IDLERS' LOGIC
Since September 11, 2001 I have been continuously collecting and using
stock images of social and political nature in my mixed media works; images
of riots, confrontations, masses in fury, images of combat, war, personal
pictures of “terrorists” and those of “simple”
people of North African and Middle Eastern features, features that would
alone be enough to make their owners suspects of terrorism and make them
enemies of modernity and of the free world.
The “label” of North African, Arab or Middle Eastern describes
me as well as other Arab-Middle Eastern artists, politicians, scientists,
lay-people and idlers scattered all over the world.
I wrote Idlers’ Logic between August and December 2002. The 24-minute
film, shortly followed by the 5-minute experimental video Obsessive Compulsive
Neurosis, depicts three idlers of North African / Middle Eastern features
locked up in a space. We discover throughout the scenes that, though idlers,
they are not without talent.
The lead character turns out to be a trained singer, another character
is obsessed by Hollywood action movies, and the third creates and plays
indigenous musical instruments (the aboriginal didgeridoo).
Through equivocal Arabic (Egyptian) songs, some of them created during
the politically effervescent years of the sixties of the twentieth century,
and through excerpts from slang phrases and stock images of tele-news
and commercial Egyptian films, the viewer gets a reflection of what flows
in the minds of our three protagonists; we are able to navigate in a process
of “socio-political revisionism” of the last four decades
of regional history, tackling along the way the three Oriental Taboos:
sex, politics and religion.
Selected infamous déjà vu scenes of kisses from commercial
movies of the post 1967 era*, _an era when mainstream Egyptian cinema
carried a trend of trash that led to a total state of film industry apocalypse
in the seventies _ are inserted within scenes to accentuate the idler’s
state of mind and its relation to the current global consumer goods culture.
Insert phrases on the screen like elly yetgawez ommi a’olloh ya
ammi: ”whoever marries my mother I call uncle” first appeared
in a stage performance of the same era of socio-political disappointments.
Currently such a phrase implies a continuous change in allies and flexibility
of ethics and values, for anyone can be an ally/uncle at any given moment.
El amaleya fel namleya wel kezaza fel bazzaza: “the operation is
in the kitchen cupboard and the bottle is in the baby’s bottle”,
a phrase used sometimes in slang humor to signify simple jargon, first
appeared in a black comedy of late sixties after the 1967 military setback/defeat.
The phrase was a cynical/sarcastic acid critique of the jargon of the
inexperienced political and military leadership of the time.
A similar jargon comes out today from leaders of Hegemony and superpowers
who frame smaller nations with labels like weapons of mass destruction
and threat to the free world, etc.
Several phrases of satire nature appear on the screen throughout the 24
minutes and help the viewer smile his way through the intense history
of four decades.
The Hollywood-obsessed character plays and handles handguns and pistols
throughout the film without uttering a single word. Through his North
African / Arab features and his toying with guns, he delivers a virtual
message that defies all labels: "I am Egyptian, I am African, I am
Middle Eastern, I am Arab, I like guns that I did not invent, I get all
my ideas and inspiration from your movies, and I do not care if you terrorist-label
me or not".
The scene of gun-toying solely creates the short film Obsessive Compulsive
Neurosis, where two protagonists, the singer and the Hollywood-obsessed,
exist and interact without words in a cadre or frame, repeated several
times just to create a suspense atmosphere of confusion and lack of confidence,
as if role-playing for a serious imaginary act to come. We get the evidence
that the whole scene is a big lie, an act, just like the notorious movie
wag the dog.
The didgeridoo player looks totally absorbed in his rhythm and percussions,
delivering another message of carelessness: "though I have Middle
East features, I do not follow your CNN or other satellite news bulletins,
so you cannot Wag-The-Dog me too".
The singer of the three takes the viewer through a chain of equivocative-double-meaning
songs that covers nudity, sexual preference, religious trash, sexism and
other taboos.
Khaled Hafez
Cairo
November 2003
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