The father is troubled: all those rainbows on notebooks could promote homosexuality among children. And he doesn’t like it at all: “If it depended only on me, I’d say that homosexuals deserve to be burned alive. Indeed, burning them isn’t enough: they should be completely erased from existence!” His daughter disagrees: “Dad, if you believed in human rights, you would think these people have their rights. They live quietly, it’s just their business.” The father at this point reluctantly recognizes that also gays are human beings. And later, when he meets two homosexual men, he “just” defines their condition as “disgusting, dirty and wrong,” but he gives up physical violence.
Surprisingly, it happens in one of those TV series made specifically for the month of Ramadan, sacred to Muslims, when millions of families gather in front of TV to follow the latest episodes of sumptuous productions. Even more surprisingly, the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) produced and broadcast the series “Exit 7”: this giant broadcasting company is formally private, but actually it’s in the hands of the Saudi royal family: in 2017 the prince Mohammad bin Salman, who had long wanted to buy MBC, solved the problem by arresting its managers and taking over 60% of the property.
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The illusionist prince
When there are such important interests and characters, however, there are a little bit of surprises. Of course, many religious fundamentalists on the web wrote they were outraged by this “opening” (but can we really use this term?) during Ramadan, someone even spoke of blasphemy, but you just need to know a little what’s going on in Saudi Arabia ruled by Mohammad bin Salman to make the circle square. The prince has long been trying to sell a modern and progressive image of his country intending to strengthen his unstable absolute power, to prevent any popular uprising, to mask his bloodthirsty methods and his ruinous wars, to attract investments from abroad.
So he opens cinema and auditoriums (but religious police continue to do as they please), gives driving licenses to women (but feminist activists are rotting in prison), welcomes tourists in sexy poses (but you end up in jail for a picture in shorts on Instagram). Recently, Saudi Arabia also abolished the flogging penalty and cancelled the death penalty for minors (but only in some cases). So, for many “gay-friendly” companies it will be a point of honour to advertise on a channel that broke the taboo of homosexuality (the main US brands buy over 50% of MBC’s advertising space) – and we don’t want to ruin their party remembering that the company’s owner condemns homosexual people to death…
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Against the Palestinians
The TV series is completely conceived to favour the interests of Mohammad bin Salman, as another recurring theme demonstrates: the relationship with Israel. Saudi Arabia and Israel are officially still enemies, but in reality, the Saudi Prince and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have long been forging a powerful bond, based on the common hatred for Iran and the common love of money. And so “Exit 7” repeatedly calls for normalizing the relations with Israel and recognising the status quo.
In the Arab world there were very strong controversies, also because the characters of the series affirm historical falsities (“Palestinians sold their land to Israel”) and pronounce long ferociously anti-Palestinian tirades: “We entered wars for the sake of Palestine, we cut oil for Palestine and the day it became an authority, we paid its salaries even though we have more right over this money. Yet they take every opportunity to attack Saudi Arabia.” The desire for peace in the Middle East is wonderful, but in the hands of a bloodthirsty prince and a far-right prime minister, it sounds as sincere as an opening to homosexuality in a Saudi TV series.
Pier Cesare Notaro
©2020 Il Grande Colibrì
images: elaborations from md Ashik (CC0) / from kremlin.ru (CC BY 4.0)
