There is a flood of American cartoon strips and animation
features in children's media, not only in Europe, Asia, South and North
America, but also in the Arab World. A general complaint has been voiced
in the Arab world of an American 'invasion' of Arab children's literature.
American cartoons, motifs, etc. are overwhelming the entertainment forms
of modern Arab children, especially children's comic books and television
programs. To give a representative example, Micky is one of the most
'popular' characters in children's comic books in Egypt. It is nothing
but an Arab version of a figure belonging to a Walt Disney collection of
characters.
Not surprisingly, literate Arab children favor Disney
figures as stickers on their school-book covers, on walls, and window panes.
However, even illiterate Arab children (who statistically vary both in
absolute numbers and relative weight, from one Arab country to another)
do not seem to be spared this American substitution of their own rich oral
culture, as Arab television stations emit those Americanized cartoons seemingly
directed only at 'literate' Arab children. Only those among the so-called
illiterate Arab children who live in remote, rural areas 'deprived' of
TV, are spared this hegemonic cultural import (and the uniform orientation
it implies), and instead have recourse to their own oral legacy which constitutes
a mine of local folk stories and fairy tales.
However, paradoxically enough, the general trend in these
remote, 'disadvantaged’ areas is to 'look up' to the Arab cities and towns
which monopolize the modern media. It goes without saying that this poses
a threat to local Arab fairy tales. What dominates today increasingly in
the Arab countries is a rather unified, 'ready-made' and imported, Disney-like
fairy tale 'model.' The phenomenon often inaccurately referred to as 'religious
fundamentalism' that is currently spreading over most of the Arab world,
constitutes a reaction to these dominant imports that unleash interference
processes in the framework of socio-psychologically conflicting systems
of values and world views. Meanwhile, specific children's tales in each
of the traditionally productive agricultural and nomadic areas in the Arab
countries seem to recede in favor of the culture dominating in the Arab
cities. At the same time, the children's culture of these cities which
function as market centers is imported from world market centers,
especially from the U.S.A. This not only runs parallel to the increasing
integration of Arab societies and economies in the mechanisms of the world
market, but also leads to a consequential loss of literacy of Arab children!
Such a statement seems to be, prima facie, a paradox if not a puzzle, yet
one to be unraveled: How is it that formal 'literacy' which is supposed
to provide access to knowledge, turns out to be, in this case, symptomatic
of Arab children's 'illiteracy'? If we are to define the capacity
of 'reading' as an active process promoting the creative abilities of the
child in a critical learning process, the swift sequence of moving pictures
is all but favorable to the enhancement of this capacity for active intellectual
involvement. Instead, it impedes any critical (productive) learning process
and transforms children into passive consumers and thus victims of an ideology
represented in the dominant configurations, plots, and actions of these
animated motion pictures. They are not only weaned from the active enjoyment
of a children's literature their peers were confronted with in the past;
they are also enthralled by a filmic form which leaves them without any
chance for independent reflection.
Having felt the threat to their cultural identity that
arises as a consequence of these cartoons which are plainly overwhelming
a TV-watching public of Arab children and adolescents, a number of Arab
businessmen and statesmen decided to set up an Arab Society for Children's
Moving Pictures, with a fund of 10 million US dollars. The aim of
this society is to help create modern Arab children's cinema and TV cartoons
which would be consistent with Arab cultural values and legacies, instead
of heterocultural, alienating models. However, I do not see how this society
is going to achieve its aim of promoting cultural consistency in this specific
case without seeking to solve the problem of the reception of moving pictures
on the part of children.
As form and content are dialectically united, to simply
fill the modern, i.e. technologically advanced, media of children's
moving pictures with Arab 'cultural values' would be, to my mind, in vain.
The question which should be raised here is: how can the use of a still
relatively new, and overwhelming technology contribute to a real enhancement
of the indigenous (not: 'indigène') Arab socio-cultural life?(2)
In other words, how can these modern technologies be used to achieve this
specific, self-reliant, and rational cultural consistency, without falling
into the trap of surrendering to the all too often mystified new
media? And would the strategy suggested by the above-mentioned society
really avoid reproducing the mechanism of passive receptivity developed
by modern Arab children viewing Americanized moving pictures? Would it
help instead to promote their original, critical participation in the reception
process - which already exists in their oral cultural traditions? This
is the real challenge. If successfully treated, it would not only enhance
modern Arab children's culture but might also contribute to solving the
ultimate structural problem implied in the current use of this modern technology
adapted for the 'entertainment' of children the world over!
