ads, Maytha acted quickly and found a really cute top. We went to pay and noticed this perplexing item:
Not just the number sequence, but the legs extended vertically like TWIN TOWERS recall the day America will never forget.
Then I had remembered I had seen something like this elsewhere, on a storefront in Sharm El Shaikh way back in 2003, before things got so explosive there. 
Is this just a case of random bits of english sewn together in sometimes poetic ways, as you sometimes see on strange egyptian t-shirts-- or rather a terrible indulgence in Schadenfreude at America's expense? If you can't read it, it says "9/11, All your dreams become true". The man posing is my dad. Just before this, a group of Israelis had walked past in disbelief of the signage.
It was a toy store!
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
"We don't have Martians in Iran"
Hello fellow Kabobs and Kabobettes,
At the gracious invitation of huggable Will and mesmerizing Maytha, I am the latest piece of lahma to be skewered and added to the already delicious roster. The name's Mehammed Mack, see, Mack Daddy to May, which gets translated into Arablish as Abu Mack. All the salacious details of my biography are to be added soon...
As a first post, I wanted to address a lingering issue still simmering long after Ahmadinejad left Columbia, my university...
After all the sardonic laughter, there's a certain sense in which President Ahmadinejad just may be right. Perhaps for all the wrong reasons, but nevertheless, right. And I say this as someone who supports and participates in a sexually diverse conception of the Middle East.
What might not exist is the category of the "homosexual": that figure who self-identifies as exclusively gay, establishes a public culture based on that identity, and was born in special Victorian conditions of the late 19th century (described by Michel Foucault in his must-read THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY).
This is to be differentiated from the more free-form practitioner of individual sexual acts that we've all heard the Kalam-el-nas about: the covertly bisexual arab male who, while married, dabbles in casual sex with other men, or, dare we say it, boys, usually in a very role-differentiated manner. We have also heard of the strictly passive male-- on the outside indistinguishable from the most virile shabab-- who may exclusively prefer contact with men but would never claim a gay identity as such.
These are two 'common' personality types that have often been mentioned in anecdotes we share, books we've read (The Yacoubian Building), and 'shady' uncles or cousins we might have; they complicate the correlation many want to make between homosexuals here and 'homosexuals' there. But even writing these last sentences is problematic to me, because they still attempt to tell that strip-tease story about unlocking the Gordian knot and unveiling, through a haze of genie smoke, the secret truth of Oriental sex.
I have a professor here at Columbia, you may have heard of him before :) who has thoroughly dissected these thorny issues in a recently released book: DESIRING ARABS, by Joseph Massad. If you want to talk about sex in the Arab World, it's a great primer for all issues you should be sensitive to when making any kind of claim. In class discussion, he frequently used the following philosophical dialogue scheme to highlight the 'absurdity' of searching for homosexuals in the Middle East, as certain human rights groups are wont to do. Here it is, very loosely: "1) Martians don't exist on Earth although they do on Mars 2) Why aren't there Martians on Earth?"
Make of that what you will.
But I want to end on a sweeter, more compromising note...
As you can see in the picture here, even if in Ahmadinejad's mind homosexuals (like the Holocaust) possibly don't exist, something else definitely does. A level of affection between males that you'd never see in our most-unMediterranean society, an affection that holds hands, kisses, and embraces to the very limits of 'decency', because both men know it won't be consummated sexually, and are therefore comfortable around one another. It's a kind of affection scholars like Malek Chebel would call "homo-sensualité", that often gets confused with rampant homosexuality, in the observer's eyes. There was once a great American feminist who said (someone remind me of her name), that the only outlet here in America, for men to show each other affection is violence: boxing, football, and sometimes just plain fighting (i.e, Fight Club).
PS: Now that we're on the subject of homos-- and this is something I discussed with May-- isn't there something a little bit homo-erotic about the name "KABOBfest", that is, if we are to think about it like a "sausagefest"? For those who don't know, that means a lame party (if you're straight that is) where men outnumber women. As far as imagery goes, should we visualize a group of circumcised zobs roasting in their own sweat or something? Oops I didn't say that...
