There's the video clip showing Haifa, the sultry Lebanese shimmying in the rain in a clingy red dress. And the clip featuring Roubi, the Egyptian singer belly-dancing in a public square. And scantily dressed dancers aplenty without whom no male singing act seems complete. The blitz of dewy looks, pouting lips and suggestive dance on Arab satellite TV stations is outraging some critics. One has dubbed the new crop of performers ``weapons of singing destruction.'' Another says some women are so offended that they are praying to Allah to smite the seductresses.
| "Gawd, they look so fine, and I'm so dumpy! Please kill them all!" |
In the largely conservative Arab world, where many women go veiled and cloaked in public and government censors determine the length of an on-screen kiss, the video clips seem out of place. So why are they permitted to air?
Competition, answers Abdo Wazen, a Lebanese art critic at the newspaper Al Hayat.
| "If we don't show 'em, somebody else will, and the rubes'll watch them..." |
But others see even bigger forces in play.
| Dark conspiracies, perhaps? Insidious plots? |
``It's an attempt to divert the attention of youths away from the political and financial frustrations at home,'' offers Ali Abu-Shadi, an Egyptian who was a government censor.
| "Mahmoud! Pay attention to your political and financial frustrations and stop gawking at those titties!" |
``It's the price Saudis have to pay for opening up to the world,'' says Abdel Azim al-Awwad, a Saudi sociologist. ``Censorship has become impossible. We cannot handpick what to show.''
| "Before these videos came along, I didn't even know women had bosoms! And now we have to pick and choose which ones to show? I don't think so..." |
``It's part of an American policy to strip Arab cultures of their values,'' says Hussein Abdel-Qader of the Egyptian newspaper Akhbar Al-Yom.
| Ahah! I knew it! Our insidious plot is working! Prepare for Phase 2: THIGHS! |
What does he think of the singers? ``They're driving men crazy!'' he exclaimed.
| "I've... got... to... go... shoot... off... my gun!" |
Abdel-Qader said women in Egypt go to the shrine of Zeinab, the Prophet Muhammad's granddaughter, ``to pray that Allah take Haifa, Roubi and Nancy.''
| "O, Allah! Please make them fat and dumpy like me! And moustaches! Give them moustaches bigger than mine!" |
Nadira Omran, a prominent Jordanian actress, said the clips are ``very cheap and vulgar.'' ``They have turned a woman's body and its superior qualities into a commodity,'' said Omran, who bans her children from watching them.
| "Shuddup, y'little brats! Watch your jihad videos instead!" |
Dalal el-Bizri, a Lebanese sociologist living in Cairo, blames male-dominated societies for making women cover up. ``When the condition of women on the street is unnatural, the demand for vulgarity and nudity increases,'' she said. ``That's what viewers want and television stations have to cater for that demand.''
| Couldn't possibly be that men like looking at bosoms and thighs and comely bottoms, and that women who have them often don't mind being looked at — and sometimes flaunting them? |
Nancy — full name Nancy Ajram — is best-known for a clip that shows her swaying her hips and shaking her shoulders while serving customers at an all-male cafe. In an interview with The Associated Press, she denied it contains any sexual innuendoes. ``My clip is bold, but it doesn't go beyond feminine appeal. I don't sing with my body,'' she said.
| "I think of myself as just a little glimpse of Paradise..." |
The clips air on several satellite stations, mostly based in Beirut or Cairo, where society tends to take a more liberal view of these things. But they reach all over the Arabic-speaking world.
| That's the kicker, isn't it? |
One broadcaster is Rotana Television, a music channel inaugurated last month in Beirut. It belongs to a production company owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, famous in the United States for having his $10 million donation to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks rebuffed by Rudolph Giuliani, then New York's mayor.
Michel Murr, who heads the Beirut operation, was not available to talk about the impact the videos are having on viewers. But at another network, Cairo-based Dream TV, general manager Osama al-Sheik told AP: ``We don't broadcast any video clip unless we are sure it is morally acceptable.'' He said the station has an in-house ``censorship department'' of station employees that has banned some foreign and Arab videos, and the Roubi and Haifa clips almost didn't make it onto the air.
| "But that's what the paying customers are buying..." |
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