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The Square: The Learning Curve of a Revolution

by Dane Benko

Poster for The Square

Poster for The Square

In December of 2010 I went on leave from my job in the United Arab Emirates to visit Egypt with a coworker.  On the first night after we landed in Alexandria, he crashed out in the hostel and I wandered around to get a feel for the streets.  I ended up walking through a street demonstration with several people giving speeches in Arabic over megaphones, but I was not aware of what the speeches were about.  The fact that I wandered into the demonstration at all indicates my poor situational awareness.

Later, in Cairo, my coworker asked a taxi driver, “So what do you think of Mubarak?”  The taxi driver said, “I cannot speak about Mubarak, but I feel eventually we will have to speak about Mubarak.  Because, see, we cannot talk about Mubarak, so we have to talk about Mubarak. You see?”  Unfortunately, that would be the full extent of my personal experience with what later became internationally known as the Arab Spring, which swept the news a full week after my return from Egypt.  I didn’t even know what I was looking at until various media told me.

 

Tahrir Square during the demonstrations
“Tahrir is a symbol of power. If you hold Tahrir, you hold control of the country.” –Aida Elkashef

Three years later, Netflix has distributed a documentary called The Square, after Tahrir Square in Cairo, which came to be the focal point of mass protest against Mubarak’s and subsequent regimes.  The Square has been nominated for Best Documentary in the 2014 Academy Awards. It comes at a point where the topic is so familiar that many people have already solidified their opinions about it, but it’s a new look into the revolution from filmmakers that have been recording the mass protests in secret for several years.

Coming into the documentary with my personal experience as a prelude, I wanted to see how the documentary presented the events in a different manner than the walled-in thirty second clips embedded in shimmering red and blue motion graphics presented in major mass media outlets.  As it turns out, the concept of media becomes an underlining metanarrative to The Square’s attempt to reclaim the Arab Spring for the populist revolutionaries.

A range of characters includes Ramy, a musician; Khalid Abdallah, an actor known for his role in The Kite Runner; and various activists, painters, and civil rights watchmen.  The main plot, however, surrounds two protestors known as Ahmed and Magdy.  Ahmed is a young populist seeking a brand new Egypt after living his entire life under Mubarak’s rule.  He’s introduced speaking about his childhood, history, and hopes in the revolution while walking down the street in a heavily vignetted tracking shot that seems to be aiming more for focus tilt and ends up being a serendipitous dreamovision in high contrast DSLR.  Magdy is introduced less stylistically as an interviewee attempting to represent the Muslim Brotherhood.

The cameras let themselves be rolled along waves of protestor movements, successfully pulling off a giddy and delirious effect to match the revolutionary fervor as more and more voices join in to describe their hopes of the future.  Surprisingly early on in narrative time, Mubarak steps aside and everything seems renewed.  And of course, shortly after everything gets much, much worse.

It’s there that the movie gains its focus (though starts racking focus in tighter and tighter focal lengths) to tell a three part narrative of the revolution from the ground level.  Mubarak turns out to be only the first part, as the military then moves in and outstays its welcome long enough to set up a Parliamentary election (swept by the Muslim Brotherhood) and a Presidential Election (that goes to Morsi).  Mubarak, the military, Morsi: the three acts, each who have access to their own mass media to write a narrative.  A military general known as Bekheit insists in an interview that the military was the start of the revolution. A television recording of Muhamed Morsi insists that it was the Muslim Brotherhood.

Without access to mass media, Ahmed, Magdy, and other protestors start gathering together whatever cameras they can to record everything, communicate to each other through social networks and street-level word-of-mouth, speeches, and demonstration, and share videos on YouTube.  Khalid Abdallah becomes a sort of Metatron, using his media and entertainment experience and the advice of his father (often a floating head in a Skype window) to put these videos into context and keep eyes on the streets and away from figureheads.  Their instinct in this matter is well founded as the demonstrations become targets of brutality and the cheerful characters we met earlier on are beaten, imprisoned, and shot at with live rounds.  Warning: the documentarians don’t look away.

Meanwhile, Ahmed and Magdy’s relationship starts to drift as Ahmed becomes more and more aware of the significance of finding a universal, non-military and non-religious constitution, and Magdy’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood starts to get ambiguous.  On the one hand they are both principled men who feel dedicated to those they supported before, but on the other hand, the realities of conflict and differing opinions rears its ugly head just in time for the new regime to start dividing the ranks of protestors against themselves.  Neither man is able to keep everybody on their side of the fence, and the two of them even struggle not to argue amongst themselves.

