Sophia Al-Maria's Blog, page 4

1200 Count Head Shams from Syria and China

There’s always been something about this particular type of hijab that makes me feel uncomfortable.

Maybe it’s my general suspicion of all all-in-one products or the dirty feel of polyester on sweaty neck or the fact they closely resemble sham pillow cases…

but more likely it’s due to traumatic early  memories of  an evil babysitter called Areej. The fact that she reported mother to the mosque for teaching me witchcraft out of this book is secondary, the real problem is that she used to wear these things!

Just imagine this peering into your crib with bared teeth every morning:

Now. 5 out of 6 packages opened did not contain headwear resembling the advertised product.

A big part of me feels bad for the little Amirah who expects pink lace trimmings like in the photos but gets a grey flap of fabric violently stamped ‘Made in P.R.C.!’ instead.

Opening these hijabs reminded me of the crappy stickers you get with your Malibu Barbie convertable –  so! disappointing.

Meanwhile, without further comment I give you a selection of the better ad inserts sourced from Doha, Cairo and a $ store in Auckland:

The Chinless Wonder

Al Matrix

True Moslems Love to Sharpie Articles

Baby it is so cold outside

Brand New Day (Never Gonna Come Down)

Bonus LoL!

Snuggie tar7a onsie!

The Rape Gaze – Some Misogynistic Egyptian Movie Posters from the 70s & 80s

Rape – 1989

This week you might have found yourself sucked into the snarling call and response around Mona El Tahawy’s Foreign Policy article “Why Do They Hate Us?” and Samia Errazouki’s “You Do Not Represent Us”.  These columns are triggers in a seemingly eternal shootout around the subject of the misogyny that is endemic and often institutionalized in the Arab world (and indeed all over the world come to think of it).

So as a sidebar conversation for any curious parties wanting to investigate the subject via ze movies, I’ve culled together a topical gallery of Egyptian cinema posters that display signs of what I’ll just refer to as ‘the rape gaze’.

Think Laura Mulvey’s ‘male gaze‘ hopped up on a Steroid/Viagra cocktail. 

The posters range from exploitation typical of world cinema in the 70s to some decidedly snuffy looking fare in the 80s. Of course I’m not making an argument that this pattern is in any way unique. Quite the opposite, its evidence that Egypt’s film industry was running in parallel (if slightly behind) the sexploitation and rape-revenge explosion in western cinema and the birth of “Pinky Violence” in Japan.

1970s - Although some of the subject matter is dubious, there is an inherant sympathy towards the woman throughout the below titles. That is, until we get to 1977 and Virgin…But in which the woman’s …honor is cast into doubt.

I Am Not A Wanton Woman – 1971

Female and the Wolves – 1973

I Want a Solution! – 1974

Missing Women – 1975

Virgin…But – 1977

1980s - No more sympathy pains here. By this time it’s everyone for themselves, right down to the spade-called-’spade’ Proclamation Against Women in 1986.

Stranger in My House – 1981

Rape – 1989

The Prey – 1985

Proclamation Against The Woman – 1986

The Rapists – 1989

I am of the opinion that somewhere, somehow, somewhy there was a tipping point in the late 70s in Egypt and perhaps the greater region when the cinematic violence done to women seems to reach a higher pitch, no longer muffled by sensitivity toward’s the audience.

What do you think internets? Do these posters illustrate that attitudes and audiences changed? Is my pattern recognition all scrambled? How does this fit into the larger picture of gender politics in Egypt at the time?

Can we speak about this separately to the PTA-member-style debates about violence in video games?

Or is this just an obvious mass media arch that happened all over the world? LMK.

Bonus: Stay tuned for my next Egyptian poster collection: Girls with Guns.

Gulf Colloquy Compendium

Next week Global Art Forum _ 6 begins @ Mathaf Modern in Doha and moves on to Art Dubai … in Dubai.  I’ll be in attendance…via the holodeck presenting my short dictionary of Gulfisms while an allstar crew of some of my favorite humans including Yasmine El Rashidi, Michael C Vazquez, Alexander Provan, Sukdev Sandhu, Anna Lena Vaney and Douglas Coupland (all organized by the supreme Shumon Basar) will be present, in-the-meat.

You can peruse the entire lineup behind these words.

SCIFIWAHABI @ SNAKEPIT LONGTAIL

Today’s blog is an act of shamefaced self promotion.

Parlour is screening Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria‘s video work, Scifi Wahabi, at Snake Pit this Wednesday 7th March. Come join us at 6.30pm for a 7 o’clock start at Snake Pit, 33 High St. Auckland

PARLOURGROUP is followable behind the blue letters. SNAKEPIT behind these.

Live Fast, Die Young – It’s a Free Internet

Romain Gavras’ new video for MIA’s “Bad Girls” really ‘steams up my windowscreen’.

