Showtime for stereotypes, spaces and the Self

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Show!on!Television."!The+Washington+Post,!October!2,!2014.! Accessed!May!3,!2015.!http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2I37249113.html?! 48!Emily!Smith.
Showtime for stereotypes, spaces and the Self An analysis of constructions of difference in television series Homeland

Bachelor Thesis by Simon Johan de Leeuw Koninginnelaan 49, Groningen Supervisor: dr. D.U. Shim S2131447 9262 words

! ! DECLARATION BY CANDIDATE

I hereby declare that this thesis, “Showtime for stereotypes, spaces and the Self“, is my own work and my own effort and that it has not been accepted anywhere else for the award of any other degree or diploma. Where sources of information have been used, they have been acknowledged.

Name

Simon Johan de Leeuw

Signature

Date

18-5-2015

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Table of Contents 1!–!Introduction!.......................................................................................................................................!5! 2!–!Theory!...............................................................................................................................................!7! 2.1!Orientalism!........................................................................................................................................!7! 2.2!The!cinematic!Orient!...................................................................................................................!10! 3!–!Method!3.1!Discourse!in!moving!images!........................................................................................!12! 3.2.1!Characterization!.......................................................................................................................!14! 3.2.2!(Un)Imaginative!Geographies!...................................................................................................!15! 3.2.3.!Moral!Geographies!..................................................................................................................!16! 4!I!Analysis!............................................................................................................................................!18! 4.1!Case!selection:!Why!Homeland?!.................................................................................................!18! 4.2.1.!!What!‘Other’?!Characterization!of!Muslims!and!Simplified!Complex!Representations!in! Homeland!..........................................................................................................................................!21! 4.2.2!Islamabad!.................................................................................................................................!23! 4.2.3!Who!are!‘we’?!..........................................................................................................................!24! 5!–!Conclusion!.......................................................................................................................................!26!

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! ! “My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and re-written, always with various silences and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated, so that “our” East, “our” Orient becomes “ours” to possess and direct.” -

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. London: Penguin, 2003. Preface (2003), p xiv

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1 – Introduction Representations and visual imagery shape the way we perceive the world. Scholars from various disciplines have pointed to the dominance of images in our daily lives and the role of television as a medium that can shape our values and assumptions.1 2 In the current climate of increasing hostility against and demonization of Muslims3 4, I believe it is necessary to study how our understanding of identities is influenced by a medium such as television. This is why we need to look critically at representations of Muslim identities used in television shows. Showtime’s success series Homeland is one among many of these media, roughly part of a post 9/11 genre, that actively take part in this process of identity formation. The question I will be aiming to answer in the following chapters is to what extent the fourth season of television series Homeland taps into an Orientalist discourse of ‘othering’. ‘Othering’ is a term brought to prominence by Edward Said who discussed in his influential book Orientalism the way in which Western culture has continuously shaped and deepened the demarcation between the ‘civilized’ West and the ‘strange and undeveloped’ East.5 Firstly, I will elaborate on Said’s theory and its criticisms before discussing how Orientalism should be studied with cinematic representations as objects of analysis in chapter 3. After engaging with literature from scholars who have been occupied with how the discourse of ‘othering’ exactly functions in ‘modern’ media such as film and television, I will reflect on how to carry out this research methodologically. From the theory I have identified three perspectives, or three cinematic spaces, if you will, in which identities of and difference between ‘self’ and ‘other’ are negotiated. Firstly, some of Said’s legacy has been put into the identifying of Arab/Muslim stereotypes within Hollywood’s cinematic productions. This cinematic space I will proceed to call the characterization. Jack Shaheen has identified the pervasiveness of negative stereotypes in Hollywood cinematic culture: the depiction of Arabs and Muslims as being somehow backward, aggressive or stupid has been ubiquitous in over 80 years of cinema.6 Evelyn Alsultany is among the scholars who has theorized the different roles that Arabs play not only in traditional Hollywood cinema, but also on popular post 9/11 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1

!Nicholas!Mirzoeff.!An+Introduction+to+Visual+Culture.!(London!and!New!York:!Routledge,!1999),!3! !Glen!Creeber.!Tele7visions:+An+Introduction+to+Studying+Television!(London:!BFI,!2006),!1I3! 3 !Samuel!G.!Freedman!"If!the!Sikh!Temple!Had!Been!a!Mosque."!The!New!York!Times,!August!10,!2012.! Accessed!May!9,!2015.!http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/us/ifItheIsikhItempleIhadIbeenIaImuslimI mosqueIonIreligion.html?_r=0.! 4 !Murtaza!Hussein.!"AntiIMuslim!Violence!Spiralling!out!of!Control!in!America."!Al!Jazeera,!December!31,!2012.! Accessed!May!8,!2015.!http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/20121230135815198642.html.! 5 !Edward!W.!Said.!Orientalism!(London:!Penguin,!2003)! 6 !Jack!G.!Shaheen.+Reel+Bad+Arabs:+How+Hollywood+Vilifies+a+People!(New!York:!Olive!Branch!Press,!2001)! 2

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! ! television shows. She provides the main framework which I have adopted to analyse characterization of Muslims in the case study.7 Other studies, especially from the field of popular geopolitics and popular IR have directed the attention to the production of space and landscapes in film to illuminate how representations of space are contingent on power relations. Lina Khatib establishes a steady link with the writings of Said by directing the attention to the various ways in which Hollywood reproduces imaginative geographies of the Middle Eastern ‘other’ world that justify American domination.8 The focus in this research will be directed towards the representation of urban environments, as the fourth season of Homeland is set in the city of Islamabad. Finally, Cynthia Weber has revealed the way in which American films negotiate a conception of their own “moral geographies” in relation to the war on terror. Furthermore, just as perceptions of the ‘other’ can teach us about the ‘self’, the way in which the ‘self’ is constructed naturally relies upon the way it relates to the ‘other’. They are mutually constitutive, because identity is something we should regard as a concept very much tied to difference. Our national identities define what we are, and at the same time what we are not. Weber aptly illustrates how American blockbusters in the post 9/11 era have negotiated American moral attitudes in relationship with the rest of the world.9 All of these efforts have contributed to our understanding of Orientalist discourse in popular visual culture. I feel that the study of a cinematic production from an orientalist perspective should recognize the various contributions made in each of these different fields, and a more holistic methodological framework should incorporate them. Each of these different perspectives may complement, nuance or punctuate the other. In the end, the study of a cinematic text cannot be reduced to simply one of its features. On the other hand, one cannot discuss all of its parts and therefore it is necessary to strike the right balance.

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!Evelyn!Alsultany.!Arabs+and+Muslims+in+the+Media:+Race+and+Representation+after+9/11!(New!York:!New!York! University!Press,!2012)! 8 !Lina!Khatib.!Filming+the+Modern+Middle+East+Politics+in+the+Cinemas+of+Hollywood+and+the+Arab+World! (London:!I.B.!Tauris,!2006),!!19! 9 !Joanne!P.!Sharp.!Geographies+of+Post7colonialism!(London:!SAGE,!2009),!16.!