It is true that the encounter of a national culture with
other socio-cultures may well help to overcome many a one-sided attitude
or orientation in the indigenous system of values through the comparison
with attitudes and orientations prevailing in various different socio-cultures.
However, the domination by an alien cultural view over the world-view
of other cultures could well lead to the opposite effect, namely to a socio-psychological
interference, ambivalence, and conflict on the part of the receiving
side of the communication process. This would be especially the case in
children's literature, as children are much less discriminating with regard
to these socio-cultural interference processes, and therefore more vulnerable
than adults. The intercultural contact proves to be beneficial, though,
when based on a comparative, critical learning process. However, it can
be highly detrimental when it takes place on an overwhelmingly unconscious
or non-critical level. As the unconscious reception mechanism of identification
is inevitable with regard to imaginative literary configurations and actions
(which are related to social relations in a mediated form), the emerging
psycho-social conflict would be: with which attitude should the child identify?
With that of his indigenous, native socio-cultural system of values or
with the alien, overwhelming one? This psycho-sociological conflict, emerging
from said interference process, leads either to the refusal of the self
or to the refusal of alterity.(3) As an alternative
to both, I would like to cite the example of a rational comparison drawn
by the distinguished Arab Egyptian children's writer, Yacoub el-Sharouni.
He compared the literary treatment of the story of 'Alaa' el-Deen(Aladin)
and the Magic Lantern,' as undertaken by his predecessor, the leading Egyptian
Arab writer of children's stories Kamel-el-Kilani, with the Arabic 're-telling'
of the same story which was originally written by Mary Stewart, illustrated
by Robert Aston, and given its Arabic version by the Syrian children's
poet Solayman Issa.
El-Sharouni found that the latter treatment of the story
proved to be useful for the enhancement and emancipation of the world view
of Arab children. When he compared the Walt Disney version of the
Arabic adaptation of the story of Alaa el-Deen and the Magic Lamp with
the new version for Arab children by Kamel el-Kilani, the same positive
observation was made.(4)This comparison referred
specifically to the positive aspects in the parent-child relationship,
in the Walt Disney version of the story. It was Yacoub el-Sharouni himself
who was inspired by the ecological awareness as represented in the story
of the German children's writer Gerhard Fabian, Der fliehende Baum.(5)
El Sharouni wrote his analogy to Fabian's story for Arab children. Instead
of an oak tree he took the River Nile. The new title of the story was:
Al-Rihla al-'Agiba Li 'Arus el-Nil (The Wonderful Journey of the Nile's
bride).(6) This enjoyable book production
which took place in cooperation with the 'Egyptian National Center for
Children's Culture' and the German Goethe Institute in Cairo was distributed
to Egyptian school libraries.
Such intercultural learning and exchange of experiences,
solutions, inventions, and ideas runs counter to the one-dimensional, irrational
hegemony of one socio-cultural model over the other. The latter is especially
obvious in the case of such American children cartoons as Tom and Jerry
or Tarzan, reproduced in Arab children's comics and broadcast by
Arab TV stations. As to the typical American science-fiction series, there
is a tendency to mystify the role of technology and thus help indoctrinate
an ideology of 'instrumental reason,' which has been, as such, thoroughly
criticized by Horkheimer and Habermas.(7) This
ideology is, at least indirectly, inherent in the actions of such cartoon
figures as Superman or the Power Rangers, regardless of the subjective
attitudes of the 'hero.' It is no wonder that Arab children's writers
have raised a warning voice in view of the fact that these science-fiction
cartoons are increasingly present in the Arab media.(8)
As Yacoub el-Sharouni rightly points out, animated American science fiction
features, based on the mystification of power and technology, hardly have
anything to do with Jule Verne's science fiction which inspired scientists
and researchers.(9) In most of these cartoon
series, the question of rational ethics as it poses itself in the field
of technological inventions, with regard to both human social relations
and the relationship of man to nature, has not been considered or reflected,
I'm afraid. (Such basic reflections are, to my mind, indispensible in the
making of literature in general and very specifically in children's literature.)
The criticism, therefore, that is leveled at the bulk
of US science fiction cartoons, is justified and requires an adequate response.
Similarly, American adventure cartoons, notably the Wild West and Tarzan
varities, which were amply criticized for their racially biased relationship
between the 'white man' and so-called savages (either 'Red Indians' or
Africans), should not only be boycotted in the Arab World, but banned worldwide.
