Negotiating Democracy: Media Transformations in Emerging Democracies

9. Reality Television, Politics,and Democratization in the Arab World

INTRODUCTION THE MOST POPULAR and controversial television programs in the Arab world are “reality” shows such as Super Star and Star Academy, broadcast by satellite to viewers from Morocco to Iraq. These shows claim to be live, nonscripted and therefore “real” and rely on audience participation in the form of voting for favorite contestants. In the wake of controversy triggered by Super Star and Star Academy, some observers have hailed reality television as a harbinger of democracy in the Arab world. This chapter explores the complex ways in which Arab reality television can be described as political and poses questions about the role of reality programs in the democratization of the panArab public sphere. Based on fieldwork, textual analysis, and interviews with television producers and market researchers, this chapter concludes with preliminary observations on the political implications of Arab reality television. Reality television1 entered Arab public discourse in the last five years at a time of significant turmoil in the region: escalating violence in Iraq, contested elections in Egypt, the struggle for women’s political rights in Kuwait, political assassinations in Lebanon, and the protracted Arab-Israeli conflict.This geopolitical crisis environment that currently frames Arab politics and Arab-Western relations is the backdrop to the controversy surrounding the social and political 179 NINE Reality Television, Politics, and Democratization in the Arab World MARWAN M. KRAIDY impact of Arab reality television, which takes religious, cultural, or moral manifestations . This chapter explores the connections between Arab reality television and the political, economic, and sociocultural forces that animate contemporary Arab public discourse. It offers observations on how public contention about reality television articulates these forces to issues such as inter-Arab relations , democratization, and political participation. The chapter concludes with questions, to be addressed in future research, about the ways in which public contention around reality television overlaps and spills into Arab political life. Specifically, this chapter offers preliminary analysis of public discourse surrounding three reality television programs, Superstar, Al Ra’is, and Star Academy, used as comparative case studies to map the dynamics of contention in the pan-Arab public sphere. The analysis is based on seven months of fieldwork in Beirut and Dubai in 2004 and 2005, including more than 100 interviews with people involved in the production, promotion, evaluation, and research on the audience of Arab reality television programs, in addition to textual analysis of around 50 hours of the programs themselves.2 This initial research indicates that reactions to Arab reality television fall in two broad camps. On the one hand, there is a large group of young people and adults who follow reality television programs, some of them more or less regular viewers, others avid fans, making some reality television shows the most popular programs in Arab television history. On the other hand, there is a relatively small but vocal minority of religious leaders and political activists who have condemned reality television because in their judgment it violates Islamic principles of social interaction and/or facilitates cultural globalization characterized by Western values of individualism, consumerism, and sexual promiscuity. This chapter recognizes that opinions on reality television in the Arab region are more diverse than the two broad categories mentioned above, including those who dismiss reality television on the grounds that it is contrived dramatically, mediocre artistically, or simply not very interesting. To that end it seeks to distinguish competing political, religious, and economic discourses that are compelled into public debate on the impact of reality television on Arab societies. This chapter is drawn from a working book manuscript ,3 and therefore it is best construed as offering a set of preliminary observations rather that definite interpretation. These observations will focus on the overlaps between popular culture and politics in the context of the public controversy surrounding reality television, within the framework of the relationship between the broad categories of “politics” and “entertainment.” POLITICS AND ENTERTAINMENT Long treated as two distinct and separate spheres, the realms of politics and entertainment have become increasingly related in mass mediated societies MARWAN M. KRAIDY 180 where they both rely on celebrity and public recognition. The overlap is probably most pronounced in the United States since 1992 when presidential candidate William Jefferson Clinton played his saxophone on MTV, and this issue took surreal dimensions nearly a decade later when World Wrestling Federation ex-star Jesse “The Body” Ventura won the governorship of Minnesota as a third-party candidate against two...