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By Jamil Khader
Everyone loves Mo, Netflix’s tragi-comic sequence created by Mo(hammed) Amer and Ramy Yousef. Palestinian commentators adore it for placing Palestine again on the heart of mainstream American widespread tradition. Mo not solely defies the taboos on uttering the P-word (Palestine), but it surely additionally alludes to the Zionist settler-colonial occupation of Palestine and its ethnic cleaning challenge that culminated within the 1948 Nakba.
Within the atmospherics of anti-Palestinian racism that’s sweeping the Western world and the Ongoing Nakba in Palestine, the mere existence of Palestinians, even the two-state answer, is now thought of an expression of their anti-Semitism.
Furthermore, liberal pundits discover Mo enchanting, as a result of the asylee protagonist’s struggles with a damaged asylum system, unemployment, or unemployability, dependancy, medical insurance, crime, and so on., converse to the experiences of various American communities. It thus conveys a common message about precarity and statelessness and displays a way of solidarity between completely different underrepresented communities.
On their half, leftist analysts fawn over Mo, as a result of it subverts mainstream Western Islamophobic representations of the Arab terrorist and Muslim fanatic. Within the context of the rise of authoritarian capitalism, and what pundits name fascism or semi-fascism that’s sweeping the USA, Mo humanizes the Palestinian and Muslim Different, making it doable for viewers to sympathize and establish with the characters. Certainly, Mo Najjar, Mo Amer’s alter-ego, is a relatable character, as a result of his expertise is grounded in his childhood trauma and guilt on the demise of his father and his overwhelming feeling of castration and lack that makes him fail to supply for his household.
By combating anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, Mo may be related to the custom of egalitarian comedy. Whereas ideological comedy works to maintain and justify the social order, egalitarian comedy criticizes the dominant social order and utters the unsayable and impermissible throughout the consensual parameters of public discourse.
Nevertheless, the sequence packages its presumably radical message in an completely politically right liberal discourse, in a method that cancels out the egalitarian energy of laughter and comedy. A real egalitarian comedy, as students of comedy present, reveals that our frequent notions of social actuality and identification are neither coherent nor complete, however are hire aside by deeper antagonisms and contradictions that can not be simply resolved.
Though Mo Amer creates the character Mo Najjar as an alter-ego that enables him to make enjoyable of himself and his naiveté, Mo doesn’t go all the way in which in actualizing this egalitarian message. The sequence betrays this message in its tackle Palestinian cultural identification, Islam, and the Palestinian wrestle for freedom.
Olive Oil within the “Salad Bowl”
Opposite to egalitarian comedy, Mo essentializes cultural identification and locks itself within the jail of identification politics that grounds completely different modes of being, the way in which Palestinians or Muslims enact their identities, in coherent notions of wholeness, roots and cultural traditions. Clearly, this unequivocal assertion of Palestinian identification may very well be a perform of the Najjar’s sense of loss and experiences of dislocation.
Some commentators discovered this celebration of Palestinian and Muslim identification refreshing. They level out that the sequence options “an unapologetically Palestinian character,” somebody who “unashamedly embraces his roots.” Certainly, Mo prefers to explain himself as a “salad bowl,” although his co-creator Rami Yousef opts for the extra antiquated trope of the “melting pot” to confer with his associate. Mo seamlessly crosses borders of languages and cultures, has a black Nigerian buddy, and is courting the Mexican Maria.
Throughout the neoliberal “salad bowl” ideology of the present, Palestinian particularity is elevated by means of the three conventional F’s of multicultural America: meals, materials, and festivities. Hummus and olive oil perform as the most important symbols of Palestinian identification within the mosaic of American multiculturalism. Mo carries a bottle of Palestinian olive oil with him all over the place. Within the first scene in his relative’s hookah lounge, Mo makes use of olive oil to make his hummus extra genuine. It’s “in his blood,” as he says.
Olive oil is used not just for its culinary superiority but additionally for its medicinal and ritualistic qualities. It even takes on one other stage of existential that means: It turns into an emblem that anchors and stitches his private narrative.