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2 – Theory 2.1 Orientalism When engaging with literature on Western representations of the Middle East or the Orient the work of Edward Said surely cannot be ignored and its impact on postcolonial scholarship has to be discussed. In his book Orientalism (1978)10, based on a thorough study of Western attitudes towards ‘the Middle-East’ as expressed in literature and the arts, he unravels patterns in the way Western civilization has dealt with the ‘otherness’ of Middle-Eastern culture, traditions and religion.11 The demarcation between East and West has been a continuous process lasting over centuries, as demonstrated by Said. He identifies two interrelated, central features of the relationship between European civilizations and the Orient. Firstly, he mentions the growing knowledge of the Orient through colonial encounters as well as through “…an interest in the alien and unusual…12” as expressed in the arenas of science, literature, poetry or as practiced by enthusiasts and travellers. The second, arguably more decisive feature according to Said is the perennial supremacy of Europe (‘the strong’) over the peoples inhabiting the Orient (‘the weak’) in terms of power and the acknowledgement of this supremacy by Western thought. Said goes on from here to argue that exactly this relationship between power and knowledge influences the way the Orient or the Oriental is represented in discursive and textual expressions. Said’s ontology is decidedly anti-essentialist; he categorically rejects the idea that the Orient is an entity that actually exists as a natural fact. He also does not intend to reveal the true character of the Orient or Islam. He departs from the notion that identities, history and meaning are all by definition social constructions. The construction of identities, as Said argues, is necessarily related to the establishment of mirror images, that are always in a process of being defined and adjusted to the differences they inhibit from the ‘Self’. This process is a continuous historical, social and political process, contingent upon all kinds of discursive interactions within a society.13

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!Edward!W.!Said.!!Orientalism.!(London:!Penguin,!2003).! !It!should!not!go!unnoticed!that!when!the!term!‘the!Orient’!or!any!other!variation!on!the!theme!is!used! colloquially!in!the!United!States!of!America,!it!is!likely!to!be!associated!with!a!notion!of!the!geographical!‘Far! East’,!countries!such!as!Korea!and!Japan.!In!Europe,!and!predominantly!in!France!and!Britain,!however,!‘the! Orient’!is!generally!used!as!a!synonym!for!the!‘Middle!East’!or!the!‘Arab!World’.!!

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!Said,!Orientalism,!40! !Ibid.,!332!

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! ! So how exactly is the East constructed as an ‘other’? In order to apply Saids theory to the case study, a manageable overview of the pertaining dogmas of Orientalist discourse will have to be summed up. Lina Khatib, whose work on cinematic representations of Orientalism will be discussed in the following pages, identifies and extracts from Orientalism four major facets that characterize the West’s relation to the Orient. Firstly, the West tends to project the Eastern ‘other’ as its negative mirror image. If Europeans and Americans are developed, masculine, rational and superior, then the Orient will feature as its inferior, feminine, backwards and barbaric counterpart, in need of the supervision of the more developed countries, or of a colonial well-doer. A second aspect of this ‘othering’ is the disregard of difference among Middle Eastern cultures and religions leading to the creation of a stereotypical, monolithic Orient that exists only to sustain the binary thinking of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. The Arab world is seen as uniform and usually antipathetic to the West. Thirdly, Orientalist discourse is also embedded in the realm of science, giving any Western ruminations on the Orient a significant truth claim. As the Orient is incapable of presenting itself, “…a generalized Western vocabulary to describe the Orient is scientifically objective.14” The fourth dogma is that the Orient is something to be apprehensive of. There is something inherently dangerous about its people and its places which justifies control and supervision. Ultimately, the relationship between Occident and Orient is one characterized by domination. The orientalist discourse – expressions of Western knowledge about the Middle East – has removed the Orient’s right to speak for itself. Illustratively, the Middle Eastern woman is often portrayed as veiled and oppressed, but when she is exposed she serves “…as a metaphor for her land, becomes available for Western penetration and knowledge. 15” Said’s work has effectively become obligatory reading for all who are engaged in postcolonial studies. Its affiliation with the poststructuralist school of thought – most notably with Michel Foucault – is apparent in the shared assumption about the earlier mentioned ‘unhealthy’ relationship between knowledge and power.16 The main concern of the disciplines that have their roots in poststructuralism, which include among others feminist studies, is to “ (…) foreground the exclusions and elisions which confirm the privileges and authority of canonical knowledge systems, and to recover those marginalised knowledges which have been occluded and silenced by the entrenched humanist curriculum.17”

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!Ibid.,!301! !Khatib,!Filming+the+Modern+Middle+East,+5! 16 !Leela!Gandhi.!Postcolonial+Theory:+a+Critical+Introduction!(Edinburgh:!Edinburgh!University!Press,!1998),!25! 17 !Ibid.,!42! 15

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! ! The Orientalist discourse is one of these ‘canonical knowledge systems’ according to Said. It serves as an entire system of meaning reflecting and legitimizing Western hegemony. The Orientalist discourse has removed the right of the Orient to speak for itself and has replaced it by a negative projection of the Western Self in the form of stereotypes. Said demonstrates that these stereotypes and fixed modes of representation keep confirming the necessity of colonial government by constantly, implicitly or explicitly, expressing the relative superiority of the Western world over the underdeveloped Orient.18 To sum up, Orientalism forms the theoretical foundation of this research, as it not only provides the researcher with an account of the various dogmas about the Orient, but also because of its epistemological and ontological assumptions: treating knowledge about history and geography as an a discursive construction is necessary if one is interested how this knowledge is created. Also, Said’s work provides an outstanding starting point from which to engage with more recent postcolonial and critical studies. Although the days of colonial government may be over, expressions of Orientalist discourse still remain intact to reflect and legitimize Western interests. But, since we are living in an increasingly visual world, attention will have to be given to its new disguises: the construction of images and more specifically in this case the cinematic representation of the Orient. Also, as mentioned earlier, the Orientalist discourse is in itself both subject to and constitutive of the changing geopolitical environment and the relations between East and West. This is why some context regarding the current geopolitical environment will have to be provided by using existing literature on popular and cinematic geopolitics in the post 9/11 era.

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!Ibid.,!77!