The extermination of the 'Red Indians' (as Native Americans are frequently
referred to) in the Wild West cartoons has been 'translated' and thus perceived
by an Arab audience (the 'receivers') as being paralleled by the persecution
of the Palestinians, writes Y. el-Sharouni.(10)
One can imagine, therefore, the amount of psychological interference it
would provoke in Arab children. The same is valid as regards African
children when viewing Tarzan. The reflection of the contradiction between
the 'aesthetics' of play and action in a story, and its relation to inter-individual,
inter-ethnic, and inter-national relations has not been undertaken by greedy
publishers and media bosses, who only strive to maximize their profits
at the cost of rational social relations. Rational criticism would see
this contradiction rooted in the hegemony of the world-market over inter-individual,
inter-cultural, and inter-national relations. However, it can be maintained
that the majority of the direct producers in our world support peaceful
and rational social relations instead of gambling and persistent efforts
to dominate by all means, at the cost of others. Those who protested against
Apartheid are a representative example of all this. However, didn't the
elimination of Apartheid also help widen the range and deepen the mechanism
of a world market which - on its behalf, maybe in a more subtle way - again
reinforces the same irrational trend we are critical of?
The fact that the mechanisms of the world market are not
evenly spread over the globe provides an opportunity to marginal and marginalized
socio-cultural areas, often in one and the same nation, to subsist in their
'natural', pre-market social values and legacies (even though these may
have been transformed, or are in need of transformation, in terms
of new social needs). I am referring here to the political economy of folk
tales as a dialectical socio-cultural process. Folk literature mainly draws
on these self-contained, 'natural' social relations of subsistence economies
which are at the root of, and constitute, a mine of tales to be elaborated
and worked on in terms of the children's needs for 'entertainment' and
playful learning. The claims of some thematological folklore researchers,
such as Mircea Eliade (11) - whose approach
is very close to that of Northrop Frye, as well as that of E.R. Curtius,
equally based on C.G. Jung's archetypal theory of alleged 'constants'
in the 'deep level' of human culture - seem to me to contribute to
a leveling out rather than truly relating to, and linking, the various
socio-cultural inventions of humankind.(12)
This approach runs counter to one that would be accounting for the validity
of the specific socio-cultural context in which the oral folk-legacy is
received and re-interpreted.
It might be fitting to raise the following question in
a Federation of Modern Languages and Literatures, which has been raised
already by myself (13), as well as, independently,
by the Tunisian sociologist Abdelwahab Bouhdiba in his outstanding book,
L'Imaginaire Magrebin (Tunis 1992) in which he thouroughly studies
Tunisian folk tales for children: Apart from the fact that is provides
an interesting exercise for literary historians, what would be the use
of an approach based on presumed 'constants' (in the form of
'recurring' themes, motifs, etc.), in terms of understanding society? Let
me reformulate this question by saying: What is the use of an approach
which claims to be 'historical' - as long as it disregards (or considers
of merely marginal importance) the changes and transformations that occur
with regard to 'legacies' when they are ‘entering’ different social
relations and when their relation to nature varies, as well? In other
words: how can such an approach call itself 'historical' when it denies
'historicity' as a category of constant change? And how can this change
be understood without having recourse to the new societal relations
in which the legacy is received?
Even though the ten folk stories told to Tunisian children
by their mothers and aunts which have been collected and interpreted by
Abdelwahab Bouhdiba use the 'same' themes known in their specific cultural
heritage, the militant female mark left on them is distinct enough. This
specific mark gives the 'original' stories a new semantic dimension which
is understandable only by taking into consideration the struggles of their
female tellers against patriarchally dominated social relations in Tunisia
today.
A closer look at these stories demonstrates quite well
what is meant. As it is, the children's stories told by men are called
in Arabic Asatir. They used to be solemn and preaching, while those told
by women to their children are called Khurafat (legends).(14)
Contrary to the ones told by men, those told by women take the liberty
of having recourse to imagination. They used to deal with their relations
to their husbands and men in their society in a mediated (imaginative)
form. Most of the ten stories interpreted by Abdelwahab Boudhdiba are hostile
towards men. According to Boudhiba, the story of The Mighty Goat
for instance symbolizes a 'phallic mother and an uterine father.' Unravelling
the symbols of this story leads him to conclude that it is about 'the castration
of the father by the mother who uses her horns to break his.' The
reason why I prefer to quote Boudhiba in French, in the following
passages, is the fact that his use of a foreign language enables
him to distance himself from the ideological and social control mechanisms
he would be involved with, would he use his mother tongue. Boudhiba comments
on the ten folk tales of his country dealt with by him:
Dans nos contes, presque sans exception, aidée par la seule intuition,
par sa seule intelligence, la femme se tire toujours d'affaire. Elle remporte
sur l'homme des victoires renouvelées. Dans Sept vierges il es pour
le moins leger et imprudent, lache et cornard. Dans Conseils nous reçumes,
il est menteur, hypocrite, impuissant et en fin de compte foncierement
méchant et capable des pires guet-apens. Dans Demi-coq hormis le
cas de Demi-coq lui-même, l'élément male est jaloux,
cupide, envieux, méchant, tyrannique. Dans Si El Baggouri
il est inconscient, méchant, nigaud et niais. Dans Elles se sont
envolées, il es cupide, tyrannique, méchant. Dans Préposé
aux balancoires il est inconscient, inconstant, jaloux, sadique et bourreau
de soi-même. Dans Aicha que faisait donc ton père l'ogre?