Furthermore, the sequence makes use of the conventions of incongruity to take satisfaction in Palestinian heritage and explicit identification. When the shop gross sales affiliate tries to supply him chocolate hummus, Mo retorts that she has simply offended his grandmother. Then, to the amazement of the shop worker, he whips out his olive oil bottle and drizzles olive oil on the hummus. As well as, Mo is continuously seen together with his kaffiyeh over his shoulders and there’s additionally an Arab marriage ceremony.
Therefore, Mo is structured as a motion from exclusion and statelessness to integration into the privileges of citizenship and the American multicultural panorama. As Mo Amer stated in a single interview in regards to the refugees and asylum-seekers, “All an individual like that wishes is to really feel like he belongs, and really feel like they’re seen, and really feel like they’re equal to their different human counterparts.” On this sense, the sequence makes use of the conventions of comedian reduction to show the issues with American myths about exceptionalism, democracy, and equality however to not dismantle them.
As such, the asylee’s extreme presence is in the end neutralized and included into mainstream tradition. No marvel, in the direction of the finale of the sequence, olive oil, the long-lasting image of Palestinian identification, turns into one other commodity for circulation within the world capitalist market. The mom decides to begin her personal olive oil enterprise and Mo decides to assist her, by making a cope with the olive farm proprietor to arrange an olive oil refinery for his mom. The irony of all of it is that Palestinians are reclaiming this iconic image of Palestinian identification in Texas as refugees “selecting olives with immigrants.”
Nevertheless, the sequence presents Palestinian identification as Muslim to the exclusion of Palestinian Christians from the official narrative of Palestinian identification. Extra importantly, there are missed alternatives in Mo that would have turned this tackle identification politics into a real egalitarian discourse that acknowledges the void and divisions inside our identities. For instance, Mo is normally mistaken for a Mexican by Mexican and Black gangs. There’s a second right here for him to acknowledge the void on the core of identification and the impossibility of essentializing any identification in any singular form or kind. However, Mo insists on falling again on his identification, reproducing and reaffirming it.
“Mohammed Walks right into a Church”: The Limits of Muslim Laughter
Mo additionally subverts egalitarian comedy, by essentializing Islamic identification and refraining from criticizing the Islamic religion. For the present’s co-creators, Islam as a faith has a transparent identification. They talk about what they name the “fundamental Muslim package deal” in very essentialist phrases, together with the “oud, prayer beads, and possibly a touring [prayer] rug” as if these objects outline the essence of who or what a Muslim is.
Like different Muslim comedians, Mo attracts on the conventions of incongruity in comedy to (lovingly) mock the on a regular basis practices and paradiastolic hypocrisy of Muslims. For instance, the mom justifies utilizing a tequila bottle to package deal her olive oil below the pretense that she cleansed it in a method that removes the haram and turns it into halal. It turns their vice right into a advantage and thus refuses to sentence them for these practices.
Furthermore, when Mo and his siblings pray at their father’s grave, they appear completely clueless about what they’re saying—the sister asks God to offer her lifeless father well being and vigor (a’afiya in Arabic). Unnecessary to say, Mo’s pre-marital sexual relationship with Maria contradicts the tenets of Islam. These instances of incongruity present that the youthful generations of diasporic Muslims have no idea a lot about their faith, however it’s all the identical.
Extra problematically, nevertheless, Mo makes use of the conventions of superiority in comedy to query the tenets of Christianity and persuade Maria to put on the hijab. Whereas Mo shies away from criticizing Islam as a faith, it questions Christian beliefs and dismisses them. These methods indicate that Islam is a extra superior faith than Christianity. Within the confession scene, for instance, Mo is prepared to dismiss the absurdity of Christian beliefs, however he’s not prepared in that scene or anyplace else within the sequence, to query his personal religion. Therefore, the “Jesus was Palestinian” assertion, and the direct hyperlink Mo Najjar (Arabic for carpenter) establishes with Jesus, doesn’t make the scene humorous.