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2.2 The cinematic Orient The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of the most commercially successful movies in the world. They are consumed, in contrast to the works of authors studied by Said such as Flaubert or Dante, by millions of people daily in all parts of the world. Hollywood’s film industry has more than once been accused of sustaining racialized regimes of representation when it comes to the depiction of Arabs, Islam and the Middle East in general. The book and eponymous documentary: Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People by Jack Shaheen illustrates how eighty years (his analysis includes nearly nine hundred films) of American cinema have witnessed the production and the sustaining of negative Arab stereotypes.19 Arab men have been portrayed almost uninterruptedly as a variation on or a combination of either the evil villain, the wealthy power-seeking sheik or the silly backward Bedouin stereotype inhabiting the desert, detached from civilization. Women, on the other hand, are “…humiliated, demonized, and eroticized in more than 50 feature films.20” Furthermore, women in the movies analysed rarely show any sign of agency and often have no function other than that of a suppressed object. Even though the sheer scope of the research is impressive, and notwithstanding the fact that there is no arguing with Shaheen that these stereotypes are slanderous and insulting,21 he fails to theorize his findings sufficiently for researchers to come to a better understanding of how stereotypes are constructed and how to analyse motion pictures from his perspective. Ultimately, we cannot fully understand the demonization projected at a particular ‘other’ without knowing more precisely the social environments of those projecting these images.22 Khatib (2006) provides a more advanced discussion of the cinematic representation of the Middle East. She recognizes, drawing explicitly on Said’s theory, the imperative to view films or cinema as part of a discursive reality characterized by the relation between power and knowledge.23 She also stresses that it is necessary to relate the movies analysed to their historical backgrounds, since these movies often take a stance and reflect on the politically salient issues of that particular day and age. This point is central to the criticism that Khatib directs at Said, as the message of Orientalism seems to imply implies that the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19

!Shaheen,!Reel+Bad+Arabs! !Ibid,!22! 21 !Ibid,!37! 22 Linnéa!J!Hussein,!review!of!Reel+Bad+Arabs+7+How+Hollywood+Vilifies+a+People,+by!Jack!Shaheen,!Film+&+History:+ An+Interdisciplinary+Journal+of+Film+and+Television+Studies!(40,!1,!2010),!120.! 23 !Khatib,!Filming+the+Modern+Middle+East,!3! 20

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! ! hegemonic dogmas and meta-narratives produced by the Western world are some sort of fixed constructions. However, these dogmas and stereotypes are not fixed; as Khatib aptly points out that different types of stereotypes are contingent upon different contexts. Today’s depiction of the Arab/Muslim as a terrorist has seen a surge since the events of 9/11. The recognition of the differences and variations of representation over time and the need to account for them is an important contribution made by Khatib. In the light of this research it justifies to a certain extent the selection of Homeland as an object of analysis in the post 9/11 era. Identifying differences with preceding times may tell something about how the ‘other’ is known in a changing geopolitical environment. Another point of criticism espoused by Khatib is the suggestion that Said seems to make about the ideological homogeneity of the West. This ideological ambivalence is also visible within the realm of production of popular culture. Even though the work of both Khatib and Shaheen suggests that Hollywood movies tend to reproduce an Orientalist discourse of ‘othering’, one should also look for counterhegemonic practices within American cinema.24 25 If we are to assess to what extent acts of ‘othering’ are apparent within a particular work of cinema, it is imperative to look at how this type of research is to be conducted. I will proceed to lay out the methodological framework, before moving towards the actual analysis.

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Ibid,!p!8,9.! !Klaus!Dodds,!"‘Have!You!Seen!Any!Good!Films!Lately?’!Geopolitics,!International!Relations!and!Film.”! Geography+Compass!!2!(2008):!490,!491!

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3 – Method 3.1 Discourse in moving images

Since this research is concerned with constructions of identity, difference and utterances of ‘othering’ in a television series, some more elaboration is required on how to approach this particular visual medium from this particular perspective. I will follow these steps as laid out in the chapter Discourse Analysis I in Visual Methodologies by Gillian Rose closely, as this method “… is centrally concerned with the production of social difference through visual imagery.” 26 Additionally, since Rose’s outline of a methodological framework is phrased and explained in more generic terms and not necessarily tailored to the particularities of moving images, I have looked towards disciplines such as film and television studies in which similar researches have worked with a so-called ‘ideological analysis’.27 Like Said, researchers conducting ideological analyses of television or film are interested in unravelling the ways in which ideology naturalises culture by upholding myths about different social, national, racial or gender relations. The main problem of this form of analysis, however, is “… the methodological weakness of the claims it seems to want to make about the social significance of the ideological operations it uncovers.” 28 To counter these forms of criticism that are often also coupled with questions on whether a research of popular visual culture really is something an IR scholar should be occupied with, it should be argued that since television and visual imagery in general have become such a commonplace in our daily lives it leads to a conflation of the areas of (international) politics and the everyday. It has been argued that academics, ‘ordinary people’ and politicians alike are intellectually influenced by the visual dimensions of their lives. Politicians are not conducting politics and making decisions with their IR textbooks in their hands but we should view them as people who, just like ourselves, regularly visit a cinema and watch television; they consume and interact with all kinds of visual media and are, consciously or not, affected by these interactions. They are themselves actively taking part in

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!Gillian!Rose.!Visual!Methodologies!an!Introduction!to!the!Interpretation!of!Visual!Materials.!(London:!Sage,! 2001),+!p!161! 27 !Glen!Creeber.!Tele7visions:!An+Introduction+to+Studying+Television+(London:!BFI,!2006),!30! 28 !Richard!Dyer.!"Introduction!to!Film!Studies,"!in!Film+Studies:+Critical+Approaches,!ed.!John!Hill!and!Pamela! Church!Gibson!(Oxford:!Oxford!University!Press,!2000)!p!6!

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! ! a discourse of images.29 Token of this argument is the often-cited notice that Barack Obama reportedly is a devout fan of Homeland.30 Still, despite having indirectly justified the study of popular visual culture by presidential mandate, we have to be aware and critical of the particular shortcomings of the highly interpretive manner in which I have tried to make sense of Homeland. There is an inherent bias on the part of the researcher. I am a white, Northern-European male in his early twenties with a particular set of opinions, values, assumptions and way of seeing, and therefore my way of interpreting images will inevitably be filtered or distorted, but not necessarily in a wrong or right way. These cultural expectations influence the way a cinematic production is perceived by the viewer in the first place. This is why the researcher must initially try to abandon these preconceptions as much as possible and be aware of the fact that his interpretation is at its very most an approximation of a so-called ‘preferredreading’ when engaging with the material he wants to analyse. The recognition that there is no such thing as a right way to interpret the text should be buried in mind. Even though this research is concerned with the reproduction of discursive formations of difference, the goal is not to prove or disprove that a certain cinematic text is racist. Rather, it should be seen as an exercise helping us to figure out how to deconstruct racist images in a structured way.31 The above forms the starting point from which to start the Foucauldian interpretation of discursive constructions as described by Rose.32 The following issue that requires thought is related to the selection of the empirical material within the images. Considerations have to be carefully made as to what parts of the twelve-hour body of moving images are of particular relevance to the research and what parts – not in the last place with limitations in terms of the scope of the research in mind - are to be left out of the equation. Any piece of television or film consists of many different aspects that ultimately contribute to its entirety as a text. Of course, one could regard a cinematic piece as a sequence of different scenes. Each scene then has its own components or ‘codes of television’ and is defined by various aspects - such as mise en scène, camerawork, dialogue and lightning – each capable of transmitting certain particular effects.33 Surely, one also always has to bear in mind what the overall narrative of the cinematic text is and how the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 29