il est inconscient, cruel, malpropre, dégoutant. (15)
Boudhiba elaborates on his analysis of the (implicitly)
critical socio-cultural and socio-political position of these children
stories:
Parfois, la satire tourne au persiflage et à la subversion. Nos
contes ne manquent pas de prendre parfois l'allure de la protestation sociale
ou politique. Ils sont en tout cas un art d'apprendre l'irrespect. La maitresse
d'école cupide et voleuse finit, a la joie de tous, par reçevoir
une bastonnade magistrale. Le Sultan et sa fille sont nargués, ridiculisés
jusqu'a l'obscenité. Ils sont dépouillés de leur dignité:
la princesse est teigneuse, le Sultan est deculotté! Les hommes
riches, les vieillards, les gros proprietaires et les riches commerçants
sont l'objet d'une satire féroce une petite 'borma se gausse' de
leurs personnes. Mais c'est le Cadhi, et avec lui tout le capital religieux
qu'il represente et charrie, qui reçoit en conformité d'ailleurs
avec une image populaire stereotypée, les coups les plus durs. Ce
magistrat suprême n'est qu'un goinfre vulgaire. Ce juge tout puissant
n'est qu'une specialiste de l'iniquité. Ce faquih savantissime n'est
qu'un pauvre perroquet qui reprend sans en approfondir le sens, la parole
d'Allah. Cet homme enfin qui se veut roublard est finalement la risée
d'un petit anier qui préfére s'installer en dehors du système
et mettre les rieurs de son côte.(16 )
In the face of these males, the women of the tales
have no other way out but to rely on compensatory strategies: some try
to find "the ideal man" and make good for time lost - while
others turn into the type of the "castrating woman" with a teeth-studded
vagina.
Reduplicating this bipolarity, the tales have two distinct
orientations. Boudhiba points out:
Il y aura des contes de rêve ou le thème repose et fait
rêver: le beau bâton joueur de Puits rends-moi ma figue, ou
encore le serpent qui souffle toute nuit sur une certaine fente qui se
retrouve à l'aube triomphant, regaillardi ayant recupére
son aspect d'origine et idyllique de jeune homme beau à faire pâlir
la nuit du destin. La compensation type reste la promesse de bonheur sans
fin precedée par tant de métamorphoses et tant de retrouvailles
avec soi, que symbolise la rencontre avec Sard Ben Ward.
Il est une autre orientation: lorsque le rêve idealisé
d'un bonheur sans fin s'avère hors de portée, s'y substitue
alors un rêve de lutte, de renversement, d'écrasement de l'autre,
de déstruction. Ce n'est plus un rêve de l'éros, mais
un rêve du thanatos. La femme rivalisera avec le mâle. Comme
la puissante chevrette, elle fourbira ses cornettes; comme la vieille de
Mêre Aigue, elle luttera, voyagera, et finalement fera périr
dans le zerdab un partenaire decidement impossible a maitriser. (17)
Even though the Tunisian folk stories for children reveal
feminist militancy, they are highly polysemic in their intrinsic structure.
As a sociologist, Bouhdiba remarkably refuses to reduce them to their content
or even to their social commitment. Regarding such approaches as
that of Vladimir Propp, who works out a kind of morphological 'grammar
of folk tales,' Bouhdiba rightly comments:
Il est tout a fait legitime de tenter une formalisation rigoureuse et
systematique des contes et de les traiter comme un ensemble de signes univoques.
