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 http://ejc.sagepub.com/ Communication

European Journal of

 http://ejc.sagepub.com/content/26/4/381.citationThe online version of this article can be found at:

 DOI: 10.1177/0267323111428402

 2011 26: 381European Journal of Communication Dana Nassif

 Life Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Marwan M. Kraidy,

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- Dec 22, 2011Version of Record>>

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Book reviews 381

Across the chapters as a whole the jury is out on a definitive answer to this question, not

least because all of the contributors mobilize their own conceptually nuanced approach to

what they take ‘media events’ to mean for their own case studies/cultural geographies. But

what do emerge are high octane theoretical explorations of media events in the contexts of

cultures and technologies that are reshaping the global media landscape of ‘events’. As such,I have to point out that the style of book as a whole is unlikely to appeal to colleagues looking

for undergraduate-friendly case studies dealing with media events. Happily, then, this is a

splendid collection for those who want to really think about  media events and are prepared

to immerse themselves in what Hepp and Couldry describe as a ‘thickening’ of mediated

communication across different media products and diverse audiences and participants.

Marwan M. Kraidy

Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Life. New York: Cambridge University Press,

2009. £16.99. 270 pp.

Reviewed by: Dana Nassif, Loughborough University, UK 

DOI: 10.1177/0267323111428402

Marwan Kraidy’s Reality Television and Arab Politics brings a significant, insightful and

up-to-date contribution to the growing literature on Arab media as it explores the relation-

ship and overlaps between popular culture and politics by examining the connection

 between Arab reality television programs and the wider political, economic and socio-

cultural forces shaping contemporary Arab public discourse. The book demonstrates the

ways in which Arab reality television has become a vibrant space in which politics is

expressed and negotiated, and draws on the volatile geo-political environment which

shapes the politics of the Middle East and Arab Western relations as a way of understand-

ing the context of public controversy in which these shows are received, and the social

and political implications to them displayed through religious, cultural and moral mani-

festations. Kraidy’s book examines and compares between three shows -Superstar , Al-Ra’is,

and Star Academy- and traces the varied reactions to these shows by the public along a

scale which ranges across those who avidly follow the shows from young people and

adults on one side, to those who condemn them on another, on the grounds that they violateIslamic principles of social conduct and promote cultural globalization dominated by

foreign values of individualism, consumerism and sexual promiscuity.

Kraidy’s introductory chapter discusses how reality TV creates what he calls ‘hyper-

media space’, how it has repercussions on wider public deliberations of modernity and

authenticity, and how it engages with complex political, social, religious and cultural

issues. He states that being an ‘inventive adaptation of Western formats of programs’

which also claims to represent reality becomes a volatile combination for reality shows,

acquiring them opposition from a vocal minority of religious leaders and political activ-

ists who criticize the unfamiliar and alien in them. Kraidy argues that as ‘hybrid texts’that merge global and cultural values, these reality programs disturb the boundaries of

identity, authenticity as well as concepts of gender and ikhtilat  (‘the unsupervised social

mixing of men and women unmarried to each other considered illicit by most Islamists’

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382  European Journal of Communication 26(4)

(p. 54)) which have hardened after years of Western colonialism, political instabilities

and worldwide misrepresentation of Islam.

Chapter Two examines the case of the short-lived Al-Ra’is (the Arabic version of Big

 Brother ) and the institutional, national and regional forces that led to the termination of

the show within a week of its running on the Saudi-owned MBC2 channel. Kraidy reflectson the Bahraini -Saudi connection, particularly the reliance of Saudi Arabia’s royals and

elites on Bahrain’s more socially liberal environment to produce  Al-Ra’is and other

reality shows that are impossible to produce on Saudi television which is controlled by

Wahhabiyya Muslim clerics. Kraidy demonstrates how the influence of Muslim clerics

in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain was significant enough to mobilize considerable public

demonstrations that objected to the broadcasting of the show and requested its termina-

tion, accusing it of being an imperialist move which threatened Islamic values and morals

and imposed foreign and non-authentic reality. Yet Kraidy also highlights the complex

nature of the public debate as he notes the simultaneous and opposing ‘shift in Arabic public discourse toward free-market ideals, unfettered trade, and the search for competi-

tive advantage to lure global capital’ advocated by younger people and adults (p. 55).