!Terell!Carver.!"Cinematic!Ontologies!and!Viewer!Epistemologies:!Knowing!International!Politics!as!Moving! Images."!Global+Society!24,!no.!3!(2010):!426,!427! 30 !Chris!Harnick.!“President!Obama!Will!Give!'Homeland'!A!Foreign!Policy!Heads!Up,”!The+Huffington+Post,! March!22,!2012.!Accessed!April!24,!2015.!http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/presidentIobamaI homelandIdamianIlewis_n_1373175.html! 31 !Robert!Stam!and!Louise!Spence.!"Colonialism,!Racism!and!Representation."!Screen!24,!no.!2!(1983):!20! 32 !Rose,+Visual+Methodologies,!150.! 33 !Glen!Creeber.!“Case!Study:!ShotIbyIShot!Analysis."!In!Tele7visions:+An+Introduction+to+Studying+Television,!ed.! Glen!Creeber,!(London:!BFI,!2006)!39!

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! ! individual components form and accentuate the narrative. A preference had to be made since analysing each individual component would be too time-consuming and probably not even efficient - among the things that constitute the film text. I have chosen to direct the analytical focus towards three different elements, or key themes as Rose calls them, that are directly affiliated to the theoretical framework while keeping the cinematic ‘codes of television’ and their effects in mind.

3.2.1 Characterization As indicated earlier, the book “Reel Bad Arabs” by Jack Shaheen has shown that one of the most pervasive aspects of the Orientalist discourse is the negative stereotype. Identifying stereotypes requires a textual focus on character and characterization which is in itself not enough to assess whether a film produces a ‘progressive’ or commonplace discourse on difference. Shaheen has merely identified negative stereotypes without evaluating this form of racism as one presented in the film (strictly representational) or a social one.34 How can we say that the showing of a positive image of a certain Arab in a movie makes it progressive or not? Firstly, a closer look at the exact role of the character within the narrative of the story will have to be given. Secondly, as suggested by Stam and Spence, a comprehensive methodology of the analysis of cinema within the context of postcolonial or race studies should also focus on the analysis of the specifically cinematic dimensions of films and genre (A few thoughts on generic conventions will follow in the next chapter), rather than pointing the finger at what might or might not correspond to a certain empirically known stereotype.35 To avoid the problems described above, I will focus on the representations of Muslim characters with the theories of Evelyn Alsultany in mind. Alsultany has identified a recent trend that involved sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the media such as television series and views these portrayals as strategies used by writers to counter the negative terrorist stereotype. She calls these strategies simplified complex representations and identifies seven different ways in which they are presented. One of the most commonly used strategies is executed by inserting a patriotic Arab or Muslim American character into a show that actively fights the Muslim terrorist threat. The supposition here is that unlike many of his Muslim brothers and sisters, this particular individual can show that Muslims and Arabs may feature on the team of the 'good guys.' She sums up several other strategies, such as the tendency of writers and directors to humanize the terrorist by making him less of a flat !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 34

!Robyn!Wiegman.!"Race,!Ethnicity,!and!Film."!In+Film+Studies:+Critical+Approaches,!ed.!John!Hill!and!Pamela! Church!Gibson,.!(Oxford:!Oxford!University!Press,!2000),!162! 35 !Stam!and!Spence,!"Colonialism,!Racism!and!Representation."!11.!

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! ! and evil character. She mentions these strategies to support the argument that the ‘other’ is now portrayed sympathetically to project the United States as an enlightened country, but that essentially all Arabs and Muslims are still portrayed in the context of terrorism and therefore the stereotype can never be completely subverted.36 Surely a certain awareness and reflectivity needs to be upheld before all too easily bemoaning the fact that the ‘other’ is being portrayed as a terrorist. After all, this thesis concerns the analysis of a war-on-terror-genre television series that attempts to reflect on a geopolitical reality so perhaps we should not necessarily be too concerned about whether the ‘other’ is represented as a terrorist. What matters more is how we are made to see this terrorist and his points of view and to what extent the viewer is made to empathize with his character. Even though Hollywood and American cinema may boast a rich tradition of negatively stereotyping of the Arab/Muslim Other, I think it would be cynical dismiss a priori what may be attempts by American television and cinematic productions to construct a more nuanced narrative on terrorism as ‘predictable strategies37’ to somehow bolster a sense of American or Western superiority, while at the same time productions made by, for example, exponents of Third cinema are lauded for the sympathetic, layered representations of terrorists.38 By doing this, one would fall into a pitfall of creating a binary between the ‘uncritical’ cinematic industry of Hollywood versus the subverting, counterhegemonic world of Third Cinema, which is exactly something that is to be avoided if research is conducted from a poststructuralist perspective. Also, the problems encountered here justify the need to look beyond the characterization and to move towards a more comprehensive framework from which to engage with cinematic representations of the Orient. A work of film cannot be judged from this perspective on representations of its characters solely, because such an approach would obscure other relevant components that make up a cinematic text in its entirety.

3.2.2 (Un)Imaginative Geographies Both Lina Khatib and scholars from the field of critical and popular geopolitics have directed the attention to the representation of space and landscape within cinematic productions. Khatib builds on Saids notion of ‘imaginative geographies39’ when she argues that Hollywood’s cinematic representations of the Middle East indirectly serve an ideological !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 36

!Alsultany,!Arabs+and+Muslims+in+the+Media,!21I27! !Ibid.,!28! 38 !Elaine!Martin.!"Films!about!Terrorism,!Cinema!Studies!and!the!Academy."!in!Terror,+Theory+and+the+ Humanities,!ed.!Jeffrey!R.!Leo!and!Uppinder!Mehan.!(Ann!Arbor,!Michigan:!Open!Humanities!Press,!2012),!7! 39 !Said,!Orientalism!p!55! 37

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! ! agenda.40 Firstly, she argues that Hollywood movies often make the viewer to see the ‘other’ landscape from high above, denying to show the viewer the intimacies of its everyday life and thus invoking a sense of mastery, surveillance and objectification of the ‘other’. Secondly, she points to the seemingly useless role of Middle Eastern cities and landscapes as the backgrounds for American heroism. In scenes like these, space is made unimportant to the story and made secondary to the glorification of the American military, making the Middle East seem like a generic battlefield. She also gives attention to the frequent depiction of deserts as a symbol for savagery or barbarism. The people inhabiting the desert are detached, the emptiness of the landscape represents the opposite spectrum of human civilization. A different wilderness is the concrete jungle. Orientalist depictions of cities and urban environments such as Beirut are essentialised to a chaotic conglomeration of “… rows of men praying outdoors and veiled women, a mayhem of slums where rooftops are covered with hanging laundry and bird cages, and where random shooting by militias in jeeps is an everyday activity.41” In this research, I have coded for footage involving urban environments and I will mostly look at how the camerawork, mise en scene and editing influence the way we are made to see the city of Islamabad.