Les progrès de la formalisation sont à çe prix: la
réduction du symbole equivoque au signe univoque.(18
)
In his final analysis of said Tunisian folk tales for
children, Bouhdiba underlines the necessity to acknowledge the contribution
of this humble folk culture as a mine of collective creativity:
Ils sont [the stories - M.Y.] jaillissement renouvelées et, à
chaque occasion, recreation collective. De ce point de vue dynamique nous
avons grand besoin de rehabiliter la culture populaire et l'humble vie
quotidienne.(19)
He further expounds on the reasons of this necessity,
especially with regard to an emancipatory integration of children and adults
alike, in spontaneous socio-cultural interaction:
Par le biais du conte, la communauté du conte et du conteur et,
par-delà celle du groupe entier, dévéloppe un
véritable sur-moi [note the Freudian terminology - M.Y.] dont l'influence
préside a l'évolution culturelle de la société
et du même coup à l'insertion de l'enfant et des adultes dans
les œuvres culturelles spontanées. [...] Nous plaidons donc pour
la specificité du conte et pour son 'autonomie' ce qui n'exclut
nullement qu'il y ait des reseaux complèxes et dialectiques qui
l'inserent dans son environnement propre.(20)
While referring to Maghrebinian folk tales for children,
Bouhdiba cites Roger Bastide: 'Le symbole prend dans le mythe un autre
sens que dans le rêve.'
And Bouhdiba comments:
Disons que dans le conte, et même dans chaque conte, il prend
encore un autre sens. C'est que la dialectique içi joue à
plein rendement: la forme du conté et les significations multiples
qu'elle peut revetir sont au carrefour d'un reseau inéxtricable
de relations multiples: conscient et inconscient, conteuse et conté,
partenaires du conte et société globale, passé, present
et futur, culture et sous-culture ... le conte pour l'enfant, tel qu'il
est pratiqué dans les milieux maghrebins, est en derniere analyse
un ensemble d'équilibres structurels en dévenir.(21)
Unlike the Egyptian children's writer Yacoub el-Sharouni,
whom we see making quite traditional claims by wanting Arab children's
stories to reinforce the established social values of respect towards parents,
the Tunisian sociologist Abdelwahab Bouhdiba hails the opposite trend in
the oral children's folk tales of his country. Irrespect and revolt vis
à vis patriarchal and despotic fathers and rulers are regarded by
him as emancipatory moments in the imaginative realm of the oppressed.(22)
Would it be now too far-fetched to maintain that feminist Tunisian tellers
of children's stories were among those who went into the streets in their
country a few years ago, to voice their protest against the rise of a religious
'fundamentalist' movement, which was making hegemonial patriarchal claims?
To pursue the critical discussion of the theoretical approach
of E.R. Curtius that I undertook in my paper presented at the FILLM conference
in Brazilia in 1993, I would like to elaborate on an alternative theoretical
proposition based on intercultural studies. It is true that themes, motifs,
ideas, generally-speaking, emerge through man confronting challenges. The
outcome which lasts longer than the moment of discovery of a solution for
a challenge goes into human history as an invention. In fact it can be
defined as a productive force. The fact that it would be taken over in
different situations, according to the principle of accumulation
of human experience, does not mean, though, a continuity of its original
identity. Every new situation bears in itself the possibility of transformation
of the inherited. New solutions added to the previous ones constitute real
new productive forces. Now, if we take into consideration that the selection
process, as such, is an expression of interest or disinterest in a given
proposition, we inevitably have to ask ourselves what is the dominating
factor in the selective reception? It is not the original challenging situation,
as it already passed away. The new situation might seem similar to it.
However, where should one start from: from the departed alien - or from
the new one? The comparison, in this regard, can be either enhancing or
detrimental to the productive force. It would be enhancing when it springs
from the discovery of the specific new aspects in the new situation, which
requires unprecedented solutions. This is the difficult, but rewarding
channel to real knowledge.
The other way round (where we proceed by reducing the
specific, new experiences to already 'experienced' ones) is much
easier. However, needless to say, it would be at the cost of any real enhancing
of the human productive force.(23) Now it
would be legitimate to ask the following: when I read this paper in front
of you, am I productive or a reproductive force? If I try to identify myself
with what I am presenting at this very moment, then I would be, without
doubt, merely reproductive. It is only when I question my thesis that I
eventually become productive. Now, what about this language I am using
at this moment? Am I not supposed to follow its rules if I am to communicate
with you? These rules are a societal invention, as they are also
a convention. They are in continuous change, even though we would not notice
this change but in relatively longer periods. We would notice them clearly
in the field of cultural connotations and different societal usage, e.g.
the use of cockney vs. Oxford English, or in the case of Portuguese in
Brazil vs. in Portugal, French in France vs. in Quebec, etc. This semantic
change language undergoes in time and space is the result of socio-cultural
'innovations' carried out by human productive forces. Now, which are the
decisive factors which lead to these innovations? They would depend on
the decisive interests of those involved in a micro/macro-social relation,
or in a socially mediated relationship to nature. The strategies of ideological
formations, including those of oral telling of children's stories, are
clearly dependent on the specific situation and position of the teller
in a given social relationship as mediated through his, her, or their consciousness.
