Waiting for the camels!

Rasha Almaqaleh                                                                                                            

Like many people around the world, I enjoy watching American movies and series. I admire how the directors pay so much attention to the details and how they turn a fiction into something that feels almost real. However, whenever they shoot a scene ‘supposedly’ in an Arabic country or depict the Arabian culture in their films or series, their idea about the everyday life in the Arab World seems naive and unrealistic.  It is obvious that their references are not accurate or they are seriously outdated.

Let’s take the third episode of season 7 of ‘the mentalist’ as an example. For the record, I like Patrick Jane so much. He is quite a character and I was sad to see him in that episode looking like a fool!

In that episode, Jane and Lisbon go to Beirut to gather information about an international supplier of weapons and explosives; Jan Nemic, a Slovakian national who is trained by the “Russian mob” and the CIA thinks he is involved in an imminent terrorist operation against the U.S.A.

  It is important to mention that the filming locations of the episode are in the U.S. and the footage from Beirut was provided by a freelance photographer.

Anyway, when Jane and Lisbon arrive in Beirut, strange and irritating background music is played. That music is played in every scene in Beirut as a special effect which apparently aims to make the viewers get a ‘real’ feel of the Arabic ambiance. Even though I’m an Arab and I grew up with the Arabic music and my ears are very well tuned to it, that background music feels so weird to me. It is something I’m not familiar with, probably because it is ‘ancient’ and perhaps it is taken from the old ‘Arabian nights’.

I’m not really sure because I had never heard it before. One thing is for sure though: the Arabic music has significantly changed since then and that background music is kind of irrelevant.  It makes you think that a semi- naked female dancer is going to jump up at any moment to do some belly dancing.

In addition to the odd out-of-date music, here come the decorations of the hotel where Jane and Lisbon stick around during their stay in Beirut. The hotel is hypothetically located in downtown Beirut, yet the interior decoration seems as part of a Caliph's Palace back in the seventh century. The arabesques are excessively scattered all over the walls, there are old lanterns in the hotel’s lobby, and Eastern carpet runners are laid along all the stairs.

When Jane lies on the palatial bed, surrounded by all the arabesques, I felt like he is the Caliph, if only the Caliph wore a suit and used a Smartphone.

Moreover, when Jane and Lisbon arrive in their room, Erica serves tea in an old Arabic style in which the tea is poured from a traditional Arabian tea pot called Dallah, and served in small cups. I cannot imagine that modern hotels or households still use that classical style of serving tea anymore or at least very often. It is probably still used in Arabic desert tents by tribesmen. When I watched that scene, I felt like Jane, Lisbon and Erica are sitting in a Bedouin tent in the desert, not in a modern hotel downtown Beirut.

Another funny thing is when Lisbon asks Erica “do you speak Lebanese”? That question seems so weird to me because there is no such a thing in the Arab world as the Lebanese language. Although, we have a variety of dialects in the different Arabic countries, we never call them ‘languages’ and we never ask a question such as “do you speak Yemeni or Lebanese?” Instead, we refer to the different dialects by saying: “They speak Arabic with a Yemeni accent or a Lebanese accent’ and so on.

Furthermore, in that episode, one side of Beirut is showed and it is not the tourist side, of course. The scenes were mainly filmed in crowded dirty wet streets and poor neighborhoods. When you look down, you can see weeds on the grounds and when you look up, you find cables crossing over each other between old buildings. Even though, that side does exist in Beirut, the tourist side is huge and part of the real deal, too.  

Another unrealistic thing is the apartment where the Slovakian smuggler lives in. It is an old apartment filled with antiques! The sofa, the coffee table, the small desk and chairs are so old that it gives you the feeling of being in a museum, not in an apartment.

One of the things that I really enjoyed is the way they pronounce the word Manakeesh. It is so cute and funny. It was obvious that there was no Arabic consultant among the crew at all!

Another proof of the absence of Arabic guidance, the scene of the police catching the Slovakian criminal. It is normal at the beginning, but not until someone decides, all of a sudden and with no reason, to shout the Arabic words “ya habibi”! These words basically mean ‘my love’ and it is used in different contexts depending on the situation, but I can’t see that scene as one of them!

And to finalize the Arabic touch in that episode, the final scene on the rooftop has to be about celebrating ‘the end of Ramadan’ with fireworks. Cool thing, right? Yeah, why not?! But ironically, on of the first scenes in Beirut includes people eating and drinking during the daytime. There is also another scene for guys smoking on the street. So how could it be possibly Ramadan while locals are not fasting?!

Overall, when Americans film something about the Arab World, it seems that they desperately seek something extremely bizarre and hugely different to the modern life they are familiar with. I understand that and I appreciate their search for authenticity and originality and I admit that there are indeed huge cultural differences between East and West. But, thanks to globalization, I guess that Americans sometimes are looking for things that do not exist anymore. And if they want to shoot something about the everyday life of Arabs, they should at least avoid coming up with scenes that make viewers feel that a camel might jump up from the screen.