3.2.3. Moral Geographies Klaus Dodds and Cynthia Weber are two of the most important scholars engaging in the field of popular geopolitics (or popular IR) who have investigated the post 9/11 movie genre. They attempt to understand the way in which Hollywood constructs American (and Other) identities at war since the attacks on the Twin Towers of September 11 2001. According to Dodds, the study of films within action-thriller genre provide the researcher with opportunities to evaluate the discourse on of the role of U.S. (military) presence in the global landscape. He identifies that several films in the aftermath op 9/11 have focused on advancing the notion of the foreign deployment of US military forces as a necessary course of action as to secure international and domestic safety. Dodds observes a changing of the moral geography towards intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, as directors seem to at least question the viability of war.42 In fact, films that appear to be challenging the U.S.’ foreign military policy have appeared to become more of a commonality, involving plots that directly or indirectly imply U.S. government failures and cover-ups of civilian casualties for example.43 One of the

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!Khatib,!Filming+the+modern+Middle+East,!19I25! !Khatib,!Filming+the+modern+Middle+East,!25! 42 !Klaus!Dodds.!"Hollywood!And!The!Popular!Geopolitics!Of!The!War!On!Terror."!Third+World+Quarterly!29,!no.! 8!(2008):!1628I29.! 43 !Michael!J.!Shapiro.!Cinematic+Geopolitics.!London:!Routledge,!2009.!37.! 41

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! ! objectives of this analysis is to assess to what extent Homeland critically engages with the war-on-terror and to evaluate how American morality is negotiated. Similarly, Weber discusses the quest for a so-called moral grammar (the position of the American) in relation to the war on terror starting with Bush’ division of the world into the proponents of humanity and those siding with terrorists. But this dichotomy, she argues, does not hold for those in need of a moral justification for the war on terror, since the situation is no longer as black and white as in the Second World War for example. What constitutes “a moral American” is expanding the narrative of the US as a leader or a heroic warrior that safeguards its interests to a wider conception of the US as having a humanitarian mission to save and rescue the actual victims of the war on terror in countries such as Afghanistan. Weber observes one of the discursive constructions of this identity: a notion of the United States soldier as a morally enlightened humanitarian. By doing so, however, it still calls upon the notion of an Orientalized, feminized and helpless Other (the countries victimized by the war) thereby enhancing its own enlightened status. Weber argues that if the US claims to be a humanitarian moral authority in its cultural narrative of the self, it should recognize the ‘other’ as an active player and not as a passive object reaching out for help.44 I will try to argue that in the fourth season of Homeland, a similar search for moral certainty is visible and that different moral geographies are explored. This demands a more loose, interpretive approach to the textual whole. I will attempt to highlight the different ways in which the American protagonists working for the CIA define and renegotiate their moral stance, and perhaps more importantly, what this identity ‘does’ in relation to the narrative. Weber frequently interprets the attitudes and behaviour of characters in the movies synecdochically - meaning that one part can be said to represent the whole, the whole in this case being the moral attitude that the American nation adopts. For example, the emergence of the vigilante character in many post 9/11 films is related to a the negotiation of a new moral attitude in which justice has come to mean ‘an eye for an eye.’45 I think this particular, synecdochical way of interpretation of characters can tell us a lot about underlying, unspoken assumptions in a particular text. Also, the vigilante theme features prominently in the final few episodes of Homeland. In Weber’s view, this moral attitude does not evoke the notion of a feminized “other” and it implies the justification of becoming judge, jury and executioner in event of the failure of traditional routines. 46

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 44

!Cynthia!Weber.!Imagining+America+at+War:+Morality,+Politics+and+Film!(London:!Routledge,!2006),!87I90! !Ibid.,!91I92! 46 !Ibid.,!p!113! 45

17! !

! !

4 - Analysis 4.1 Case selection: Why Homeland? Homeland is a television series thaat started airing on the American television network Showtime in September 2011. It continued in the tradition of post 9/11 television drama 24 (co-producer Howard Gordon has worked and written on both shows), dealing with topics such as international politics, terrorism and counterinsurgency. It has been acclaimed as an essential post-9/11 narrative, as it reflects and provokes thought on the War on Terror, while at the same time often being criticized as being islamophobic and racist.47 48 Its narrative is mainly centred around the intrigues and schemes plotted by and against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Its main characters are Carrie Mathieson, a CIA official with a bipolar disorder and Nicholas Brody, a marine who turned to the side of terrorists during his imprisonment by Al-Qaeda. He features in the first three seasons until he is hanged in Teheran after he murdered the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Naturally there are many other relevant characters, but they will be mentioned and given attention further on when the analysis requires it. Even though it may feel as if justice needs to be done to the overall storyline leading up to the fourth season, I will not lay out in too much detail the preceding events in the series. With the end of the third season, the Brody-subplot has come to an end and there is a large timeframe between this moment and the beginning of the fourth season. Where necessary I will provide how the several characters and their relationships with Carrie have developed in the previous seasons in the analysis. The fourth and most recent of Homeland consists of twelve episodes that aired on Showtime from October to December 2014. Each episode has an approximate duration of fifty minutes. This particular season forms an excellent object of analysis fitting to the theoretical framework described before for a number of reasons. Firstly, its recent air date allows for the researcher to examine very contemporaneous issues. It also forms an empirical research opportunity that has not been academically engaged with before. Secondly, almost the entire storyline is set in the battlegrounds of the war on terror; namely in Afghanistan and Pakistan and this means that there are many scenes in which Middle Eastern landscapes and characters are depicted. I think it is worth noting that this has led to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 47

!Laura!Durkay.!"'Homeland'!Is!the!Most!Bigoted!Show!on!Television."!The+Washington+Post,!October!2,!2014.! Accessed!May!3,!2015.!http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2I37249113.html?! 48 !Emily!Smith.!The+Rupert+Friend+Handbook+7+Everything+you+need+to+know+about+Rupert+Friend.!(Emereo! Publishing:!2013),!29I30!

18! !

