Fear and Perving: the portrayal of women in Lebanese Pop Culture
Tonight I discovered Myriam Klink: a Lebanese pop singer who wishes she was a porn star. Her biography states: “Myriam Klink is a Lebanese girl from the mountains raised between animals and natures.”
In Lebanon, Myriam is well know for her song “Antar” a song sung and performed in the same playful but explosively sexual vein as Marylin Monroe’s “I wanna be loved by you.” And it is written for a cat. The chorus goes:
“Antar my lovely cat
Antar, my luckiest cat
Antar, super strong,
For Antar I sing this song.
Antar I love you …. Antar I need you"
Is Antar really a cat? A “super strong” and “lucky” cat? Loved and ravenously wanted by a woman who provokes that desire from her audiences?
By channeling all her energies towards a cat, Myriam switches from outrageously kinky – or Klinky- to childish and innocent. The viewer is also absolved in watching Myriam because all she wants in the end is her “super strong” and “lucky” cat.
Haifa Wehbe’s video for “Bous al Wawa,” another embarrassing Lebanese song, is similar: Haifa, a sex symbol and pop sensation, is presented in this video as the ideal mother and house wife. Her behavior is highly eroticized but I don’t think the song is a philosophical account on the oedipal relations in post-industrial capitalist societies. Like Klink’s cat, it is a superficial framework, which places these explicitly sexual and pornographic portrayals of women, in socially acceptable – even socially desirable contexts.
Only it’s not fooling anyone. The wet dream for an immaculate conception, a raunchy Madonna is all too clear, and so is the extent of its repression.
Of course this taste for candid nymphomania is not particular to Lebanon, and can be found almost everywhere. Britney Spears dressed as a school girl in “Baby One More Time” is one example. In Lebanese pop culture it operates differently. The oscillation from ho-bag to virgin, from sex kitten to just a normal kitten reflects an identity conflict that can be seen in two recent portrayals of Beirut and Lebanon.
The first is Richard Quest’s broadcast for CNN about Lebanese nightlife, which was revived and rebutted recently by Beirut Beats. Quest presented Beirut’s widespread “hedonism” as a product of the “turbulence of the past” and the ongoing instability that leads to its seize the day mentality. He went through Beirut bars beach resorts to show this. For Quest, the explosive music from rooftop bars and bomb explosions on the streets are one and the same.
The second is the mini-series Mamnou3, mockumentary about the censorship bureau in Lebanon. A petty bureau chief picks on references to sex at the expense of culture itself: in the first episode, he rejects a performance of Sartre’s La Putain Respectueuse, on the basis of its title. The documentary reflects all the contradictions of Lebanese civil life: a friend on Facebook today pointed to the arrest in Beirut of two men for kissing in a car, whilst the recent kidnapping of 20 people by militants went unpunished.
Both gesture towards conflicting realities: Hedonism and Censorship. On the one hand, Beirut is the epicurean capital of the Middle East, criticized for its debauchery by neighbouring arab countries (even in Sweden someone described it as: “good food, good sex”). Despite this, it is also a country afflicted by quieter, but nonetheless visible modes of moral and cultural control. These two forces, Hedonism and Censorship, interact in Klink and Wehbe’s videos.
They are also play in an altogether different genre: Nadine Labaki’s film Caramel. Caramel is very different to “Antar”: the former is made for indie film crowds and Lebanese hipsters, and is-French funded. They may both be Lebanese, but the culture that produced them varies.
In Caramel Layale is a young woman who works at the local hairdresser. She is having an affair with a married man, and arranges to meet him in a seedy backstreet hotel. The room and bathroom are filthy. What does Layale do? She hoovers, polishes and scrubs the room and the scene is set to music. Here, on a much more subtle level than “Antar” Hedonism and Censorship are at work. Layale –young and unmarried – is engaged in a relationship which, though it may be common, is also scandalous. She is redeemed by her excellent housekeeping skills, a real sit-el-beit.
I love Caramel, but I want to show how even with different audiences and sponsors, Censorship and Hedonism -Fear and Perving - fuel the Lebanese portrayal of women.
