Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

Assuming of course that they knew for certain that they would get away with it and no one would notice it before it hit the airwaves.

It's a risky proposition and not guaranteed to work most of the time.

ROMANES EUNT DOMUS

... and there's the hack. It's us.

If you ever needed proof of the adage that capitalism will co-opt even the most accurate and stinging criticism of it, here it is.

The show was criticized as being racist and so the show appropriated that message (by hiring the "street artists" and instructing them to "go rogue") in order to sell more of the show.

> The producers also admire the hack.

The producers know that if they publicly complained they would be torn apart on social media and in the press.

An older example of the same kind of thing could be Melrose Place [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melrose_Place#GALA_Committee

So it's most definitely a part of the joke. Thanks! :).

Probably autokilled because of spam filter false positive. Fixed now, though.

Yes, they breached trust, but it was not courageous, because there is basically zero chance of any kind of negative consequence for the individual, and any possible negative consequence would be extremely minimal.

My point about the courageousness of doing something like that under a despotic regime was not to say that is the only way to be courageous - my main point was that, if your bacon isn't on the line, it probably isn't courageous. For an example within the american system, even though I don't quite agree with all his choices, what Snowden did was courageous, because he had to literally flee the country for what he did.

I'm sure someone on the set can read Arabic (extras for example) but I'm sure not all staff are walked through every set and exposed to all the art.

France is not a race. That would be xenophobia, which is a different brand of bigotry.

Not speaking Arabic is a grey area -- not all Muslims are Arabic, despite the fact that the Quran is written in Arabic and only canonical in that language. There are millions and millions of Muslims who do not speak Arabic, and rely on their clergy to teach them the Quran.

While it's apparently not the case here, the absence of an arabic-speaking component on the production team does not necessarily preclude a Muslim component on a production team.

"exclusively trading in stereotypes and Western orientialist imagery and tropes"

To be fair, they could also be simply trading on whatever happens to be in the news. If you open a newspaper / watch the news, most of what you will see about the region can be summed up by 'crazy islamists killing people, threaten America with annihilation'.

For an example of how the fake TV world can be used to justify real world beliefs: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/06/20/justice-scalia-hearts-ja...

> The Globe and Mail reported that Scalia came to the defense of Jack Bauer and his torture tactics during an Ottawa conference of international jurists and national security officials last week. During a panel discussion about terrorism, torture and the law, a Canadian judge remarked, “Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra ‘What would Jack Bauer do?’ ”

> Justice Scalia responded with a defense of Agent Bauer, arguing that law enforcement officials deserve latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles . . . . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia reportedly said. “Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” He then posed a series of questions to his fellow judges: “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer?”

> “I don’t think so,” Scalia reportedly answered himself. “So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes.”

>many people, seeing only stereotypes, come to believe them.

Seems like the local education system has failed if people can't think critically or rationally. Blaming the arts is wrong and only treats the symptom. Do you believe that all information needs to be carefully controlled so that people don't get the wrong ideas? If so, what are you doing on an open/liberal/libertarian forum like HN then? Anyone can post anything here, pretty much. Seems to me that you're going your own advice by being present here.

Might we also criticize the portrayal of Jews in Palestinian kids cartoons? I am not certain there are many Muslims complaining about those portrayals.

Some of the Arab/Iranian/Pakistani characters are critical members of the portrayed CIA team.

Oh, so that explains it. IMHO the first season was really great, one of the most subversive shows aired on TV in the last 15 years. I know the word "subversive" gets thrown a lot in many discussions lately, but the first season certainly deserved it (warning: spoilers for season 1 following), I mean, we've got an American war hero praying to Allah, getting elected as a congressman while conspiring to kill the Vice-President and only at the last second deciding not to do it, and not because he believed in America or western values, whatever that means, but because of his kids. Plus the entire higher echelons of the CIA getting bombed off to pieces at the end, you don't see that in many shows/movies.

Yes, because Western media conglomerates should operate using the same tactics that media companies in the Islamosphere use. /s

Other countries' media's lack of nuance is no excuse for Western media's lack of nuance.

1) That was completely non-sequitur. I didn't say Christians are primarily responsible for discriminating against Muslims.