! ! international controversy with Pakistani officials issuing their discontent with how its capital city, its people and its governmental institutions have been portrayed in the series.49 This illustrates how a television show has the capacity to foster public debate on the identities of places and people. Moreover, as the reaction of the Pakistani government implies, it has the more powerful capability to normalize the way we think about the MiddleEast. In this regard, I think that Homeland has an important quality to its advantage in that it has a relatively high authenticity claim. There is a number of things that contribute to making this assessment. This is because the viewer is intricately engaged and involved with the personal lives of the main characters. We are often allowed in their personal spaces and we get to know the characters as if they are close friends. This enhances our empathic feelings for them and makes us see and believe that the people in the control rooms are, for all their vices and virtues, essentially humans like us. The lead role of Carrie Mathieson played by Claire Danes is not your archetypal Hollywood spy hero, not in the last place because she is a woman, but especially because of the faults in her character. She often appears unattractive, both physically and in the way she behaves. This leads to a removal of the pedestals that protagonists in action-thrillers or spy movies seem stand on from the viewer’s perspective. Klaus Dodds, citing the genre theorist Steve Neale, adds that it is important to understand that different genres or generic categories shape different expectations not only in relation to the plot/narrative but also about the way space is represented.50 51 He has analysed, among many other films, action thrillers or spy movies such as The Bourne Trilogy which they are characterized by the clear identification of good and bad characters, a showdown like climax usually resulting in the victory of the spy hero (think also of James Bond films) and a rehabilitation of the status quo.52 What is perhaps related to the authenticity claim and the ambivalence of the characters is that Homeland is not the exponent of a welldefined, clear-cut genre. It certainly has elements of an action-thriller, but as it concerns not a two hour film but a twelve hour television show, the action is spread out and suspended over an elongated time frame. I would argue that Homeland could be better described as a television drama with a heavy emphasis on character development, while at the same time explicitly presenting itself decidedly as a post-9/11 narrative, because characters are in

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 49

!Chidanand!Raighatta.!"Pakistan!Is!Really!Upset!with!US!TV!Series!'Homeland'!Season!4!I!The!Economic! Times."!The!Economic!Times.!December!29,!2014.! 50 !Klaus!Dodds.!"Hollywood!And!The!Popular!Geopolitics!Of!The!War!On!Terror."!Third+World+Quarterly!29,!no.! 8!(2008):!1624! 51 !Klaus!Dodds.!"Gender,!Geopolitics,!And!Geosurveillance!In!The!Bourne!Ultimatum*."!Geographical+Review+ 101,!no.!1!(2011):!88I105.! 52 !Ibid.,!90!

19! !

! ! search of moral certitude (as featured in the discussion of Weber) while at the same time being forced to react to the threats of terrorism. 53 I think Homeland makes for a very interesting case study, because it discusses and reflects on both the physical and moral geographies of the war on terror. Furthermore its elongated plot has the ability to show the complicated entanglement between the private and public troubles of the main protagonists in a way that previous action-thriller blockbusters have not been able to do.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 53

!Dell’Aquila,!Mike.!Homeland:!Women!in!Charge!in!PostI9/11!America!(CONSTRUCTION!Literary!Magazine)! http://constructionlitmag.com/culture/homelandIwomenIchargeIpostI911Iamerica/!

20! !

! !

4.2.1. What ‘Other’? Characterization of Muslims and Simplified Complex Representations in Homeland In the fourth season of Homeland, different kinds of Muslim characters feature with different backgrounds. There is no unequivocally homogenous way of representing a Muslim ‘other’. The first one I will discuss is the female CIA analyst Fara Sherazi, the only character that is both American and Middle-Eastern (Iranian). She is introduced to the audience in season three, when she is hired as a financial analyst with Farsi language skills. While I have made it clear that I have made the fourth season my object of analysis, I think that particular attention needs to be addressed to the establishment of Fara’s character in season three. Her presence, she’s wearing a hijab, does not go unnoticed upon first entering the Agency and the fact that she is a Muslim employee of the Agency apparently demands that a lot of the initial screen time during the third season serves to raise suspicion about her allegiance and motives. The camerawork here is angled from over her shoulders, and we see how the Agency’s staff and workers keep a close eye on her. The viewer here is involved by receiving the same sort of vibrations of disdain and antagonism, because we are made to see from her perspective. Her co-workers are initially uncomfortable upon first sight, until Fara herself breaks the ice by asking: “Is something wrong?”, to which her new superior, Saul Berenson, softly replies: “No.” He then understands that she is the new recruit who is going to help to trace one of the main targets.54 The underlying suggestion that a Muslim is someone to be treated with distrust and suspicion until it is clear that he or she ostensibly is on the ‘right’ side is something that must be noticed. Apparently there is no middle ground for Muslims. It’s either ‘us’ or ‘them’. Further on throughout the third and fourth season, she needs to prove through word and deed that she is in fact committed to America’s cause. It is remarkable how Alsultany’s theory about the insertion of the patriotic Muslim American character (Strategy #1)55 resounds through Fara’s character development. Also, as illustrated above, “The persistent unquestioned assumption in these TV dramas is that Arabs and Muslims are terrorists, despite writers’ efforts to create a wider range of Arab and Muslim characters.56” This statement holds up comfortably until the end of the third season. In the fourth season, the centre stage of the story is situated in the city of Islamabad and the characters do seem to get somewhat more complex. I will not venture into too much depth on whether !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 54

!"Uh...Oh...Ah."+Homeland.+Showtime.!13!Oct.!2013.!Television.+ !Alsultany,!Arabs+and+Muslims+in+the+Media,!21! 56 !Ibid.,!27! 55

21! !

! ! Pakistan is part of the Middle East or whether it is a South Asian country, as I think for the purposes of this research, this is in fact irrelevant. Obviously I do not intend to disregard the cultural differences apparent and even though I tread into the dangerous area of risking to regard the Orient as a large monolithic entity, I think for now we ought not to be concerned with what the Orient really is or how far its physical borders stretch; what’s important is that we understand how the theory of Orientalism can be applied to any “other” region.57 In Pakistan, several new Muslim characters appear and their lives are tied in one way or another to terrorism. In other words, while the plot still revolves around counterinsurgency and the pursuit of the very cartoony terrorist Haissam Haqqani, the Others also include characters that are not strictly antipathetic nor sympathetic to American involvement. A wider range of characters is inserted between the previous, virtually black-and-white dichotomies. To start with there is Ayaan Ibrahim, a nephew of the wanted Haqqani. He is introduced in the first episode of the fourth season, as a surviving victim of a drone strike directed at his uncle. The strike was carried out on a farmhouse during a wedding, killing many innocent civilians in the process. Eventually it emerges that Haqqani himself was not even present at this instance. Ayaan has recorded a video of the wedding on his telephone, with clear evidence of the damage done by the air strike. Despite his grief and despite the attempts by one of his friends to persuade him to upload the video, Ayaan is reluctant to become involved in any political games and seems only to be interested in pursuing his academic career as a medical student in Islamabad. His friend then secretly uploads the video in his name, it instantly goes viral ,even reaching the CIA headquarters. From there on Ayaan is caught between two fires. On the one hand, Carrie Mathieson seduces him – taking his virginity, the ‘other’, whilst male, is eroticized - into become an asset for the CIA and on the other hand he still stays in touch with his uncle Haqqani. When ultimately he leads the CIA drones to his uncle, Haqqani shoots him for his betrayal. We are made to empathise with Ayaan through the use of intense close-ups, becoming familiar with his background and following him into the decisions he seems to be forced to made. His role in the narrative could be seen as a synecdoche for all the harmless and vulnerable Pakistani civilians. The assumption seems to be: if he (synecdoche for Pakistan) does not fall for the Americans, he will fall for the Taliban. His death is all the more tragic and shocking because he has been set up into a very difficult situation by both parties. It could be read as a criticism on the way in which the war on terror is conducted, because the actual people are not helped by the many intrigues that foster chaos in their country. Ayaan is depicted as vulnerable and in need of help, but his problems are inherently tied and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 57

!Pun!intended!