In the end The Square is merely the first act of a larger narrative history has yet to tell, but it firmly takes the perspective of the populist protestors to fight against the representations of the military and Muslim Brotherhood.  It’s also worth studying as a look into the learning curve of a revolution, as individuals are increasingly left with the burden of representing themselves and their fellow activists coherently and in a manner that doesn’t get subverted from above or contradicted from below.

Filed Under: ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, REVIEWS Tagged With: Ahmed Hassan, Aida Elkashef, Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Jehane Noujaim, Khalid Abdalla, Magdy Ashour, mass protests, media, Mohamed Morsi, Ramy Essam, revolution, skype, social media, Tahrir Square, The Arab Spring, The Muslim Brotherhood, The Square documentary, youtube

Catfish the TV Show: Addictive for all the right reasons.

by Ryan Shea

Catfish
Catfish
Credit to: www.mtv.com

 

I have to say in recent years MTV has sure put out some shows that I would rather run into a knife than watch, most recently Buckwild and the gem of all gems Teen Mom, which is making thousands of girls pregnant and money hungry as I type this post.  It didn’t seem too long ago when I was growing up that shows like Fanatic, Total Request Live and The Real World (when it was good and documentary-ish) were filling their airwaves of a once thriving network.  Lately though, that sparkle and luster is gone from a network that is completely devoted to programming (why on earth there is still a VMA every year beats me).

Yet, they seemed to have strike it gold with their new reality show “Catfish”, which premiered back in November.  The show centers around its star Nev Schulman, who made the movie of the same name two years ago.  It is based off of people you develop a relationship online, yet never meet in person, or Skype/Facetime either.  His whole purpose of the show was that “Catfish the movie was my story, Catfish the TV show is yours”.  Pretty simple, right? Sure.  Then, no matter what the topic is, shit always gets real and by the end the show has more twists and turns than a bad Lifetime movie (it’s your opinion if that is a good reference, but you get it).

Take the premiere episode.  Cute nursing student Sunny thought she had been talking to a model out in Los Angeles called Jamison for quite sometime.  Her younger sister actually talked to him first.  Yet during the whole eight months they talked, they never did it in front of a camera.  Finally, Nev to the rescue!  After doing some research (he does this in every episode, and it seems like anyone can, just pointing that out there) both Nev and Sunny travel to find that the person they were talking to isn’t a drop dead gorgeous model, but in fact a teenage girl named Chelsea.  Chelsea in return said she made the profile due to the incessant bullying she was dealing with on a daily basis, and wanted to create an alternate life in a way where she felt like she could be accepted.  All hell breaks loose but by the end there isn’t too much harm done and everyone goes their separate ways.

I’m sorry, I would be having serious issues if I was Sunny.  For so many different reasons.  I felt bad for her the whole time but at the same time you have to wake up and realize this person you think you are talking to isn’t real.  Why do I say this? Because just like every other gay man, woman, and even straight man to a certain degree, I have done online dating.  Whether it’s an app or a site, I have been there, and still do.  The thing for me is unless you are far away or there is a chance you are visiting the Tri-State area I don’t really have the need to talk to you beyond a certain point.  It’s not rude, it’s just honest.  If you are in Australia, and ask to see certain parts of me, what is the point? Can’t go through someone’s phone and grab it now right? Ugh, I digress.

I have been in Sunny’s situation where I have talked to guys from far away, and there have been several few exceptions of ones that really get my interest.  But, within two or three days of talking, we always Facetime or Skype.  That way, I know you are real and not cray cray.  Moral of the story to everyone reading this and watching the show is always make sure you know who you are talking to.  That way, you don’t end up sad and really embarassed in front of millions of people.  I think the show is fantastic though for several reasons.  It has done a couple of episodes focusing around the LGBT community, especially transgendered which of all those letters doesn’t really get the most attention.  It’s done in a non-judgemental way and people can see that when they watch the show, so kudos to Nev.

Bottom line, I am hooked.  Watch the show.  Debate it for yourself.

Have you ever been in a catfish situation? What do you think of the show? Sound off!

Filed Under: BREAKING NEWS, ENTERTAINMENT, OPINION, REVIEWS, TELEVISION Tagged With: catfish, catfish tv show, chelsea, facetime, fanatic, los angeles, mtv, nev, nev schulman, skype, sunni, the real world, total request live

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