2) The people persecuting Christians in (some of) the Middle East aren't the same people facing persecution here. It's unfair to assume they're guilty of bigotry just because someone else who shares their religion is. Should we assume all Catholics molest children because some do? Are all Protestants members of the Klan?

3) I'm from the US, and I'm not bigoted toward Muslims or Christians (nor do I belong to either group). I'm neither pot nor kettle, so your nonsensical comment means even less to me.

Not really. You're considered a Jew by other Jews if at least one of your parents is Jewish (your mother in most sects, your father in a few other sects). That's very tribalistic. So, what's the common communal identifier of Jews? Jewish culture, and interwoven with that, Judaism. You can't separate the religious from the cultural component of that communal identity, and you can't separate Jewish culture from Jewish people.

This also shows in how Israel regulates its immigration: both people with ethnically Jewish roots (at least one of your grandparents) and people of Jewish belief where ethnic roots hadn't been established at that time (biggest example: Ethiopian Jews) are accepted and granted citizenship.

Conversion of people to Judaism are relatively rare, and are really a more recent phenomenon. Jews don't proselytize and often discourage conversion. Samaritans, the "sister" religion of Judaism (both derive from the Israelites from before the destruction of the first temple), are similar but even more extreme in that. How more tribalistic than that can you get?

Granted, there are many types of anti-Islamic thought, everything from actually studying the tenets of the religion and arguing against it from different angles, all of the way to having ignorant, inaccurate cultural stereotypes- Islamophobia. My conflating of racism with anti-Islam is with the latter. Because people in the West are usually less familiar with Islam, it's not difficult for people to assume Muslims are "those brown people over there in the Middle East", not unlike how a medieval European might have the social construct of a "Saracen." The point is, when a show depicts Islam in an inaccurate way that lumps a bunch of different peoples and cultures together as one Middle Eastern hodgepodge, it can be considered false to life, and thus, "racist."

Anti-Christianity doesn't work the same way in the West, because people here are generally less ignorant of that religion, and less likely to lump in all white people together as Christians. Maybe it's different in the East (though probably not the Middle East, where there are substantial Christian populations), and there they lump in all Christians as "those white people in America and Europe." In which case they would also be having a racist assumption.

I agree that's a bad definition.

However, one aspect that makes a difference is many Americans' picture of a Muslim is someone with vaguely brown skin. The people who engage in anti-Muslim hate crimes sometimes end up attacking Sikhs, non-Muslim Indians, even Coptic-Christians. https://www.splcenter.org/news/2011/03/29/anti-muslim-incide...

In a case where a culture conceptualized all and only White people as Christians and stereotyped or attacked them, I would see no problem calling that racism.

"Evangelicals and fundamentalists" are usually referring to non-existent discrimination, like not being allowed to use the state to discriminate. Ask a few Pakistani or Egyptian Christians, or Kurds. You'll notice that Christianity (like all other religions) usually follows ethnic lines in any particular place.

According to popular use. A lot of words, especially in the political or controversial sphere, end up having folk definitions that are open to interpretation. Witness how meaningless labels like "conservative" or "liberal" become when you try to dissect them.

No, I didn't convince myself I don't, and didn't even insinuate such a thing. Your inferences are interesting in that light.

My agenda is to understand and promote objective truth. The agenda of those who level charges of racism or sexism or other isms is generally to drive the debate down predetermined emotional channels as a shortcut to an actual discussion.

There was nothing normalizing about their depiction. Most of the aftermath is showing a father's response to his dead young child. If anything it reinforces how horrific drone strikes on civilians are.

I think being wary of normalization is justified, but there should also be room for a realistic representation of the banality of evil. The people doing drone strikes are eating cake and going to their kids' soccer game and helping their neighbors after blowing up people. Pretending this isn't true would also be stereotyping.

And yet you made your argument with a false equivalence. The street in Lebanon (Hamra Street) that was depicted as a hotbed of terrorist activity is a cosmopolitan, liberal road.

In case you can't see the issue: the series treats all Arabs and Muslims as dangerous terrorists willing to kill any "infidel" at the drop of a hat. And yet that is because of extremists, which exist everywhere - like, for example, Terry Jones.

It's false to say that EVERY Muslim will kill someone who criticises their religion.