In the third chapter, Kraidy discusses the Saudi-Lebanese connection and briefly explains

the historical and political backgrounds to it. Crystallized as one of Saudi capital and

Lebanese talent, Kraidy explains how the connection grew after the relationship between

Saudi Arabia and Egypt became strained in the early 1960s, and how the Middle East

Broadcasting Centre’s transformation from a news channel to a family entertainment one

lured numerous Lebanese journalists and experts in entertainment television from direc-

tors, producers and managers who were left unemployed because of the Lebanese civilwar, into joining the MBC group. With Lebanon becoming the new hub for the production

of shows aired on MBC channels, the relationship provided a new and creative way for

Saudi Royals and elites to escape Wahhabiyya clerics’ tight control on the media in Saudi

Arabia, and allowed for the discussion of ‘hot-button issues such as women, religion, and

 politics’ which were otherwise nonexistent in Saudi Arabia (p. 89).

Chapter Four examines the reality show Star Academy and its rise to popularity in

Saudi Arabia despite the fact that it clashed with the values and beliefs of Wahhabiyya,

whose clerics concentrate on sustaining Saudi cultural and religious purity and ensuring

separation between men and women. Kraidy notes how Wahhabiyya opposition was chal-lenged by liberals who advocated reality television for the political lessons they believed

it invoked, thus acknowledging and highlighting the diversity which characterizes the

 public debates in Saudi Arabia. Kraidy states that, ‘in a country devoid of political institu-

tions where such issues could be publicly deliberated, the Star Academy battle royal

 publicized rival visions of national identity and cultural authenticity, and reflected dissent

from official Wahhabiyya. More importantly, Star Academy’s widespread popularity and

the ensuing polemic suggest that Saudis are ambivalent toward conservative and liberal

ideologies’ (p. 105).

In Chapter Five, Kraidy examines the connections between reality television, politics,

religion and gender in Kuwait, and considers the challenges imposed on women’s

emancipation with the emergence of Islamism in the 1970s. Succeeding at winning the

government to their side with Islamic values that called for obedience to authority,

Islamists also succeeded at weakening voices which protested for the active involvement

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Book reviews 383

of women in society, and worked towards restricting women to their domestic boundaries

while maintaining the upper hand throughout the 1980s, a decade which also witnessed

the increasing presence of Islamist women. Moreover, Kraidy further explores how

‘Kuwaiti women were enfolded in their country’s national identity in ways that hindered

their struggle for political rights’ (p. 125). Reality shows such as Star Academy andSuperstar  also triggered polemics in Kuwait, with Islamists arguing that the existing

criterion for selecting from Western modernity was flawed because it imports Western

values incompatible with Muslim culture (p. 139). At a comparative level, Kraidy also

highlights how Kuwaiti liberals were more successful than those in Saudi Arabia and

Bahrain in confronting Muslim clerics and supporting reality television, emphasizing

as a crucial reason for that the fact that Kuwait had developed operative public institu-

tions, which Saudi Arabia and Bahrain lacked. These, Kraidy states, operated as a place

of ‘political discussion and socialization, information gathering and fact checking, and

entertainment. In effect they provide an alternative communication network to nationaland international media and a vetting process to the information these media distribute’

(pp. 140–1).

In chapter six, Kraidy examines expressions of nationalism on reality television. The

chapter particularly examines the deteriorating relationship between Lebanon and Syria

 between 2003 and 2006, during which the reality TV show Superstar  was telecasted on

the LBC channel (the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation), and the way in which audi-

ences and contestants were drawn into the tensions. Kraidy demonstrates how competi-

tion between Lebanese and Syrian semi-finalists in the first season of the show, and the

loss of the former to the latter, exposed deep-rooted wounds in the relationship betweenLebanon and Syria, and was interpreted as yet another episode of Syrian interference

and control in Lebanon. Kraidy also notes how these sentiments are exacerbated by

channels such as LBC and Future TV, which commenced anti-Syrian media campaigns

critical of the regime’s influence over Lebanon (p. 155). Kraidy concludes that Superstar

