File this under unintended consequences: thanks to Lena Dunham, Syrian refugees, and their representation in Hollywood are all trending. When news broke that Dunham would be writing a film adaptation of a Syrian refugee’s story, reaction was swift. People expressed anger, annoyance, deep disappointment and even resignation.
Part of the ire stemmed from Dunham’s previous inability to represent complex characters of colour. But the focus on her is also sexist – young women get criticised more easily than men – and I’m not here for that. The real offender is her industry, one that has proved itself repeatedly to be remarkably tone deaf, self-congratulatory and lacking in self-awareness. After all, powerful Hollywood gatekeepers Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams (and their teams) were the ones that looked around and decided she was the best person for this job.
The Dunham incident sparked anger not only because of Hollywood’s long-time abuses against the peoples of the Middle East, but specifically because Syrian voices have been consistently diminished over the course of Syria’s catastrophe – by the Syrian regime, the likes of Islamic State, the global community, and now by Hollywood. That the film will adapt a book by an author who is also not Syrian has only compounded frustrations.
Hollywood is a central player in how Arabs exist in the American imagination. If aliens were to land on Earth and understand Arabs as explained by Hollywood, the main takeaways would be that Arabs are barbaric, irrationally violent (since Hollywood sanctions what it portrays as “rational” violence), and utterly foreign to the US.
There is no quicker way to learn this history than to watch Planet of the Arabs, by Arab American artist and filmmaker Jackie Salloum, a 10-minute montage of Hollywood clips of Arabs. Even today, it immediately takes me back to the 1980s when I, the American daughter of Syrian immigrants, came of age, and to the pain that the small and large screen caused me and countless others.(For those who have more time, see the seminal work by Jack Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.)
The notion that Arabs could only be foreign to the US was abetted by the complete invisibility of Arab Americans in American tales – whether spun in Hollywood, the news or history books – despite the fact that Arab immigrants first came to the US in numbers back in the late 1800s and have been Americans for generations. Where is our My Big Fat Greek Wedding, or The Joy Luck Club, or Big Night?
Hollywood and media portrayals of the diverse peoples of the Middle East have dehumanised and reduced hundreds of millions to a monolith. As geopolitics evolved, the enemy Arab easily morphed into a more vague enemy: the Muslim (a much larger group). This, in turn, gives Americans cover to not question US policies in the Middle East, as if the entire region was congenitally doomed to chaos and misery. Haven’t we learned what evils can happen when, in a democracy, the people stop paying attention?
Clearly, portrayals and storytelling, with their ability to engender empathy for others – something missing in our world today – are powerful. I appreciate Dunham, Abrams and Spielberg using their power to bring attention to Syrian stories. But why not enable Syrian storytellers? There are so many talented Syrian writers and filmmakers who have lived a version of these stories, or are at the very least more intimately acquainted with them and their context than the current team. It’s not that hard to find them. Soudade Kaadan’s feature film The Day I Lost My Shadow won big at the Venice film festival just weeks ago.
What is frustrating is that Hollywood has begun to recognise the value of having members of a community helm narratives about themselves – but only one community at a time. This has hopefully finally been understood about African Americans. Take Barry Jenkins’s incredibly profound Oscar history making Moonlight. Surely its resonance has something to do with the fact that Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney (the playwright whose semi-autobiographical play the film is adapted from) are black men from Florida telling the story of black boys and men from Florida. But beyond this payoff in terms of depth, authenticity and intimacy, there’s a real payday when people tell their own stories. See Black Panther.
Hollywood is slowly learning this with Asians. Compare the worldwide success of Crazy Rich Asians to a time when Hollywood cast Scarlett Johansson as an Asian woman in a movie no one remembers.
Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians were released this year. Is Hollywood’s memory so short and its best minds so unable to analogise?
Dunham should get this. Girls, which drew on Dunham’s own life experiences, was often lauded for its veracity. Why wouldn’t Syrians be just like her in this regard?
To be clear: ethnicity or gender or citizenship (or some other facet of identity) doesn’t automatically qualify or disqualify anyone from telling the story of a community they are or are not a part of. It takes work regardless. But someone already fluent in the language, customs, history, shared experiences and context of a place or a people can do this more readily. So, given the large financial investment in this film and the urgency to get it out, why not hire someone who could start today?
Similarly, why choose a base text that already raises questions about power, bias and independence? While the book is the story of a Syrian woman, it was written by Melissa Fleming, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ communications chief. The UNHCR is an important organisation, but its entire existence is based on the tragedy of refugees. Many refugees depend upon it for survival. We should critically interrogate its self-interest and this troubling power dynamic, and ask questions as to how such factors affected the story that was told (and what was left out). Besides, there’s no shortage of Syrian stories out there, being told by Syrians or by people with less problematic baggage.
In an era when people with bad intentions are killing, silencing and explicitly banning Syrians’ very presence, we need those of good intentions not to also exclude Syrians – in this case when it comes to telling their own stories.
Yes, all these projects are likely to be rooted in good intentions. But isn’t it clear by now that sometimes the best articulation of good intentions is to step aside and hand the microphone over to the very people who have been excluded from telling their own stories? Hold the mic, pay for the mic, make money from the mic – OK. But get off the damn mic.