While Hani Mustafa reviews the latest record-breaking comedy, a hoard of visual and aural contradictions, Iman Hamam, driving across Cairo, registers the city's visual mythologies Driving across 6th October Bridge, I hear Habibi arrab, boss w' boss boss (My love, come closer; look, look and look). A year ago, I got off a bus in London to find an illuminated poster with a public warning to raise awareness of terrorism on the bus stand. Only the eyes were revealed in what was simultaneously an inversion of black censor strips and an image of the veiling strategies common among especially religious Muslim women. The poster was similar to advertisements rotating throughout the city -- on billboards, underground stations and buses themselves. Sometimes they kept one up to date with the latest cinema releases, at other times they were sensual reminders of chocolate. We all know Calvin Klein underwear. There was never any doubt about what they were. Supported by a somewhat varied traffic system, Cairo's bridges -- sprouted, spewed almost from one end to another -- allow for a local variation on that theme, one that seems to answer to the ubiquitous refrain from Nancy Agram's pop hit: an imperative to look. It was the reality acknowledged by the illuminated bus stop in London that struck me -- the familiarity the image presented in comparison to that something or other about the colour of the figure's skin, and something else about the eyes. Questions of race and ethnicity jolt one's attention where a variation of the same poster presents a white-skinned, green-eyed woman. In both instances the blurb reads "life savers", suggesting that anyone may be called upon to act vigilantly -- to notice and report a suspicious- looking bag, for example. Ultimately, the posters expose themselves, prompting suspicious glances between similarly veiled and unveiled passengers. Paranoia, as the poster makes apparent, is suitably placed. The aim of advertising boards is to capture one's attention. And once that happens, you're done for. GOOD REASON TO BE PISSED OFF: One microbus driver will have it, as evidenced by the inscription on the back of the vehicle. But it's not to say that the posters, whether conceptually or practically, present drivers with any substantial risk. It's not as if one can avoid looking if one chose to. Mechanisms are employed to ensure that the images presented not only are obvious but make an exhibition of themselves. On 6th October Bridge drivers and passengers are presented with a display of billboards seemingly suspended by the miracle of progress alone. Approaching from Dokki, one can discern two simple messages: "Creativity pays"; and "Ariel: Nazafet bukra ennaharda (the cleanliness of tomorrow today)". A little further on, the distant glare of neon lights is abstracted into a triangle at the centre, a circle or two -- and square splatters. The cars advance in folly. And eyes begin to focus on the haphazard arrangement of colours and lights ahead. SHARP. Needless to say, size matters. How then to arrange the visual display, the better to understand its significance on the level of signs? Individually, such images provide a semblance of order amid chaos. That's how they work. The process of demythification as outlined by Roland Barthes involves a reading of these signs in terms of what they might mean semiotically: what films, advertising, the press, photographs -- cars -- represent. This is less a case of drawing attention to the binary structure of opposition between presence (of the advertisement) and absence (of the product), and more one of exploring how images in popular culture disguise and conceal the very structures and concepts that formulate them. An image of a beautiful woman carries with it certain "universal" denotations of health, for example. One is presented with a visual display and almost immediately it connects with a string of associations; these can in turn be divided into signifier and signified, image and concept. MUN'ISHA WA MUFIDA (Refreshing and beneficial): Flicking through a book of advertisements from the 1950s, one recognises that the classification of products bears significance in relation to the fact that this is not only post-(world) war but post-revolution Egypt -- a place that was establishing, in a number of ways, a particular mode of consumerism and class relations. Beauty products (perfume, soap, toothpaste), domestic products and electric appliances (vacuum cleaners, radios, irons, washing powder), drinks (Coca Cola, Kawsar), medicine, fertilisers (ammonia sulphate), cigarettes, and cars; in the final section, a number of (political) stars endorse King Farouk soap in earlier decades. Together, these items, always delightfully presented in conjunction with images of women, marked the formation of a relation between Egypt's stars and their national duty to contribute to and assist in the modernising process. The advertisements for Coca Cola make this link apparent: here is one of several corporations that have sustained celebrity