The World Through a Lens

October 2007

When a group of teenagers from various countries in the Middle East were asked what images came to mind when they thought about America, their responses overwhelmingly were, “big guns, bigger cars, sex and violence.” If you asked that same question in reverse to American kids about the Middle East, their answer would probably be suicide bombers, shrouded women, and bloody bodies.

Where do such images come from? Television, in large part; movies to an extent and of course, now, the ubiquitous Internet.

Media is the lens through which we develop our perceptions, accurate or inaccurate, about a place, a region, a people. What power. What influence. What potential for creating greater understanding—or the reverse.

Media as a lens to a culture can be revealing. But for Americans, the lens is frequently distorted and out of focus when it comes to the Middle East, a region most often characterized in Western media by one-dimensional images of war and cultural conflicts. Very few Americans see any television programs or listen to any radio or consume much in the way of web content that comes directly unfiltered from the Middle East. Aside from Al Jazeera, most Americans could not name another Middle Eastern media company.

This past spring at The Paley Center for Media [formerly the Museum of Television and Radio], we created an exhibition and a series of public programs focused on using media as a window to understanding the Middle East. The first thing we did was to consume as much media from the region as we could manage to bring in via satellite or through the Internet. With help from Link TV, a cable channel in the U.S. that features global programming, we created an exhibition of media from more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, including soap operas from Iran, music videos from Egypt, comedies from Iraq, dramas and talk shows from Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, entertainment and news from Israel, the United Arab Emirates and others. Some of it was live television and some of it was edited and translated.

And here’s what we found out: what makes people laugh in Iraq is not all that different from what makes people laugh in the U.S., the elements of a successful comedy are much the same, and the stories on the soap operas and prime-time dramas, not to mention the topics on the talk shows, were all very familiar. The common ground was unexpected and enlightening, laying new foundations for an altogether more comprehensive view of the diverse people in a region where the countries and cultures are as different from one another as say, Montana and Manhattan. Love and marriage, politics and religion, family values and family conflicts, are ingredients for compelling entertainment in any language and with any cultural background.

The level of interest in our Middle East series was encouraging—both in viewing the media exhibit (a real hit with teachers and students) and attending our events. The theaters at the Paley Center were filled night after night for panels on subjects like The War of Information in the Middle East, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict through Multiple Lenses and Covering the World: Al Jazeera.

One particular event, Women, Media and the Middle East, stands out in my memory. U.S. media icon Barbara Walters hosted the panel, which included famed Lebanese journalist May Chidiac, who was severely injured in an assassination attempt; popular Saudi talk-show anchor Muna AbuSulayman; and Iraqi reporter Huda Ahmed, who explained that she could not be photographed for fear of reprisals upon her family. Their stories and personal insights into the cultural, religious and social challenges that they must overcome to do their work were sobering and inspiring. At the end of a stimulating evening, one of the panelists made a comment that really struck a chord. “Look, none of us know enough about other cultures around us and not many of us take the time to really read or watch or listen to the programs that might tell us more about each other,” she said. “But when Americans are ill-informed or have misperceptions of a culture or a region, the consequences for the rest of the world are huge.” The silence in the theatre that followed indicated a new level of understanding—and agreement.

I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we all took up her challenge to use the collective lens of media to learn more about other cultures and people. Perhaps media really could play a significant role in making the world a more secure and peaceful place. Food for thought as the global media market meets and exchanges content and ideas.