Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Counterrevolution in an Egyptian Comedy

Click here to access a review of a recent Egyptian film by Meir Walters from Mufta.

The detailed description of this film and the author's review of it provides some insights on the views of ordinary Egyptians in the midst of the turmoil that they are now experiencing.
...Haz Saeed [the film] represents the divisions and ambiguities of revolutionary movements themselves.

The film not only depicts latent tensions between various factions temporarily united in the revolutionary moment, but also the potentially ambiguous relationship between revolution and counterrevolution, and the authoritarian undertones of much revolutionary discourse.

In the wake of June 30, these tensions are coming dramatically to the surface as violence becomes more widespread. As I write, the military is using mass protests to justify violent crackdowns on the Muslim Brotherhood. While Haz Saeed does not predict the outcome of ongoing mass mobilization in Egypt, its satire is significant in expressing tensions that were always just beneath the surface.