Arab Media & Society

Watch the skit on YouTube

Shafiqa was certainly not the kind of television host Lebanese viewers would expect to see interviewing a major political figure.  Dressed as a woman and with a silly, effeminate voice a la Mickey Mouse, he was anything but the image of a serious TV presenter. So it would be all the more startling for Lebanese audiences to witness this newscaster host the most controversial political leader of them all: Hizbullah head Hassan Nasrallah. But this is what they were apparently witnessing as they switched to Lebanese satellite channel LBC on 1 June 2006. Shafiqa welcomes the viewers to the show and remarks that some people might be surprised to see Hassan Nasrallah beside him, to which Nasrallah retorts: “Why would people say that? Has anyone said that we [Hizbullah] eat people?” “Well,” says Shafiqa, “every time Your Honor appears in the media, you say, ‘we will chop off their hands, break their necks and grind their stomachs.’” “That’s tactics, Shafiqa, part of the balance of terror,” Nasrallah explains with a wave of his hand. “Do people think that we will open a butcher shop and sell ground meat and hamburgers?” Nasrallah wraps up the interview declaring that Hizbullah will not lay down its weapons after liberating the Shebaa Farms,[1] but will instead move on to its next target: the occupied territories of Abu Hassan, a Lebanese in Detroit, whose Jewish American neighbor has invaded his garden.[2]  

The five minutes long interview was of course a joke.  But as the most controversial offering from popular Lebanese comedy show Bass Mat Watan (BMW), the sketch was to have repercussions that prove comedy is about more than just making viewers laugh. Having said that, the sketch might have been overlooked had it not been for the context of heightened political tension in Lebanon in which it was aired. Many Lebanese I have talked to agree that it was nothing more or less than the usual fare of BMW’s trademark political satire. Others found the lacuna between real-life Nasrallah and the silliness of his claims in the sketch extremely hilarious. Clearly going to lengths to subvert Hizbullah’s discourse, the sketch could be taken as  insensitive by those who share Hizbullah’s political views. Though the charge of insensitivity is a common refrain in the highly charged atmosphere of Lebanese politics, many argue some measure of offense is in the nature of political satire if it is to have any impact at all.

 Nasrallah’s supporters begged to differ. They were outraged that LBC, a station widely seen as “Christian” in Lebanon,[3] was making fun of their leader and took particular offence at the joke about Abu Hassan in Detroit. Many Lebanese Shiites live in Detroit and the reference smacked of sectarian stereotyping. Moreover, the prod about the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1559 that calls for Hizbullah to disarm made the group’s supporters see red. Hours after the show had been aired scores of young men took to the streets in Beirut’s southern suburbs, blocking the road to Beirut International Airport and burning tires. The protests continued through the night and at one point threatened to spread to downtown Beirut. The following day Sharbil Khalil, the producer of BMW, made a public apology and stated that he respected Nasrallah and did not mean to offend. The real Hassan Nasrallah intervened to calm his cohorts and break up the riots.

The event set off a flurry of counter-accusations, with many alleging that Hizbullah orchestrated the violence as a show of force. Among the critics was Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, who claimed that the riots were meant to intimidate Lebanon’s Christian community.[4] Nasrallah denied the charges, saying the protests were spontaneous and exaggerated by anti-Syrian politicians.[5] Although the violence did not escalate beyond street riots, the affair left a widespread sense of despair over the widening gap in understanding among Lebanon’s sects in the ongoing crisis triggered by the death of Rafiq Al Hariri in 2005. About a month after the sketch was aired, Hizbullah would be involved in fighting a devastating onslaught from Israel. Tensions would remain high in the aftermath of the war and Gemayel would be assassinated later that November.

Beyond being a colorful incident in the political saga of post-Syria Lebanon, the BMW affair makes an interesting example of how and when political satire transgress accepted norms in the public realm.[6]  Often ignored as mere play or entertainment, comedy is, I argue, fertile ground for sociological analysis. This is because a sociological enquiry into comedy and humor allows for a unique insight into the red lines between sanctioned speech and that which is deemed unacceptable in a national culture.[7] In this short article I investigate the social functions of humor in Lebanon, and argue that the BMW affair illustrates fundamental changes to public discourse and sensitivities in the period after 2005.

