Sonali Pahwa speaks to Kouross Esmaeli, an Iranian-born, New York-based filmmaker who recently went to Iraq, about the politics of US representation of Iraqis I decided to become a filmmaker on 12 September 2001. I had made one short film before this, but had not taken work in the medium seriously until I saw the level of control and distortion in the American media in covering events of the previous day. I joined Paper Tiger Television, an independent video collective based in New York, and worked as assistant producer on a video titled Turning Tragedy into War. The alternative media community is a face of American culture few people get to see. It is the antidote to CNN et al, trying to build structures and networks outside the corporate media. It is part and parcel of the American left, very dedicated, very critical of US foreign and domestic policy -- but with very little access and visibility. It was partly frustration at this fact that led me to accept an offer from MTV. Last October I got an e- mail from an independent producer looking for a co- producer to go to Iraq for an episode for MTV's weekly show True Life. This is one of the better shows on MTV -- reality television that aspires to cover the lives of young people in some depth. The producer had already made an earlier episode in which he tracked four Palestinians and four Israelis. It was probably the first time many young Americans had seen the Middle East situation from a personal angle, or had seen a Palestinian at all. So when I heard of a similar project in Iraq I figured that showing the daily lives of Iraqis and humanising them might be a corrective to the way the war has been shown in the US: like a video game, as if the death and destruction are totally anonymous and separate from people's lives. MTV is not a news programme and there aren't layers of producers and editors to make your material politically acceptable. Their one big concern was that we bring back something entertaining, something that wouldn't hurt their ratings. We were also strongly advised to avoid subtitles, meaning that we had to interview Iraqis who spoke English. I grumbled about this but finally acquiesced. We made contacts with organisations in Iraq and went there at the end of October 2003. Going to Iraq was like stepping out of the screen and into the street. Baghdad is devastated. It is a large city with beautiful public spaces, artworks and buildings that are covered in dust, bombed out or just abandoned. I arrived there on the day the Red Cross and several other international agencies were bombed. And the mood never really changed after that: fear mingled with a strong desire for normalcy. Baghdad is a far cry from Cairo or Amman, where American franchises litter every corner. It has yet to be globalised, but the process has begun. Satellite dishes of every size poke out of windows, balconies and rooftops like metal sunflowers twisting to find their satellite beams. Iraqi television sets are now flooded with the same programming that people watch in the rest of the Arab world. It is a whole new world for Iraqis, since satellite dishes were banned under the previous regime, and its effects remain to be seen. I stayed at a hotel that was also the Baghdad bureau for a major American network belonging to the MTV conglomerate, and so I got to see how the news bureau operated up close. The newest development in the US corporate media operation in Iraq is the use of private security. Imagine, for every American journalist there has to be one guard. How close can you get to ordinary people if you have an armed guard following you around and directing your movements according to his estimate of risk? I simply refused one, and the bureau agreed to make an exception in my case since being Iranian and speaking Arabic made me local enough. The producer and I had two digital cameras and that was it. All we had to do was to find the right characters and follow them around until a good story emerged out of their lives. For the Americans we contacted the military and asked to meet soldiers and be embedded with them. The Iraqis were contacted through a variety of sources, including universities, NGOs and personal contacts. We would make an appointment, go to someone's house or office, and interview young people one-on-one. Out of about 50 interviews we picked eight. We split into two crews. The four young Iraqis I ended up following were a journalist, a musician, a filmmaker and a graduate student. Three were from Baghdad and one from Al-Kut in the Shia heartland south of Baghdad. They had all heard of MTV but since it was not yet available on the satellites they had not seen it. These were all young people with knowledge of English. None of them wholeheartedly supported the occupation but the fear of continued violence or civil war kept them hoping that the American presence would bring some stability. They were interested in learning about the world outside Iraq, and especially about America. And they faced a contradictory America that is both a fantasy piped in through their television sets and at the same time the occupying power in their country. It was hard to gain access to every part of their lives, particularly to their homes, which was a necessity for the format of the show. Part of this stemmed from their fear of being identified as close to the Americans, but it was also because people were not used to the camera and how to be natural in front of it. America is saturated with cameras -- culturally and visually -- and Iraq is the opposite. This fact, I think, contributed greatly to the final outcome of the show. The American soldiers we interviewed hardly co- existed with the Iraqis. Most were resentful and tired of being at the front-line of the continuing war. One soldier described their first assignment in Baghdad, informally called Operation Get Shot. They had to go down to the street and draw fire so they could then identify and arrest the shooters. The outcome of this situation is a basic mistrust and resentment between Iraqis and the military. I believe this is a reflection of the leadership's ignorance, its obliviousness to the lives of Iraqis and its own soldiers. The young Iraqi filmmaker wanted to make a documentary about American soldiers during Christmas and the New Year. But the military refused to give him access. It would have been a great public relations exercise for the Americans but their fear of Iraqis prevented them from seeing it that way. On my return to the US I was told that contrary to the original understanding, I was not going to be a part of the editing. There wasn't enough money in the budget and there were professional editors more experienced at making an MTV cut out of the footage. The producer wanted my input every once in a while but I basically had no say over which characters were included in the final show and how they were portrayed. So they took the footage and made it MTV-friendly. In the name of dynamic characters, strong stories and good television the show became mostly about the hard lives of the American soldiers. Of the Iraqis only two men were included. And of the two the filmmaker was featured more prominently, and was edited to speak at length about his desire to make a film about the American soldiers and their difficult situation. There was no mention of the fact that the US military had refused him access to the soldiers. The Iraqis, as a friend of mine put it, were afterthoughts or little breaks between the stories of the Americans. American television is a business: there's a lot of money at stake and there is no sense of right and wrong beyond the bottom line. It is not only a question of censorship and editorial control over the content; it is the general cultural and political values that individual directors and producers don't question, and also the values of the television industry itself. I think the producers of True Life really do believe that their priority is to show the strongest characters -- judged by American television standards -- rather than make the extra effort necessary to show Iraqis who don't exactly fit with MTV character-types. In that way, I believe, they lost an opportunity to show a true and varied picture of the situation in Iraq.