‘stirred inter-Arab rivalries and various expressions of nationalism by Arab governments

and populations alike’ (p. 147), and, by being overshadowed by politics and nationalism,

even absorbed moral and cultural objections to the show because ‘it did not entail the

kind of physical interaction between men and women that provoked outrage among

Gulf Islamists’ (p. 153).The implications of the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister al-Hariri for the

Lebanese -Syrian relationship and the way it was reflected on reality television are further

examined in Chapter Seven. Kraidy describes the first show after the assassination as

 being `a folkloric celebration of a resurgent patriotism that brought Lebanon’s most-

venerable singers and its hippest pop idols side by side with Star Academy’s cast’ (p.

171), where audiences, usually holding pictures of their favorite contestant, were unani-

mously waving Lebanese flags. Kraidy further explains how contestants became caught

up in the surrounding politics as well, as those who were in danger of leaving the

competition were voted to stay on or leave the show according to their nationality which,

due to the surrounding uproar with the assassination of the Prime Minister, became the

decisive factor with which they were judged.

Marwan Kraidy’s Reality Television and Arab Politics is an extremely valuable con-

tribution to research on popular culture and politics in the Arab world. It calls on a rich

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384  European Journal of Communication 26(4)

and varied collection of data as well as provides clear and original analysis of reality

television in particular which brings together both the cultural expressions and the political

economy of Arab media. His work provides the reader with a thorough understanding of

the way reality television triggers questions, controversy and debate about modernity and

what it means to be Muslim and modern in the Arab world - and the way these are chal-lenged or advocated by different audiences and ingrained in the surrounding politics of

the region. Thus Kraidy offers the reader a unique chance to understand the link between

 popular culture, politics and modernity in relation to very recent times and events. At the

same time, the book raises several interesting questions which beg further exploration.

Although Kraidy occasionally comments on the way men and women engage with and

are represented on reality TV, the gender dimension as well as examinations of audience

reception and engagement with these or similar shows provide an exciting perspective

from which similar research projects could instigate.

Katarzyna Marciniak and Kamil Turowski

Streets of Crocodiles: Photography, Media, and Postsocialist Landscapes in Poland . Bristol and Chicago:

Intellect, 2010. £24.95. 176 pp.

Reviewed by: Magdalena Kania Lundholm, Uppsala University, Sweden

DOI: 10.1177/0267323111428403

Streets of Crocodiles is a result of the fruitful collaboration between photographer KamilTurowski and feminist media researcher Katarzyna Marciniak. This book has two goals:

to visually document the scenery of the post-socialist urban landscape in Poland and to

comment on the country’s transition from the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ Europe. The project draws

attention to the post-socialist condition in the country while engaging photography, media

culture and scholarly essays. The phenomenon of post-socialism in Europe has predomi-

nantly been theorized within the framework of transformation and modernization. This

 book offers an alternative perspective that is, according to Marciniak, ‘beyond the politics

of politeness and superficial appeasement’ (p. 172).

The book consists of a foreword, preface, four essays and a total of 63 black and white

and colour photographs. The book’s title derives from the short story written in 1934 by

Polish-Jewish artist and writer Bruno Schultz, known for his extraordinary language and

imagination. In the foreword, the film critic J. Hoberman refers to the ‘disturbing elegance’

and ‘surreal juxtapositions’ of Turowski’s photographs, which invoke the atmosphere of

the fragmented, ghost-haunted and phantasmagoric industrial landscape of Schultz’s prose.

In the preface, Kamil Turowski argues that the short story by Bruno Schultz serves as

a metaphor for understanding the post-socialist, hybridized terrain emerging after the

collapse of communism in Poland. The photographs in this volume come from a long-

lasting project initiated in the late 1980s and completed in 2009. The main goal of the

 project was to visually document the process of transition in Poland from the communist

regime to democracy and EU membership.

The majority of the photographs concentrate on the industrial city of Łódź, a blue-collar

centre with a rich history where at least four ethnic groups of Poles, Russians, Germans

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