endorsement in Egypt: in the early 1950s, the curvaceous bottles were held up delicately (again) by the likes of Mohamed Fawzy, Madiha Yusry, and Samira Ahmed. Today it's Nancy Agram. Otherwise, we are left with the same splattering of green bubbles, the same twist of orange. Medium close-ups have been zoomed in and we are left with thirst- quenching sugared delights. It is less a matter of wondering how the neon lights of the Cola sign are so splendidly curved, more a hijacking of colour. In summer one can only go back to basics. What obviousness is being presented here? The myth of cooling down, defying the heat of the sun, quenching your thirst not with water, but colour. On with the air-conditioning, or suffer the treat of aqua blue -- only to get worked up again over the shapely waist of Dysani (another Coca Cola beverage). There is little doubt that products need to update their marketing strategies. Why wonder what the Al-Arousa (bride, doll) identifying one brand of tea -- with her sad little eyes, her red dress and rosy cheeks, set against a canary yellow background -- might be saying about bridges and marriage in Egypt, when the identity of a rival brand involves nobody to speak, no parting, only a thumb held up in approval: Kidda. It's universal. MAFIISH HAGA TIGI KIDDA (Nothing comes easy): Downtown Cairo on Ramsis Street, a demonstration (visually emaciated, except for a white sheet with Arabic writing on it) is dwarfed by the more permanent display to the left: a swift and bare shoulder, a muscular construction worker and the title of a song or album: Insaa (Forget). Further down are three billboards presented by Rotana, the wisp of the logo curving in complete harmony with the straightened curls and fringes of female singers. More girls with lollipops, more ice cream. It is in the midst of demonstrators chanting slogans that pop music swiftly enters the scene. Underneath the 6th October Bridge, where parking is a fiasco, the fences give you less of a chance to loiter suspiciously even as they give others something to lean on as they stand there for hours and watch you walk past. Mazzika and Rotana provide head shot next to head shot of gel and lipstick. Boss w' boss boss. So we do. The image of the veiled women walking past the music billboards is easily reconciled with that of the female pop star -- rather than being contradictory, both maintain a formulation, a fashioning of the visual. While on the surface one subverts the other, both remain dramatic constructions of femininity -- but more importantly, relations of looking. The modern pop singer is legitimated even as it is simultaneously condemned and distanced by popular entertainment. The fantasy of Nancy Agram superimposes itself onto the faces of veiled women, who might nonetheless be spotted drinking a bottle of Coke on the street. Images of women in mass culture, particularly pervasive film stars and singers, suspiciously mark the absence of women's presence in the domestic sphere of advertising. Alongside the beauty and household products of the 1950s, figures of women affirmed the association between naturally maintained beauty and the capacity to sustain perfectly groomed and perfumed bodies, whether in dust-free households or iron-free shirts. Today, the bathroom glistens alongside the (surely cholesterol reduced) bottle of corn oil. In the first, women's social and economic conditions are simultaneously displayed and concealed; in the second, the women are absent entirely. The reality of domestic chores is displaced onto an image of Nancy Agram, legs astride, vigorously washing clothes in a bucket. Ghasalat idial aquatik: a'la mostawa lil-nadhafa (Ideal washing machines, the highest level of cleanliness). CHANGE YOUR VIEW (Ray-ban): The semiology of the street sign highlights the correlation between the development of the city on the one hand, and the traffic system that directs you through it on the other. On cars, minibuses, lorries and trucks, frequently viewed most closely from behind, are little stickers of simple red, orange or green, designed into knots, and often placed alongside words and phrases from the Qur'an: Kull hadha min fadl rabbi (All is from the bounty of my lord). In an article exploring the significance of what he calls "monumental public writing", Gregory Starrett writes, "In the late 1980s, along the extensive stretch of desert road between Alexandria and Cairo, the Olympic Electric Company placed dozens of signs, like a set of prayer beads strung between the two cities, each bearing an exclamation of prayer, ' subhan Allah ', ' al-hamdu li-llah ', and ' Allahu akbar. '" The hadha on the microbus reiterates the imperative to look ( boss w' boss boss ). This is not an irony: the words reveal or expose a devotion that directs attention to what the hadha is referring to. It forces you to look, and describe, "this": a microbus packed with people, speeding along, momentarily halted by traffic, before it courageously proceeds along its path. It reveals an ideology, simply, without concealing