It’s adequate to check the ideological work of comedy within the confession scene with the notorious confession scene in Seinfeld. Regardless of Jerry Seinfeld’s Zionist commitments and his participation in an anti-terrorist fantasy camp in an unlawful settlement within the West Financial institution years later, Seinfeld mocks Christian hypocrisy however reveals divisions in Judaic beliefs themselves. Within the confession scene, Jerry complains to the priest that the dentist Tim Whatley transformed to Judaism for the jokes. In response to the priest’s query of whether or not this offends him as a Jewish particular person, Jerry responds that it offends him as a comic.
These thwarted expectations render the scene hilarious. Seinfeld mocks Christian hypocritical practices, whereas displaying divisions in Judaic beliefs. Certainly, the sequence makes these contradictions central to Jewish life in the USA. For instance, within the bar mitzvah scene, Mr. Lippman’s son Adam, believing he’s a person, French kisses Elaine. When Elaine meets the boy after the ceremony and tries to elucidate how inappropriate his habits was, the boy is outraged by the daddy’s lie that he was already a person and renounces his Judaism.
Unnecessary to say, Seinfeld unsettles liberal sensibilities, by toying with varied Nazi motifs, together with impersonating White supremacist Nazi leaders. Seinfeld even mocks Schindler’s Record in addition to the extreme abuse of anti-Semitism in some Jewish circles, the way in which his uncle Leo does when he attributes any inconvenience in his life to anti-Semitic hatred.
The issues with Mo’s confession scene however, it’s ironic that this confession permits Mo to work by means of and open up about his repressed traumatic childhood and his guilt over his father’s demise. At that second, he reaches the epiphany that his makes an attempt to supply for his household failed all alongside—that his household had seen by means of his masculine sham from the start.
Moreover, Mo’s try to persuade Maria to put on the hijab is framed throughout the conventions of superiority. He retains making an attempt to steer her to put on the hijab, as a result of “nuns put on the hijab and they aren’t fundamental.” He additionally retains mendacity to his mom that Maria is about to transform to Islam anytime quickly. Therefore, the mom is displeased about their relationship and complains to his pearl-clutching aunts that Mo is courting a Christian. Mockingly, Mo’s sister Nadia is married to a White Canadian man and she or he doesn’t put on a hijab both. Mo merely witnesses to Maria, in a method that reveals that religion stays a stumbling block in his “salad bowl” ideology.
Briefly, Mo is embedded in liberal taboos about Muslims and Islam in a method that displays liberal patronizing attitudes in the direction of Muslims. For Netflix, Islam and Muslims can’t be criticized, since they’re perceived to be below assault, making them past criticism, although the Islamicate world is filled with debates about religion, revelation, and the prophet.
It’s as if Netflix, in an try to atone for the barrage of criticism it obtained for airing the Spanish sequence Elite, determined to air the polar excessive illustration of Islam and Muslims.
Branding Palestine within the Age of International Empire
Lastly, the sequence undermines its egalitarian message, by lowering political antagonisms to mere pleasant banter and branding points. From the start, the sequence represents Palestinian-Jewish relationships within the US as an amicable banter between associates. In his shisha lounge, Mo’s uncle performs backgammon together with his Zionist Jewish buddy and so they passionately argue in regards to the Palestinian wrestle for freedom. When Mo reveals up, he tries to close the controversy down, calling them Arafat and Rabin. Furthermore, the Zionist Jewish buddy is taken into account a part of the household as he participates of their household celebrations.
Apparently sufficient, some Palestinian and Jewish commenters had combined emotions about this lounge scene and accused Mo of spreading propaganda, Zionist and Palestinian, respectively. Palestinian commentators lambasted it for serving as a instrument for Zionist propaganda, whereas the latter disliked it for referring to Palestine as an alternative of Israel and for claiming that hummus is a Palestinian dish. Though the Jewish pundits didn’t applicable hummus and declare it an Israeli dish, they steered that hummus has Egyptian origins. Nonetheless, these Jewish commentators nonetheless expressed their appreciation for the way in which the sequence handles the so-called “Israeli-Palestinian battle.”