22! !

! ! to and caused by the presence of the Americans in his country. It cannot convincingly be argued from here that Homeland conveys a message that legitimizes Western domination or supremacy, even though the “other” in this case is very much represented as a victim. Rather, American interventionism is considered as an essential part of the problems inflicted on the country. Increasingly, and this notion will be explored in the final stage of the analysis, the Americans are portrayed as moving from one failure to the next, without knowing what their long-term objectives are. Another group of ‘Others’ in the series that are compelling to discuss are the agents of the ISI (Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence), Pakistan’s intelligence agency. Upon Carrie Mathieson’s arrival in Islamabad, there is already a great sense of mistrust between the Pakistani and the American government. The character of most ambiguity is Tasneem Qureshi, a female agent who is complicit with Haqqani. She is empowered by a great sense of independence and she is adept at the games of intrigue that eventually lead to the infiltration of the American embassy by the terrorists, claiming that this is in the best interests of her country. She is in my opinion the most ambiguous Muslim character in the series, because on the one hand she represents a ‘Western’ sense of emancipation (hardly wearing a headscarf throughout the series) by pulling the strings. She is a practically antiAmerican, educated female who backs the terrorists.

4.2.2 Islamabad The main stage in which the action takes place during the fourth season is, as mentioned earlier, the city of Islamabad. The Pakistani controversy in reaction to the way the city was represented (“...maintaining that "Islamabad is a quiet, picturesque city with beautiful mountains and lush greenery.”" 58) in Homeland shows us that spaces are areas of contestation that are capable of defining the identity of the people inhabiting it.59 Overall it can be argued that Islamabad is very much represented as a place of constant danger. After the public murder of former chief of station Sandy Bachman in the streets during the first episode, the U.S. embassy is put on lockdown and all U.S. officials are prohibited from leaving the embassy terrain without permission. The unspoken assumption here seems to be that the inhabitants of Islamabad are generally hostile to American presence. This fits in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 58

!Chidanand!Raighatta.!"Pakistan!Is!Really!Upset!with!US!TV!Series!'Homeland'!Season!4."!The+Economic+Times.+ December!29,!2014.!Accessed!April!22,!2015! http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/pakistanIisIreallyIupsetIwithIusItvIsey!riesI homelandIseasonI4/articleshow/45672820.cms! 59 !Khatib,!Filming+the+Modern+Middle+East,!17!

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! ! The Oriental, exotic, structureless city is attempted to made known (‘unveiled’) in terms of a Western knowledge system that has a certain scientific objectivity claim to it. We can see this by the frequent use of the surveillance systems that attempt to track targets. We often follow the operatives of the CIA control room who seem to struggle with the chaotic streets. Dodds remarks that these narrow streets and enclosed spaces serve to foster a sense of apprehension towards the terrorists, of whom it seems like they can manoeuvre with great facility and invisibility in these surroundings.60 From the viewpoint of Stephen Graham one may analyse these representations as part of a “…profoundly anti-urban military discourse in which urban terrain – particularly the urban terrain in poor, Islamic countries – is portrayed as a great leveller between high-tech US forces and their low-tech adversaries.61” The urban, vertical environment limits the effectiveness of long-distance drone strikes, surveillance system and automated weapons. It could be argued that by showing how the CIA struggles with the implications of the impenetrability of Islamabad, Homeland criticizes urban warfare, but it does so by needing to evoke the ‘idea’ of Islamabad as a strange, mischievous city. Especially interesting is the fact that the season was not shot in Islamabad, but in Cape Town. This illustrates that there must be an ‘idea’ of a generic large Oriental city that can easily be understood by viewers, much in the same way Beirut has become essentialised to a place where normal life does not exist, as described by Khatib.62 The sense of strangeness is reinforced by the fact that no conversations in Urdu are subtitled,

4.2.3 Who are ‘we’?

The final part of this analysis considers the construction of the American ‘Self’ within the overall narrative of the twelve episodes. By discussing the different moral stances taken by the main protagonists in the way that Weber does in ‘Imagining America at War’ and reflecting on the effects of these different moral geographies within the storyline, I have hoped to distil the idea of the Other that is invoked throughout. Dennis Boyd, the ambassador’s wife and lecturer of political science on one of Islamabad’s universities, had been leaking salient intelligence from his wife’s computer to the former CIA chief of station in Islamabad. This information is known by Tasneem Qureshi, who blackmails him by threatening to expose him to the embassy. From here on, he is put under pressure to work for the ISI by obtaining information and sabotaging the embassy. He is given a key to Carrie Mathieson’s apartment and instructed to take photographs of interesting material. He !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 60

!Dodds,!“Hollywood!And!The!Popular!Geopolitics!Of!The!War!On!Terror”,!1634! !Stephen!Graham.!Cities,+War,+and+Terrorism:+Towards+an+Urban+Geopolitics,!(Malden,!MA:!Blackwell! Publishing),!19! 62 !Khatib,!Filming+the+Modern+Middle+East,+25! 61

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! ! does not know whether he should do this and starts drinking in a bar until he is carried home by one of the CIA’s men. Drunkenly he overhears his wife talking to the man and telling him: “There's a theory, men secretly fear their wives are crazy and women secretly fear their husbands are losers.”63 Ms. Boyd then goes on to tell about that twenty years ago, Dennis still had an imposing physique and she was still in love with him. Deeply hurt, Dennis’ next move is that he decides to follow through with entering Carrie’s apartment. From here following defect to the ‘other’ side can be interpreted as emanating from a loss of perceived masculinity. To redeem himself and his pride, Dennis betrays his country, ultimately leading to the death of many of his fellow citizens as later on the embassy is overrun by Haqqani and his men thanks to Dennis giving away the location of a hidden entrance. How must we interpret Homeland’s establishment of a causal relationship of the loss of masculinity and the betrayal of one’s country? It could be argued that it functions as an observation on the detrimental effects of the focus on masculine attitudes, as Dennis Boyd acts in order to seek what he thinks his wife has lost, a sense of courage and manhood. Nonetheless I think that also here, we could come to interesting insights by giving a synecdochical interpretation. Dennis Boyd’s character represents the search for moral absolutism compared to times (twenty years ago was right before 9/11) when America’s role in the world was somewhat less complicated and ambiguous. “You should have seen him then.” 64, Martha Boyd says. The demise and defection of Dennis, whose job as a political science teacher in Islamabad should also not be regarded as a coincidence, can be said to symbolise the way in which America loses influence precisely because the changing environment, with contemporary resolving of conflicts made out of the stuff of more feminine, intelligence-based activities, demands it to look beyond traditional conceptions of masculine heroism and moral absolutism. It calls upon the notion of the ‘other’ as an equal player in the field of intelligence and counterinsurgency, as illustrated by the influence the ISI has in the series.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 63

!"About!a!Boy.”!Homeland.!Showtime.!26!Oct.!2014.!Television.! !Ibid!