I mean it is hot.

‘Hot’ used here in the ‘let’s go do some crimes‘ … sense.

I’ma come off like a real trite asshole dear internets, especially with the real revolutions raging all around us… but I just need to get something off my chest.

As @yousefkaid eloquently pointed out to me on the Twitter:

“Dude, they stole yo shit wholesale. I was really pissed. Da revolution will be ?commercialized”

I blame Gavras not MIA for rolling up to my little raw materials mine and taking his Bagger 288 to my claim. I have no qualms with an other brown girl tipping her hoodie to this stuff from her neon-vehicle or radifying riding sidesaddle or winking from behind her dirty-khaleej mirrorshade aviators. I’ve made videos featuring these things before in evidence here, here and here.

Take these screengrabs rubbed bumper-to-bumper. Frankly, I think you’ll all agree – she wore it better.

Click to view slideshow.

The dude who directed this has done it before. Namely with his video for MIA’s “Born Free” in which he shot-for-shots Peter Watkins’ “Punishment Park” .

The diff is that Watkins was a real filmmaker, over here in the Gulfie desert of the unreal I’m still in the sandbox writing my bad-girls-in-drag-drag-race script.

Whether it was intentional, psychic or  if any of them saw my stuff at all – it doesn’t matter so much. It’s a free internet after all.One thing’s sure, I still L-U-V MIA more than I could ever

And it’s some bitter consolation they got the gutras wrong and didn’t have the chunks to shoot it in the Gulf.

I’ve still got a sleeper cell full of visual weaponry – AKs and Abayas that Gavras isn’t wild enough to dream of.

Lemme make a vid for you Arulpragasam. I’ll do it right. Badgirlwise.

In the lyrics of the ladytiger

XXXO

At least ya’ll can’t take my Maalaya.

Türkan “The Sinema Sultan” Şoray

Even though She Lives, Türkan Şoray is a kind of picture-ghost. She endures in the memory banks of the internet, ripened to a bright 480×360 pixels. Here fans who have spent 30 years lovelorn over the “Sultan” of Turksih pop Sinema now post videos in dedication to her.  The faces of Turkan’s lovers are often rubbed out in a spray of Gaussian blur, making Soray untouched, pure, the eternal and the original beloved.

Imagine if you will, Isabel Sarli...except with less moany cleavage and more…feeling.

Şoray manages to heave with a tragic longing we mere mortals only ever feel a quiver of. And so, I wanted to share her with you.

Now, just look into my LINK and tell me you don’t love her!

What Habbens in Lenden…

My video for ma muse Fatima Al-Qadiri’s Genre Specific X-Perience album came out a few weeks ago and I forgot to post it.

Pitchfork, Fader and a truck of others featured it and it was Tumbled to its high water mark closing in at around 14,000 views on the Youtube since then.

Some info on the track & the vid:

Fatima Al Qadiri’s ‘How Can I Resist U’ is a love letter to London in general and Dubstep (before it wobbled) in particular.

“Lenden” as it’s known has become a historic site of pilgrimage for wealthy Arabs seeking the forbidden fruits of sex, drugs, gambling and alcohol.

Interspersed with Youtube footage of Ma’alaya dances specific to Gulf countries like UAE and Oman–the super cars, dancing girls and brutal council estates

in the video are part of the down-and-dirty dream that a trip to London signifies for Khaleejis (Gulf Arabs). The color of the video is based on an
infamous Arab royal’s custom ‘Gulf Blue’ Koenigsegg CCXR that terrorized the streets of the city’s posh neighborhoods.

How Can I Resist U? is viewable behind these blue letters.

Burj Olympus

 

The city of grand delusion + the "king of vain"

Last week I went to see Mission Impossible 4 : Ghost Protocol for one reason – Dubai on film – that’s all, I swear. Despite the fact that the Emiratis milling around in the background of the film reminded me of the transparently rendered ‘locals’ in an architectural fly through, I fell for all its Franchise Colon Sequel tricks like a real chump. That includes gawking at this publicity stunt Cruise pulled of sitting barefoot on top of the f*cking Burj.

The city of grand delusion + the "king of vain"

I know MI:4 shooting in Dubai is old news and this particular celebrity is not in this blog’s usual purview but after seeing these pictures I have to say, Tom Cruise is an immortal and Burj Khalifa is his Mount Olympus.

I’d go into a deep thing here about the politics/poetics of the Hollywood action-hero-as-pseudo-sacrificial-ecstatic-body in post millennial cinema or something but for now my thoughts linger in the shallows.  There is just something in the thrilling idiocy of Tom Cruise hurling himself (for real) out of the 130th floor over that great big barren that had its effect.

Real et Surreal – Tom Cruise repelling past the hotel window of a hotel guest: