An impulse Christmas present bought for my husband has resulted in the latest Nash household obsession: Homeland. Rather than give a spoiler alert myself here, I beg you, don't tell me what happens! I've already discovered more than I wanted to know about the seasons I haven't watched yet by googling the series to find reviews. We didn't do much else other than watch 'Homeland' over the Christmas break.
I've been planning to blog about Homeland for a week or so but, to be honest, I didn't want to take time out from watching it to write about it. It's been favourably compared with '24' as a drama series tackling issues of terrorism but without the gung-ho attitude of Jack Bauer or constant recourse to torture in order to extract information from suspects. Predictably it deals with the threat of Islamist terrorism but with a subtlety which was pleasing to see; amazingly for American TV, it actually helps the viewer to feel some empathy with Al-Qaeda - or at least to see where they're coming from. Which was why I was pretty shocked by a scene toward the start of season three which seemed to me to show a crass attitude I thought the writers of Homeland were above displaying.
There has been a devastating attack on the CIA in which many CIA operatives have lost their lives. The agency has been decimated and Saul, the new director, has to pull in relatively young and inexperienced agents to help track down those responsible for the attack. A young woman arrives in the foyer and all eyes turn to her. Initially I couldn't work out why we were supposed to be surprised and then I realised - it's because she is olive skinned and wearing a headscarf. We're supposed to view her with suspicion. She starts working on her assignment and initially isn't doing too well, resulting in a telling-off from Saul (incidentally, one of the characters who usually displays most sensitivity and integrity). During his tirade he says, quietly but angrily, "and if you have to wear that thing on your head, if you really have to, that thing which is a f*** you to all the agents who died, you'd better start doing better". Maybe I'm hopelessly naive, and yes it's just TV, it's not real, but surely it's totally out of line to criticise a Muslim for wearing a headscarf after an Islamist terrorist attack.
This afternoon I was reading a report in the Independent about the aftermath of the horrific Charlie Hebdo attack. A reporter went to one of the Paris suburbs in which many young French-Algerians live, struggling to find work and hassled by police. One young man said this about the attackers:
"These guys are dangerous. And they're also fools. What do they think this will do for Muslims in France? What will it do for people like me when we already have a hard time getting work? What happened was disgusting. A lot of guys around here are angry about living here. We don't like the police: they give us a hard time. But it's another thing walking into an office and killing people just like that in the name of God. It's not my God or anyone else's around here."
I'm reminded of another excellent US drama - The West Wing. There's one episode made after 9/11 during which there's a security threat at the White House and everyone is in lockdown. Some of the White House staff are contained in the dining room with a group of students who were on a school visit. One of the staff decides to talk with the students to help them understand the issues around Islamist terrorism better. He writes on the whiteboard something along these lines:
? is to Christianity as Islamist terrorism is to Islam
He asks the students to fill in the blank. When they can't, he fills it in for them:
KKK is to Christianity as Islamist terrorism is to Islam
White hoods and burning crosses have nothing to do with the Jesus I know.
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