64

25! !

! !

5 – Conclusion By synthesising a methodology from the three different cinematic ‘spaces’ (characterization, landscapes and the Self) of ‘othering’ I have attempted to blend the fruits of several academic disciplines together into what is, perhaps, a more comprehensive analysis. I think more work needs to be done to elaborate this framework in order to make it applicable for further in-depth research. Because the foci of an analysis are spread out more thinly across several cinematic parts in this research, perhaps its conclusions are also somewhat more shallow. Firstly, the Muslim characters in the show do not overhaul the dominant style in which we are accustomed to see the ‘other’ in contemporary American cinema. Alsultany’s concept of simplified complex representations can be applied to the show and many of the characters are still only related in relation to terrorism. However, we are often made to see ‘their’ sides of the story, and we can observe that for example the ISI officials, among whom most prominently a woman, have significant agency and do not feature as passive objects but rather, define their own terms and even outwit the Americans in playing the ‘spy game’. Secondly, imaginations of the urban landscape of Islamabad are ambiguous. The public by Pakistani government is understandable, as the capital is continuously presented as the stage for terrorism, violence and an overall sense of paranoia and strangeness. There are no depictions of any serenity or calmness in the city apart from those scenes that take place within the U.S. embassy. Exactly because it may serve arguments not to engage in urban warfare, the depiction of the city of Islamabad comes with connotations of fear and apprehensions and is thus understood to be strange and dangerous Thirdly, Cynthia Weber’s theories on the continuous American search for moral certitude has proven to be very helpful in the context of this research. By consistently showing American characters and leaders struggling to adapt to the environment in Pakistan and ultimately having to leave Pakistan after many consecutive failures, Homeland certainly breaks with a rigid dichotomy between ‘us’, the good, intelligent and civilized people that control ‘them’, the barbaric tribesmen. In the narrative, whilst we are made to feel for the main American characters, the overall tone is not patriotic: there is very much a sense of the U.S. as a clueless policeman. I think that the different foci of analysis provide a more nuanced assessment and interpretation of the show. It helps us understand better which and how different spaces of a particular cinematic production can be said to further an Orientalist discourse of ‘othering’ 26! !

! ! and which parts show a counterhegemonic direction. However, it still is a highly interpretive method and one has to be careful not to jump to conclusions all too soon.

27! !

! ! Bibliography Alsultany, Evelyn. Arabs and Muslims in the Media Race and Representation after 9/11. New York: New York University Press, 2012. Carver, Terrell. "Cinematic Ontologies and Viewer Epistemologies: Knowing International Politics as Moving Images." Global Society 24, no. 3 (2010): 421-31. Creeber, Glen. Tele-visions: An Introduction to Studying Television. London: BFI, 2006. Dell’Aquila, Mike. “Homeland: Women in Charge in Post-9/11 America” Construction Literary Magazine. Accessed April 28, 2015 http://constructionlitmag.com/culture/homeland-women-charge-post-911-america/ Dodds, Klaus. "Gender, Geopolitics, And Geosurveillance In The Bourne Ultimatum*." Geographical Review 101, no. 1 (2011): 88-105. Dodds, Klaus. "‘Have You Seen Any Good Films Lately?’ Geopolitics, International Relations and Film." Geography Compass 2, no. 2 (2008): 476-94. Dodds, Klaus. "Hollywood And The Popular Geopolitics Of The War On Terror." Third World Quarterly 29, no. 8 (2008): 1621-37. Durkay, Laura. "'Homeland' Is the Most Bigoted Show on Television." The Washington Post, October 2, 2014. Accessed May 3, 2015. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P237249113.html? Freedman, Samuel G. "If the Sikh Temple Had Been a Mosque." The New York Times, August 10, 2012. Accessed May 9, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/us/if-the-sikhtemple-had-been-a-muslim-mosque-on-religion.html?_r=0. Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory a Critical Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998 Graham, Stephen. Cities, War, and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geopolitics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Harnick, Chris “President Obama Will Give 'Homeland' A Foreign Policy Heads Up,” The Huffington Post, March 22, 2012. Accessed April 24, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/president-obama-homeland-damianlewis_n_1373175.html

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! ! Hill, John, and Pamela Church Gibson. Film Studies: Critical Approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Hussein, Linnéa J. "Reel Bad Arabs - How Hollywood Vilifies a People (review)." Film & His tory: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies: 118-20. Hussein, Murtaza. "Anti-Muslim Violence Spiralling out of Control in America." Al Jazeera, December 31, 2012. Accessed May 8, 2015. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/20121230135815198642.html. Khatib, Lina. Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World. London: I.B. Tauris ;, 2006. Martin, Elaine. "Films about Terrorism, Cinema Studies and the Academy." In Terror, Theory and the Humanities, edited by Jeffrey R. Leo and Uppinder Mehan, Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press, 2012. Rajghatta, Chidanand. "Pakistan Is Really Upset with US TV Series 'Homeland' Season 4 The Economic Times." The Economic Times. December 29, 2014. Rose, Gillian. Visual Methodologies: an Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. London: Sage, 2001 Said, Edward W. Orientalism. London: Penguin, 2003. Shaheen, Jack G. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. New York: Olive Branch Press, 2001. Shapiro, Michael J. Cinematic Geopolitics. London: Routledge, Sharp, Joanne P. Geographies of Post-colonialism. London: SAGE, 2009. Smith, Emily. Rupert Friend Handbook - Everything You Need to Know about Rupert Friend. Emereo Publishing, 2013. Stam, R., and L. Spence. "Colonialism, Racism and Representation." Screen 24, no. 2 (1983): 2-20 Van Efferink, Leonhardt. "Jason Dittmer: Popular Geopolitics, Culture and Representations." Exploring Geopolitics. January 5, 2015. Accessed May 2, 2015. Weber, Cynthia. Imagining America at War: Morality, Politics and Film. London: Routledge, 2006. 29! !