itself, determined by its own statement. "A cynic might look at the road sign advertising campaign that Olympic Electric has waged along the Cairo-Alexandria road, with its ritual phrases mounted above sales pitches for fans and water heaters, and say that the company was greedily capitalising on religious sentiment to hawk its products. But it is perhaps more interesting to approach the campaign from the opposite direction, looking at how this familiar God-talk has succeeded in spreading itself between the two cities by hitchhiking on the back of a commercial vehicle and capitalising on the human desire for temperature control," writes Gregory Starrett. AQSA IRTIFA' (maximum height): In the end, it is a question of temperature control in more ways than one; and there is little doubt that back in the city, there is a multiplicity of choices. But it is useful to maintain the juxtaposition of billboards and a transport system, or refreshments and road signs. On one occasion the traffic sign is incorporated into the image itself. Is this not a woman holding an ice cream to her mouth, clearly, visibly, enjoying it? Crowned gloriously by the Nestlé of Tahrir Square? Everyone knows this is the biggest instance of the proverbial mamnu' (forbidden) there has been for a while -- a futile reference to "this" mechanism. Social propriety and automatic (mechanical, instinctive, natural) responses clash and are reconciled in the way the figure suggestively sucks on the Mega ice cream bar, eyes closed, oblivious to the car horns that blast below. I don't suppose they are paying that much attention to her either. There is nothing more to be said. Is this, again, not the same product, which, further along 6th October Bridge, is advertised by a man who cradles it in his hand, as he states: Ana, wa Mega, wa bass (Me and Mega -- only). Of course it is. Two more, just to be sure: a woman takes a bite from the bottom of an ice cream cone: itigah mo'akis (opposite direction); a woman measures the length of an ice cream cone: aqsa irtifa' (maximum height). The obscenity does not lie in the way in which, viewed together, this particular series of Nestlé advertisements are so overtly sexual; the obscenity lies, rather, in their bare-faced, shameless presence; and it's further compounded by their repetition. This is a clever strategy -- and one that holds strength in its capacity to force the obscenity on those who might dare (but can only) acknowledge and recognise it's indecency, at the same time as it salutes itself, and mocks others -- or mocks itself and salutes others -- again, much of the same. ENTA AKEED KHASRAAN (And you will no doubt be the loser): It would be foolish to think that billboards are monopolised by advertisements for corporate products and celebrities. On the level of the street, shop fronts draw attention to their merchandise, and similar to the anti-terrorist campaign in London, there are also family planning campaigns, policy announcements, desert development ( Awiz al-amn wal-amaan? Ta'ala 'ish fil-Rehab -- Want security and safety? Come live in Rehab; or else Al-haya kama yanbaghi an takoun -- Life the way it's supposed to be) as well as political posters. On the Cairo-Suez road, the possibility, or permission, to take photographs is officially withdrawn. Preceding billboards advertising Al Rehab City, military buildings, concealed behind walls and sand dunes, warn passers-by that it is forbidden to take photographs or for persons to approach. Mantiqa 'askariya. Mamnu' al-iqtirab aw al-tasweer. In this instance looking is prohibited for security purposes. This does not mean that one is not able to see (it's hard not to), but simply denied the right to record. Elsewhere, billboards advertise advanced mobile phone technology, such as Alcatel's Record replay and relive your life. But it is the device itself that is worthy of magnification. This is a way of ensuring that "your life" and those precious moments are adequately preserved, whether by cameras or security services. Put together, the permission and prohibition suggest that in either case, life is assured. On 6th October Bridge, just past the Post Office Museum and Ramsis Central Railway Station, thirsty and exhausted drivers are presented with a banner (with regards from Misr Insurance) that reads Nu'amin mustaqbalak wa mustaqbal usratak wa nahmi muddakharatak wa mumtalakatak (We insure your future and the future of your family, and protect your savings and possessions). Above is the image of a picture-perfect family. We can only identify with this picture, and at last recognise the significance of the billboards and buildings that precede and follow this theatrical display. Barthes' focus on popular culture, deconstructing the mythologies surrounding iconic figures, advertisements, national food, exposes the relationships between a consumerist society and the socio- economic structures informing them. Today Egypt's billboards carry a firm reassurance: Dumta li misra saliman (May God keep you safe for Egypt's sake) .