Let us now move back from the Maghreb (literally: sunset),
as well as from our theoretical reflections, to the Mashreq (sunrise) of
the Arab World. The first major shift in modern times from the oral traditions
of Arab children's stories to a written literary form was undertaken in
1927 by the Arab Egyptian writer Kamel el-Kilani (deceased in 1959).
This was the beginning of a new genre in modern Arabic literature. However,
it was only in 1974 that the first, and still unique publishing house specializing
in children's literature was founded in Cairo. It was established by immigrant
Palestinians and bears the name: Al-Fata al-Arabi (The Arab Chap). The
one-hundred-and-seventy children's books and related works published by
Al-Fata al-Arabi, until it moved to Palestine (Ghaza strip) in 1995, range
from art posters for children up two two years old, to children's
stories written for the various ages by distinguished Arab and international
authors. Among the authors of one of its major series entitled 'al-Ufuq-al-Gadid'
(The New Horizon), addressing children 7 to 12 years old, we find the following
titles: From Heart to Heart, by the starkly melodic, humanistic Egyptian
poet Fuad Haddad; The Moon Opera, by Jacques Prévert; The Breeze
of the Wing, by Paul Eluard; The Revolver, by Ngugi wa Thiongo from Kenia;
and The Small Oil Lamp, by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani (1936-72).
In another series entitled 'Al-Mustaqbal Li'l-Atfal (The Future Belongs
to the Children), designed for children between the ages of 6 and 9, thirty-nine
titles have been published. These stories were written especially for children
by major Arab writers of today, such as Zakaria Tamer of Syria, Hanan el-Sheikh
of Lebanon and Tawfik Zayyad as well as Mo'in Bissesso of Palestine.
Their illustrations were undertaken by prominent artists from five Arab
countries. Twelve of these books which appeared in English were translated
by Denys Johnson-Davies, the editor of Heinemann's Arab Authors Series
and one of the foremost English translators of modern Arabic literature.
The stories translated present a picture of the Modern Arab World, its
reality and its visions, as seen by its writers and read by its children.
Among its book titles available in English we find:
The Peacock with Beautiful Feathers, by Ayoub Mansour
(Syria), illustrated by El-Labbad (Egypt); A Bird in the Hand, by Hanan
El-Sheikh (Lebanon), with illustrations by Leila Shawa (Palestine); The
Homeless Little Nightingale, by Hassib Kayali (Palestine), illustrated
by Higazi (Egypt); The White Pigeon, by Zakaria Tamer (Syria), with illustrations
by Adli Rizkalla (Egypt), etc.
One of the original series published by this specialized
house and carried out by the Egyptian writer Sun'allah Ibrahim is entitled:
'Al-Hikayat al-'Ilmiya Lis Sighar (Scientific Stories for The Young). In
this series, the author presents scientific discoveries in story form with
appealling and adventurous elements. All protagonists of these stories
are either birds or animals challenged by nature.
In another series entitled Min Hikayat ash-Shu 'ub (Tales
of the World's Peoples), we find sixteen books for children between 7 and
10 years of age. Each of these books deals with the folk tales of a different
population, thus from Tunisia, Spain, China, Egypt, India, Italy, Ireland,
Japan, Palestine, etc. The ultimate message of this series is one of pointing
out to Arab children the varieties of the different cultures and world-views
worldwide. Not surprisingly, the first book published by this publishing
house in 1975 in many languages, ranging from Arabic to Swedish and Japanese,
was bearing the title Home. It symbolizes the tragic situation of the Palestinians
whose quest today for a home to stay is all but over.
It is a well-known fact that the adult's personality
is already set up at the age of 6-8. Many of the attitudes he/she
indirectly acquires and interiorises, are undoubtedly formed
at this early stage, by being exposed to certain systems of values.
It is therefore obvious that the system of values mediated through
modern, Americanized television cartoons with their imaginary humans and
animals not only constitutes a considerable impact on his/her future decisions
and options as an adult but also collides and interferes with the traditions
of Arab folk systems of values, thus possibly causing a social neurosis.
If we look at the Tunisian and Palestinian children's
stories referred to above, we find them geared towards a negation
of the patriarchal hegemony, and a fearless openess towards the experience
of ordinary people the world over - the Others, who are compared - in the
case of the Palestinians - to the Self, i.e. the situation of the compatriots
which are barred from having a home, like everybody else.