These critics miss or downplay poignant political commentary on this scene, which may very well be interpreted as a sarcastic assertion on the failed post-Oslo peace negotiations. There’s a number of shouting and screaming happening, however little to no outcomes. Basically, moreover, the sequence doesn’t confer with the “battle,” however slightly makes a number of allusions to the Nakba, the Zionist destruction of Palestinian houses, and the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. At one level, Mo even refers back to the Intifada, by evaluating an arcade recreation to “throwing rocks, [which] Palestinians ought to be the most effective at . . ..”
Nonetheless, the conflation of Jews with Zionists within the sequence is unsettling. Not all Jews or Israeli Jews are Zionists and lots of Jews world wide are anti-Zionists who’re vital of Israel’s apartheid politics and the Zionist settler-colonial challenge. Furthermore, Zionism just isn’t “the one doable option to be correctly Jewish,” the way in which Islam just isn’t the one doable method for Palestinians to actualize their subjectivity. To recommend as a lot “satirically grounds Zionism in an antisemitic premise.” Actually, Israel has additionally detained and deported Jewish activists who’re vital of Israel and launched a vicious assault in opposition to Jewish Holocaust survivor and philanthropist George Soros for supporting leftist group vital of Israeli insurance policies.
Furthermore, the “salad bowl” ideology of the present’s co-creators turns deeper antagonisms right into a mere resolvable battle between associates. Everybody pertains to the opposite on the human stage. They see themselves mirrored in one another—of their meals, pastime, and festivities, making it unimaginable for them to acknowledge any atrocities dedicated within the title of the Zionist settler-colonial challenge in Palestine. Therefore, Mo can simply exchange his Palestinian lawyer with a Jewish immigration lawyer, although, because the present implies, Palestinians ought to stick collectively in opposition to all odds.
This would possibly clarify Mo’s tepid response to those that greet him with “Shalom” and confer with Israel, after they know that he’s Palestinian. For him, it turns into a “branding subject.” The present acknowledges that Israel controls the narrative, propaganda instruments, and advertising and marketing methods that body the Palestinian wrestle for freedom in mainstream and widespread tradition. However, it nonetheless codes this wrestle within the language of enterprise and commerce.
The present co-creators are positively not naïve about the way in which the leisure business works and its means to reabsorb probably the most radical messages into its capitalist circuits of trade. Nonetheless, the connection between the uncle and his Zionist Jewish buddy might have been represented in new imaginative ways in which audiences might have associated to in a different way. As an alternative of participating in juvenile “finger-banging” gestures, as Mo likes to do, the chums might have re-told racist jokes in non-racist, obscene methods not about one another, however every about himself and his personal tradition. This might have created an area for respect for and shared solidarity between these characters and the audiences.
Mo not solely gives a tepid response to the Palestinian wrestle for freedom, but it surely additionally obscures the position of the U.S. empire and the worldwide capitalist system in destabilizing the Center East. As a refugee and asylee narrative, the sequence satirically erases the totality of the state of affairs that has engendered the human tragedy through which Mo’s story unfolds.
In the direction of the top of the sequence, when Mo makes an attempt to smuggle himself from Mexico again into the U.S., a transparent hyperlink is made between the Mexico-U.S. border wall and the annexation and separation apartheid wall that Israel constructed on Palestinian territory. If something, these apartheid partitions are symptomatic of the growing polarization of wealth within the world apartheid regime, through which the haves stay in segregated gated communities away from the haves-not.
Whereas some commenters on social media didn’t discover the present humorous, the present has its humorous moments, however the moments of egalitarian comedy in it are far and in between. Mo doesn’t current any second for the viewers to cringe on the materials, confront their very own implicit assumptions and prejudices, and query whether or not they need to snicker on the joke. If there’s one other season of Mo, it ought to definitely purpose at making audiences assume twice earlier than laughing.
– Professor Jamil Khader is Den of Analysis at Bethlehem College, Professor of English, and Editor at The Bethlehem College Journal. He contributed this text to The Palestine Chronicle.
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