Female sexuality can make a show of itself, but only if it is perceived to be directed at a non-sexual object: a kitten or a baby– however conspicuous and transparent the ruse.
In Lebanon, Myriam is well know for her song “Antar” a song sung and performed in the same playful but explosively sexual vein as Marylin Monroe’s “I wanna be loved by you.” And it is written for a cat. The chorus goes:
“Antar my lovely cat
Antar, my luckiest cat
Antar, super strong,
For Antar I sing this song.
Antar I love you …. Antar I need you"
Is Antar really a cat? A “super strong” and “lucky” cat? Loved and ravenously wanted by a woman who provokes that desire from her audiences?
By channeling all her energies towards a cat, Myriam switches from outrageously kinky – or Klinky- to childish and innocent. The viewer is also absolved in watching Myriam because all she wants in the end is her “super strong” and “lucky” cat.
Haifa Wehbe’s video for “Bous al Wawa,” another embarrassing Lebanese song, is similar: Haifa, a sex symbol and pop sensation, is presented in this video as the ideal mother and house wife. Her behavior is highly eroticized but I don’t think the song is a philosophical account on the oedipal relations in post-industrial capitalist societies. Like Klink’s cat, it is a superficial framework, which places these explicitly sexual and pornographic portrayals of women, in socially acceptable – even socially desirable contexts.
Only it’s not fooling anyone. The wet dream for an immaculate conception, a raunchy Madonna is all too clear, and so is the extent of its repression.
Of course this taste for candid nymphomania is not particular to Lebanon, and can be found almost everywhere. Britney Spears dressed as a school girl in “Baby One More Time” is one example. In Lebanese pop culture it operates differently. The oscillation from ho-bag to virgin, from sex kitten to just a normal kitten reflects an identity conflict that can be seen in two recent portrayals of Beirut and Lebanon.
The first is Richard Quest’s broadcast for CNN about Lebanese nightlife, which was revived and rebutted recently by Beirut Beats. Quest presented Beirut’s widespread “hedonism” as a product of the “turbulence of the past” and the ongoing instability that leads to its seize the day mentality. He went through Beirut bars beach resorts to show this. For Quest, the explosive music from rooftop bars and bomb explosions on the streets are one and the same.
The second is the mini-series Mamnou3, mockumentary about the censorship bureau in Lebanon. A petty bureau chief picks on references to sex at the expense of culture itself: in the first episode, he rejects a performance of Sartre’s La Putain Respectueuse, on the basis of its title. The documentary reflects all the contradictions of Lebanese civil life: a friend on Facebook today pointed to the arrest in Beirut of two men for kissing in a car, whilst the recent kidnapping of 20 people by militants went unpunished.
Both gesture towards conflicting realities: Hedonism and Censorship. On the one hand, Beirut is the epicurean capital of the Middle East, criticized for its debauchery by neighbouring arab countries (even in Sweden someone described it as: “good food, good sex”). Despite this, it is also a country afflicted by quieter, but nonetheless visible modes of moral and cultural control. These two forces, Hedonism and Censorship, interact in Klink and Wehbe’s videos.
They are also play in an altogether different genre: Nadine Labaki’s film Caramel. Caramel is very different to “Antar”: the former is made for indie film crowds and Lebanese hipsters, and is-French funded. They may both be Lebanese, but the culture that produced them varies.
In Caramel Layale is a young woman who works at the local hairdresser. She is having an affair with a married man, and arranges to meet him in a seedy backstreet hotel. The room and bathroom are filthy. What does Layale do? She hoovers, polishes and scrubs the room and the scene is set to music. Here, on a much more subtle level than “Antar” Hedonism and Censorship are at work. Layale –young and unmarried – is engaged in a relationship which, though it may be common, is also scandalous. She is redeemed by her excellent housekeeping skills, a real sit-el-beit.
I love Caramel, but I want to show how even with different audiences and sponsors, Censorship and Hedonism -Fear and Perving - fuel the Lebanese portrayal of women.
Female sexuality can make a show of itself, but only if it is perceived to be directed at a non-sexual object: a kitten or a baby– however conspicuous and transparent the ruse.
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