As to the American televised cartoons for children, like
Tarzan, Tom and Jerry, and Power Rangers - let alone American science fiction
series - which are flooding Arab media today, it cannot be overlooked that
they contribute to the alienation of Arab children and youth in a number
of ways. They do so, firstly, by tearing apart the link between production
and consumption which exists, as an organic unity in the narration
and reception of Arab folk tales for children. This unity manifests itself
in sofar as receivers (children as listeners, active 'consumers')
become themselves producers, telling such stories to their children
in turn. In contrast, the modern, televised fairy tale entering the living
rooms of Arab children today is a commercial product, which reflects not
so much the sheer needs of the recipients (that require an 'answer' in
the form of their interaction with the storytellers) but the need to market
the product, in order to cash in a net return. The production process is
industrialised and segmented, making the film the product of a highly complex
division of labor. The writer of the story, the scriptwriter, the designer-trained
personnel entrusted with the factory-like drawing of the cartoons, the
trick specialists, sound engineers, cutters and editors all are producing
merely part of the work, being separated by the next stage of the work
process and finally by the entire technological apparatus of cartoon
or animated film production from the recipient who is a vague and distant
customer they do not directly enter in contact with. In fact, even more
than the technological apparatus, it is the distribution apparatus that
decides, how, when, and for what purpose the product reaches its manifest
destination: the viewer or consumer, who is cherished exactly because of
his passive, gullible social role. There is, however, a second
aspect to the alienation these televised cartoons tend to produce: By referring
to an imaginary 'world' that reflects the socio-cultural 'model' presented
by American society, they help alienate Arab children and youth from the
concrete problems and challenges they are supposed to face in their respective
societies. By relying, largely, on a mystifying mechanism which is included
in the collective symbols of overpowering modernity, that is to say,
'American' technology and American 'heroes' - which become
synonyms of success, domination (often, by brutal means), the grabbing
of pleasure, enjoyment, unlimited consumption, etc. - , they trigger an
identificatory process in many young viewers, who are prone to identify
with the symbolized equivalent of the aggressively asserted, dominant socio-culture
instead of the culture under attack (which eventually becomes marginalized).
The viewers are thus tied metaphysically to what the late Brazilian anthropologist
Darcy Ribeiro (1922-96) once termed Cavalo do Santo (The Horse of the Saint)(24)
- referring to the dependency of a growing segment of the population in
Latin America and the rest of the so-called Third World, on a cultural
'model' presented by the U.S.
Indeed, the imaginative realm of many American motion
pictures made for children and youthful viewers, by reproducing the above-mentioned
mystification of power and technology, induces the recipients to
accept as positive their symbolic representations that are related to the
reigning American model. This does not only lead, on the part of the recipient,
to self-denial and forms, therefore, the basis for a 'successful reproduction
of a helpless, submissive attitude towards the hegemonial attempts of the
U.S.A., but also towards the mechanisms of the world market, as propagated
and reinforced by the World Bank, the IMF, and WTO. By their dissociation
of production and consumption (analysed further above), unlike the traditional
folk tales, these televised cartoons help mystify the market mechanisms,
as if these were all too 'natural' phenomena. As a matter of fact, they
bring about an ambivalent, if not an adverse attitude of Arab children
and adolescents towards their presently marginalized socio-cultures. At
times, this leads - among some factions of these Arab youngsters
- to the opposite extreme: a total refusal of the West, and an all too
romantic sticking to an ideal self-image derived from the past: a new ethno-centrism,
with which they react to modern Euro-Americano-centrism. Often they go
even so far as to boycott and even to try and impose on others in their
direct milieu (e.g. their families) a boycott of certain (or all) TV emissions
- to which they might have been too much exposed in their earlier childhood.
The youth who committed the horrible massacre against Western tourists
in 1996 at the Hatshepsout Mausoleum in Luxor (Upper Egypt) were but a
representative example of this extreme attitude all too often reared by
the brutality of so many Western children's cartoons discussed here.
While we are now at the beginning of the third millenium,
the logic of the world market, fully abstracting the production from its
producers and severing the consumption from the production process, doesn't
augur well either for the populations of the First World who have been
abruptly separated in modern times from those of the so-called Third World.
The myth of the superiority of the 'white man' that American cartoons are
teeming with, shall not spare the Western populations, I am afraid, from
the dreadful repercussions of the recent crash of Far Eastern stock exchange
markets. It seems to be a main vocation for the current millenium to demystify
the illusions which divide the ordinary people worldwide while so many
among them are being made victims of hatred, exclusion, and brutality,
as often represented in the overwhelmingly present American children's
cartoons around the globe.