Social functions of humor

Humor serves a variety of social functions. It can be a safety valve for pent-up frustrations and emotions, and in particular for things that cannot otherwise be stated publicly. As Sharbil Khalil has said about BMW, “our satire has become an outlet. By tuning in, Lebanese compensate for their sense of powerlessness, and the fact that they are not masters of their own destinies.”[8] In this view, humor touches on the commonalities of the national imagination. In Lebanon’s case, this imagination is rich with widely held complaints ripe for contentious critique: the corruption of political leaders who thrive on sectarianism as a political and socio-economic system of control and patronage; the disunity of Lebanon’s diverse population; and the weakness of the Lebanese state, easily penetrable by more powerful neighbors. Just like the Pierrot figure that adorns the logo of BMW, the characters on the show often do not know whether to cry or to laugh. This is reflected in the show’s name, a double entendre, which can either be read as “but a nation died” (bass mat watan) or, “smiles of a nation” (basmat watan), depending on the pronunciation. The underlying premise is that Lebanon is a mess, but hey, you’ve got to laugh about it.  

However, pent-up frustrations can also be directed humorously against particular social groups and taboos surrounding them. As I have argued elsewhere, much of the hilarity and carnival-like atmosphere in the demonstrations in downtown Beirut between February and April, 2005 – known in Lebanon as the “Independence Intifada” – can be explained as bottled up frustrations, accumulated during thirty years of Syrian rule over Lebanon, which were finally given free rein in public space and speech.[9] By employing Syrian stereotypes in the context of demonstrations and agitation, subversion was automatically politicized. The politicization of humor and stereotypes in the tense atmosphere of post-Syria Lebanon offers one explanation why the Nasrallah skit triggered such violent protests.

But this type of humor also has potential to backfire. While it is a relief to some, others may read it as a claim to superiority, a laugh on a certain social group or the less culturally or economically powerful. In a Lebanese context, this sort of humor is often framed in terms of sectarian identity and culture. Crude stereotyping of social groups normally takes place well outside the public realm. Particularly, the jokes Lebanese tell about other sects can be virulent, mean, and sometimes racist. The BMW sketch did contain sectarian references, like the typical Shiite name Abu Hassan, which in the context of the sketch implied that Hizbullah is not the “national liberation party” it claims to be, but a sectarian group like any other in Lebanon. Certainly, many Hizbullah supporters interpreted the Nasrallah skit “culturally” as a malicious joke designed – by a Maronite Christian TV station, to make matters worse – to humiliate not just a political party and its leader but a part of the Lebanese population. Whether intended or not, at least a part of Lebanon’s population perceived the BMW skit to have transgressed the red line that separates privately held prejudices and publicly sanctioned speech.

The limits of laughter

That people overstep red lines and others react violently to humor are relatively new phenomena in Lebanon related to radical changes in inter-sectarian relations and public discourse after 2005. Since the emergence of mass media as part of everyday life for the majority of the population in the 1950s, genres such as comedy films, cartoons and TV and radio shows have generated mass mediated humor through which the limits of publicly sanctioned laughter are constantly renegotiated. Another very popular genre from this period which is still in vogue today is revue cabarets, often lightweight subversions of social norms and famous people, which are staged in theatres around the country and involve singing and dancing.
 
Perhaps more importantly, there is the time-honored nukta (joke) that finds its way into public discourse now and then but is mainly designed to be told and retold among people and which, crucially, does not adhere to the same sanctions of proper speech as do cultural productions. In fact, the whole point of the nukta is often to say things that public culture would censor or self-censor. An example of this genre is the famous Abu Abed (Abu al-´Abd) jokes about a male chauvinist, half-witted but likable ibn al-balad (a man who is “salt of the earth”). These jokes have a long history and are solidly inscribed in national culture.[10] Some of the classical Abu Abed stories vary little from similar Little Johnny jokes in the U.S., or Homsi jokes in Syria, while others play on specifics of Lebanese culture and politics. Here is an example of a recent one, in which Abu Abed and his sidekick Abu Steif join the “Independence Intifada:”

Abu Abed and his friend Abu Steif were amongst the protester in a tent in Sahat al-Hurriya [Freedom Square, the name given to Martyrs’ Square downtown Beirut during the protests in 2005]. In the middle of the night Abu Abed woke up and started shaking Abu Steif.

Abu Abed:  Abu Steif...Abu Steif wake up... and tell me what you see.... Do you see what I see?

                Abu Steif: I can see the sky... I can see the moon... I can see the        
                stars...!

                 Abu Abed: And what does this mean to you?

Abu Steif: This means “Freedom”... This means “Sovereignty”... This means “Independence”... [Hurriya, Siyada, Istiqlal, slogan of the “March 14” movement].