You don’t think that they could have done something at all? Really. Come on rack your brains. It should only take a couple of seconds.
Yeah, I totally agree. You can make interesting, dramatic stories, and take dramatic license when needed, but not resort to stereotypes. It takes some work, and some diversity in hiring and casting, but makes for better stories.
I don’t know Arabic, but it doesn’t seem like you would need to know much Arabic to be able to read that the graffiti says “Homeland is racist” and “Homeland is rubbish”. It seems pretty basic, that they don’t need Arabic scholars to be able to read it. I would have thought the director or some crew or cast member would know enough basic Arabic to see it and think “hey, I think this is about us.” I would think the set designers would at least have some Arabic 101 knowledge, since if they are putting sets together they would need to have some basic knowledge of what would be accurate or not. But it does say that they were rushed and frantic, so it is possible someone knows enough and noticed, but didn’t have a chance to fix it or say anything and hoped it wouldn’t matter.
No, I think they did do something: they hired Arabic speakers to make sure that the graffiti was accurate. The problem is not that they failed to hire Arabic speakers to make sure the graffiti was accurate, the problem is that the people they hired deliberately screwed them over.
But I think that’s the issue, why does no one else on set understand basic Arabic? Why was it only the people who were hired to do graffiti the only ones who understood it? People are going to question how accurate or true to life anything on the show is, if no one on the set understands Arabic. For a show sometimes taking place in the Middle East, and with Middle Eastern characters, and about issues between the Middle East and the US, knowledge of Arabic shouldn’t be some specialized knowledge that only one or two experts know. If you have some scenes on Bones or Elementary where you need some things written in Arabic, you can just bring in an expert for a few days, but for a show like Homeland, I would have thought it would be more intertwined in everything they do.
By an odd irony, it turns out the Arabic speakers they hired made absolutely sure the graffiti was accurate*, and yet screwed the producers over at the same time.
The truth is just *hard *sometimes.
*'cuz let’s face it, the show is pretty borderline racist. It’s like continual ethnic profiling. Sometimes the only truth is found in the spray paint on the walls.
Look, if the show is comfortable conflating Hezbollah with Al-Qaeda in S1, they’re not showing like they care too much. It’s basic, basic stuff.
The show has an agenda, what can i tell you …
Fwiw, The Guardian has this covered now in a slightly pithy but sometimes amusing piece:
Exactly.
The NY Times goes into more details on the objections to the show.
I have to agree this is a fictional drama meant to entertain. It can’t be held to an academic standard. They will get things wrong because its a creative work. These characters aren’t real people and the events are either entirely fictional or very loosely based on headlines. Drama requires a protagonist and antagonist. By definition they have to exaggerate the negative qualities of the antagonist. Make him or her a bad or misguided person.
I can’t comment further because I haven’t watched since season 1. I don’t know how balanced their portrayals are. Modern drama loves to show shades of gray. The protagonist has flaws too. The antagonist may have a few redeeming or even charming qualities. They try to show a more realistic view of life. Nobody is all good or all bad.
Og help me, upon first viewing the SDMB page I thought the thread title said Homeland gets punked by Starving Artist (the Doper).
I need to get more sleep.
But on the subject, yes, if you’re going to be prominently featuring use of a foreign language in your show, you need to hire a consultant who is beholden to you to make sure it means what you think it means.
Someone on the crew should have downloaded one of several apps that allow you to aim your phone camera at a sign and it provides a translated version.
Even if your are not the producers of the most xenophobic show on T.V, come on thats just stupid. Making fun of an unsuspecting someone a foreign language is a trope in itself.
I had a whole post where I was trying to figure out why you were contradicting yourself. Then I realized “thats just stupid” referred to what the producers were doing, and not to the post you were responding to.
What I want to know is how they have a show like that without anyone who actually speaks Arabic. Do they have the “bad guys” always speaking in English?
this was funny, I have found the articles (never have seen the show), but I suppose that it can by pointed out that the artists, who I think were egyptian origin, used in some places the Egyptian references and phrasing. So in some small way not accurate for a Syrian refugee camp slogan painting. Like using the british english for an american camp.