Abdel Hakim, a strapping young Saudi, kissed Kawthar, a raven-haired Tunisian beauty, and all hell broke loose. The kiss happened during the first few minutes of the Middle Eastern version of "Big Brother," the latest entry in the phenomenon of importing the Western concept of reality television to the Arab world. In conservative Bahrain, the Persian Gulf island where the show was filmed, a social kiss on the cheek between a young man and a young woman meeting for the first time suggested rampant moral depravity. They might as well have had sex.
| Ummm... It's not quite the same. Take it from me... |
Parliament members called the show an assault on traditional values, and last Friday a few prayer leaders led 1,000 protestors chanting "No to indecency!" through the capital. The ruckus had the desired affect. On Monday, after a run of less than two weeks, the show was taken off the air by MBC, which is owned by Walid al-Ibrahim, a brother-in-law of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. The audience outcry started in December with two shows from Beirut, "Star Academy" and "Al Hawa Sawa," or "On Air Together." "On Air Together" put eight women in an apartment for three months, winnowing the group down to one via viewers’ votes. The last one married one of more than 6,000 grooms who sent in videotaped proposals. The show attempted to bow to Muslim sensibilities by having the bride’s mother attend the actual proposal. "Star Academy" features 16 young Arab men and women in a sort of talent contest, singing, dancing and performing music and skits, as well as cooking, eating and sleeping. (Their quarters are sexually segregated, but there have been co-ed pillow fights involving skimpily clad women.) Fundamentalist types view the shows as Sodom and Gomorrah live. One Saudi columnist described "Star Academy" as a "whorehouse."
Neither of the first two shows generated quite the horror of "Big Brother," in part because they were broadcast from Lebanon, which much of the Arab world considers depraved anyway. Lebanon’s satellite networks already have a reputation for showing female employees on air with minimal wardrobes.
The idea of such liberal, unrelated men and women sharing a house was bad enough, but nothing quite raised hackles like the kiss between the first man and first woman to arrive. "Everybody talked about that kiss," said Mansour al-Jamri, editor of Al Wasat newspaper. |