Footnotes:
* The author is a professor of comparative literature
at Cairo University, Egypt.
(1) This paper was held as a plenary lecture on
the opening session of the XXth triennial congress of the Fédération
Internationale des Langues et Litteratures Modernes (FILLM), at Regensburg
University (Germany), August, 1996.
(2) Unlike the English term „indigenous“, the
French idiom „indogene“ is pejorative as it refers to the culture of the
so-called „aboriginals“.
(3) It goes without saying that this opposition
of Self and Alterity implies a certain abstraction from moulded cultures
of various social strata in a given society, which constitute an ethnic
or national general consensus called 'the Self.'
(4) Obviously, El-Sharouni's positive evaluation
of this specific aspect of the written and published Disney version doesn't
contradict the fact that the racist opening song of the cartoon based
on it and presented on TV had to be changed after Arab embassadors
in Western capitals protested against it. Needless to say, the different
contexts of reception play a major role in the critical assessment
of self and hetero-images.
(5) The Fleeing Tree.
(6) Cairo,1995,1997.
(7) Cf. Horkheimer, Max: Zur Kritik der instrumentellen
Vernunft. US edition:
Critique of instrumental reason, lectures and
essays since the end of World War 2, New York, 1974;
as well as: Habermas, Juergen: Technik und Wissenschaft
als Ideologie (Technology and Science as Ideology), Frankfurt, 1974.
(8) See: El-Sharouni, Youssef: Al-Qiyam at-Tarbawiya
fi Qisas al-Atfal (The paedagogical values in childrens stories), Cairo,
1990, p.5.
(9) Ibid, p.5.
(10) Ibid, p.12.
(11) Cf. his works: Aspects du mythe, Paris, 1963,
249p.; Traite d’histoire de
religions, Paris, 1964,393p.
(12) See: Jung, Carl Gustav (1875-1961): Die Archetype
und das kollektive Unbewusste.
US edition: The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious, Princeton University Press,1980. See also, Louis Massignon’s
application of Jung’s theory in his: Themes archetypiques et onrocritique
musulmanes, Eranos 12, 1945, p.241-5.
(13) See my book: at-Tadakhul al-Hadari wa’l-Istiqlal
al-fikri (Socio-Cultural Interference and Intellectual Independence), Cairo,
1993; Cf. Also my papers:Towards a Multi-Centric Literary Canon, in: Proceedings
of the XIXth Congress of the Federation Internationale des Langues et Litteratures
Modernes (FILLM), Brazilia, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 496-8; as well as its extention:
Towards a Real
Decentralisation of the Literary Canon: The Arab
Contribution, in: Horwath, Peter et al(eds.):Humanism and the Good Life,
Proceedings of the fifteenth Congress of the World Federation of Humanists,
New York, 1998, pp. 381-9; Il Myto della letteratura europea, in: I Quaderni
di Gaia, revista di letteratura comparata, Roma, 1997, vol.8, No 11.pp.69-76,
Le contact entre les litteratures europeennes et la litterature arabe
contemporaine: Une interfernce culturelle?, in: Evans, J.X.; Horwath,P.
(eds.): Adjoining Cultures as Reflected in Literature and Language, Proceedings
of the XVth Congress of the Federation Internationale des Langues et Litteratures
Modernes (FILLM), Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ 1983,131-2.
(14) See in this regard Abdelwahab Bouhdiba’s
elaboration on the Arabic use of both terms in his already mentioned book:
L’imaginaire Maghrebin, Tunis, pp.17-20.
(15) Ibid,p.152.
(16) Ibid, p.152-3.
(1&) Ibid, p.153.
(18) Ibid, p.144.
(19) Ibid, p. 147.
(20) Ibid, p. 147.
(22) Ibid, p. 152.
(23) My definition of the productive force in
this paper is based on the concept of production as the highest form of
consumption and vice versa, vs. the sterile dichotomy of production and
consumption as exemplified in the modern, commercialized culture.
(24) The term is derived by Darcy Ribeiro from
the socio-cultural dependency on old Yoruba rites claimed by West
African slaves working in the Brazilian plantation economy. These hard-pressed
people occasionally took refuge to their traditional believes when refusing
to obey certain commands of their masters. They did so by claiming they
were not free to do what they were ordered to do (by their masters) when
the 'Saint' rode them, taking the believer for a horse.
Ribeiro sarcastically transforms the meaning of this pretended dependency
(which camouflages resistance against oppression) by applying it to the
socio-cultural surrender of Brazilian elites to the presently dominant
American socio-culture.
|